Kenyon College

Date: Apr 02 2004
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
I got a superior education at Kenyon and absolutely loved being there. It was a wonderful college community, one I was involved with on many levels through friendships with students, professors, and people in town. I was very involved with campus activities and made the most of my time there, and had a great group of friends around me. While some may decry the geographic isolation of Gambier, I personally loved the rural setting, fascinating architecture, strong sense of history, and Kenyon's unique traditions.

My only beef was that finding a job afterwards was difficult. Kenyon doesn't pull in as many or as good recruiters as larger or closer-to-civilization schools do, and liberal arts in many cases doesn't provide you with a trade or concrete marketable skill. The career center tries hard, but you really need to be a self-starter to investigate different career paths, focus on what you want, and get out there and network. They do run a great Externship program that I highly recommend. I will say the career center is much stronger now than when I was there.

I was an English and art history double major, so I came out knowing how to read, write, think, look at art, and identify images on slides. But that isn't really resume fodder. I pursued publishing afterwards. Any English majors who want to pursue publishing, be darn sure you work on the Collegian or other journalistic enterprise in a major leadership-titled, layout-creating, editing role, and get at least one relevant summer job or internship under your belt before trying to find a job in the field. Newspaper byline clips and getting your poetry in the literary magazine will not get you there, unless you have major connections or you attend a summer publishing course like Radcliffe after graduation (or you find a job thru the newspaper in a specialty or remotely-located publishing company, as I did). You need to get all the extracurricular real-world experience and computer skills you can. As for art history majors, you'll need a graduate degree if you want to do anything serious with it (n.b. this would be true of any college, even Harvard, unless, again, you've got connections somewhere). I finally succumbed to a fascination with historic buildings (which I developed on Kenyon's campus, at an externship, and in a junior-year semester abroad), traded editing for grad school, and now have a job I love where I can indulge my love of architecture, history, research, and writing.