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- Year Of Graduation: 2013
- College/University: St. Mary’s College of Maryland
- Major: History
What do you do for a living? Can you share what a typical day at work looks like? Do you enjoy what you do?
I have a hybrid role. I work 50/50 as a business analyst and a software tester on a project for Medicare. I actually really enjoy it. This particular project I’m on follows a quarterly release cycle; it’s a little bit different from job to job.
The day begins with a meeting with the team where we discuss what we were working on, what we are going to work on, whether we had any impediments or issues, and that kind of thing. As I said, for half of my work I’m doing business analyst-type work, so that’s working with the client trying to understand their needs, what they want the software to do, and communicating that information with the team. It’s a lot of trying to get the technical information from the developers and the testers and convert that into something that the client could understand. I kind of act as a bridge between the client and the team.
I also do a share of the testing. On this particular project, I am writing up test cases. So I look at the requirements that other business analysts have figured out with the client and I analyze the requirements and I try to write up a whole bunch of tests for it. It should be able to do X, it should be able to Y, make sure it doesn’t do Z, and things like that. Then we execute the test, document our results, and communicate with the developers whenever we find bugs or defects.
Also, on the side, I’ve been working on business development. This is a little personal side project of mine. Our goal is to try and identify opportunities to expand by researching federal contracts, trying to figure out the scope of work, and trying to see if we’re a good fit. It’s essentially job hunting, but on a massive corporate scale. There’s definitely a lot of research involved with that, which I particularly enjoy.
Can you tell me about your experience finding a job after graduation? Are you happy with where your journey has led you thus far?
Honestly, I think a lot of it was due to really good luck. I had a few paths ahead of me. One was trying to find a job within my field. For history, I felt like my opportunities were pretty limited. A lot of the entry-level jobs paid about minimum wage, or maybe a little bit more, and did not really have any benefits at all. The other option was going back to school and incurring an immense amount of debt for a chance at being a professor in a saturated market. Another option was trying to find a job outside of my field, and then the third option was just finding any job, be that retail, fast food, or anything. I ended up settling with that one and my first job was working in a baby boutique store, and I hated it.
I was very fortunate, though. My father’s career was first in federal contracting and then in the federal judiciary. So he had a lot of contacts, and he gave my resume to a friend, who gave it to a friend, who gave it to his brother, who gave it to his company. My resume essentially got sent to the top of the pile.
During the interview, I guess I said all the right things. I remember the phone screening for it. The guy called me up at the wrong time because he mixed me up with some other candidate and I just went with it. He was like, “Do you know Java?” “Nope.” “Do you know .Net?” “Nope.” “Do you know C#?” “Nope.” “Do you know C++?” “Nope.” “Cool. You know what? I’d like to have you come in person for an interview.” And I was like, “Okay, all right. I’ll take it.” I remember there were three rounds of interviews, and it was for a helpdesk position.
It took me six months to find the retail job, and then I was there for two months before I got the helpdesk position. For the helpdesk, I was there for 5 months. My father had told me that I’d probably be very good at being a business analyst as that was less technical and more analytical and communicative, and working with the clients. It just so happened that there was an open internal position for a quality assurance analyst and I didn’t really want to do it, I wanted to be a business analyst. I had mentioned that to my supervisor but I thought it was worth a shot.
In that interview, I was given an exercise. As we were going down the list of questions for the exercise, I ended up stumping the interviewers. I found something that they had not intended, so they hired me on the spot. I personally found that my experience at St. Mary’s when I was doing research for my senior thesis and trying to ask questions and analyze the sources helped me because I just applied that same skill to a different context.
If I asked you in 2013 when you first graduated, what goals would you hope you’ve achieved, in life or career?
By the time I graduated, I kind of knew that I wasn’t going to work in history, either academic public or private. So my focus was on government. My new goal became wanting to work for the federal government. My dad did it had done it, my grandfather had done it, both civil service and military service. I just really wanted to contribute to my community. So my goal over the long term was to get into the federal government. I spent a good chunk of my career trying to work up my skills. Again, I feel I was very lucky because I got an easy in through the federal judiciary, not that many people would get the same opportunity. Especially not now.
