Alumni Testimonials

I remember going to Bristol to study history for one simple reason: I loved the subject. I felt that alone was justification enough to study it in higher education. I recall mixing with students, who I’m now fortunate enough to have as friends, who were studying more traditionally ‘employable’ subjects and feeling as though I was at a tribunal having to justify why I’d dare to pursue something I was passionate about on the grounds of utility in the job market. Though I was confident in my rebuttals, I’m sure I’d always had a lingering sense of doubt in my mind.

That was until I’d gone through the application process for the Civil Service’s Fast Stream programme and things began to click, as I’m sure they have for other graduates in my situation. During my application process I’d had masses of information thrown at me in a subject I was deeply unfamiliar with, alongside a simple set of questions: “What can you tell me about this?” and “What would you recommend we do here?”. It may sound ridiculous, but this isn’t too dissimilar from having the diary of a nun in the Middle Ages (a period I’d had little prior knowledge of too before my course), and placing it alongside its accompanying context, and being told to analyse it. It’s that ability to deploy excellent critical analysis on a completely new or unfamiliar set of information that was integral to our learning in History while at university. That ability helps me all the time in my job in government policy, especially as I move between departments. Picking up a new policy area with droves of vastly different, often quite technical information, and leveraging that information to make recommendations is key to the work I do in Government.

Being able to communicate that unfamiliar information to a specific audience, be it academics or the public, is also integral to the discipline of History. This too maps directly over to my current role where understanding audience is absolutely critical to ensuring that any recommendation to ministers, or line of advice on an existing piece of government policy is accurate, impartial and focused.

I’d continue to recommend that anyone going into the humanities isn’t put off by rhetoric that’d seek to deter someone from their passions, I love history and I’m proud to have studied it in Bristol.