Recent College Grad: I Studied History and Now Can’t Find a Job

I never thought my history major postgrad experience would be thrilling or lead to riches. That’s not why I studied history.

I studied history at Tufts University, graduating in 2025 with no other majors or minors, because I liked it. I liked hearing stories and questioning their particulars; I liked my classmates and the intellectual freedom we could share.

I loved debating whether Simone de Beauvoir is being overly dismissive of Rosa Luxemburg in “The Second Sex,” or if I find the Consort Yang scandal a satisfactory explanation for the An Lushan rebellion during the Tang Dynasty. Also, no, I still don’t understand the Balkans since 1453. I’m convinced nobody does.

Never did I think those revelations would get me a job immediately after college, but I believed my skills would be transferable to a number of careers. I became an expert in writing, research, and critical thinking. “Everyone needs writers” was a classic refrain I heard in my upperclassman years.

Yet since graduation, I’ve tried to find ways to write professionally, from content writer to copywriter to media jobs, but it always feels like I’m one step behind the curve.

By far the most common job posting now is “AI content writer,” or someone who reviews and improves the responses of generative AI. That was not what I studied to do. I fear AI, along with concerning trends in media and research in general, may be freezing humanities majors out of the job market exactly when the ever-artificial world needs some humanity.

I struggled to picture my future throughout college

I was never sure what I wanted to do for a career. I thought about becoming a writer, I thought about becoming a teacher, I thought about going to graduate school. Write what? Teach what? Go where? These are questions I didn’t have answers for yet, and I was sure that was fine because I was only 18.

Then life came at me fast, and the steps to success came barrelling down the road like a truck with no brakes.

I knew I liked writing, and I could imagine myself in both academic and journalism careers, so in college, I began writing about the Boston Celtics for several websites. I eventually started writing about various sports. It was fulfilling, but it wasn’t nearly enough to be called an internship; those writing gigs were never going to turn into full-time offers after college.

None of my academic pursuits, namely my senior honors thesis, was going to come with one either.

Perhaps it was my fault for studying history in the first place. I was still a teenager when I declared my major, and I feel about as useful as one in today’s job market.

I’m now left wondering if my degree will help me get a job at all.

I can’t find a job in today’s artificially intelligent world

Qualified to do exactly two things — write about sports and do historical research — the world of LinkedIn, Indeed, job boards, and career center events has felt like a barrage of distillation. I need to explain to the market why I’m useful, even though I’m hardly convinced of it myself.

Sports media is hemorrhaging full-time jobs, and the Trump Administration is gutting academic research. Graduate school funding froze overnight.

I now face the endless scrolling through jobs for “writers” or “researchers,” but my only options seem to be a slew of AI training jobs.

Studying history, I was encouraged to add complexity where simplicity reigns supreme. I was taught to embrace complexity and communicate nuance. None of those skills seems important in the AI job market anymore.

I’m left feeling alienated and lost, but I will continue my job search until I find the position right for me.