Why did you choose your undergrad major? Do you feel your time spent in college was valuable? Why or why not?
I was going to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I was a space nut. I loved everything about space. I had stars on my ceiling, and little planets hanging down. The Air and Space Museum was my absolute favorite museum. I was really good at memorizing space facts and all of that stuff. I decided, why not give this a shot? All the people around me were saying, “You can be whatever you want if you just put your mind to it.” And I’m like, “All right, sure.” So I started to seriously look at what would be required, but I realized there was a reason there are very few people in that club.
So first I got Eagle Scout, and then I was going to apply to the Air Force Academy. I had to get sponsorship from a congressional representative. In the end, I ultimately withdrew my application for that because I feel like that should be something you should want with every breath. You should wake up and just think of it first thing and eat, live, and breathe it because there are so few slots available per state.
I also looked into just being involved in the civilian aerospace industry. The shuttle program getting nixed also kind of put a nail in that coffin. So I started out with two years of community college because it was cheap, and I was going to transfer over to some technical college somewhere. I realized pretty quickly, though, that my mind was just not cut out for calculus and physics. I was great at the high school level, but once I got to lower-level college classes, I couldn’t cut it, so I really didn’t put much effort into it.
I started failing and my morale went down, and I recall at one point I was chitchatting with a friend of mine and he interrupted me. He said, “Mike, you are always talking about history. Why not?” And I’m like, ” I don’t want to starve.” And he’s like, “Does the major really matter all that much?” So I took an anthropology class over the summer. I liked it. It was interesting, but then I took a history class as well and I realized, yeah, yeah, I like this. My GPA shot up to 3.8 after that and then I transferred over to St. Mary’s.
When did you realize you didn’t want to pursue a career in history?
Talking to some of the other professors—one of them was my thesis one was my program adviser—I could just see that academic history was kind of a dog-eat-dog world. There was a lot of petty drama that I kind of didn’t want to be involved in.
I had one class one day where instead of a lecture, we went through the statistics of being a historian, and it boiled down to you actually might have a better chance of being a fighter pilot than being a tenured professor in the United States. Then if you want to look at other programs abroad, you have to learn multiple languages and be very proficient in them, and you probably should have some connections and roots established in those countries. Plus, the amount of debt involved was for such a small chance. In that lecture, I kind of realized that yeah, this is probably not going to work just like being an astronaut.
And yes, I like history and it would be wonderful if I could make a living doing what I love, but I also know for myself that financial stress would outweigh any joy that I would get from that job to the point that I would probably become stressed and start to resent it.
How important is it to have a purpose-driven life? Why or why not? Do you think you’re on a path to do that? If not, what needs to change?
I think having a purpose is essential. It gives what I do focus and for me I want to serve my community. So it’s kind of twofold. I want to go down a career path that I can do reasonably well and that pays well enough for me to pursue my own hobbies. But if I’m going to do that, I want that to be for a purpose. I don’t want to just be dumping quarterly profits in some shareholder’s portfolio. I want it to be a service that I believe in. I really enjoy working for my particular company. The culture here is great, and I’m also working on Medicare, you know, a good cause that I believe in. So just having that really helps me kind of focus my labor, and my energy on giving back to the world in some capacity.
Touching back earlier, one of the things I didn’t like about academic history is I felt like it’s a bit inwardly focused. Professors who teach students who become professors. How does it make the world better if it just stays within the academic field? I want what I do to benefit the world in some way, and if I can use the skills that I learned in history, and just apply them in a different context, then so much the better.
Do you think the major you picked ended up mattering in the long run?
Yes and no. When I originally started on the helpdesk and got a software testing position, my degree didn’t really matter. I didn’t need a degree to get on the helpdesk. That wasn’t a minimum requirement. For software testing, it was, but because I found that one error that they did not intend, I essentially was able to prove that a history degree could be valuable to them.
Later on, as I progressed in my current company, we had a mentor program that I took early advantage of and I was fortunate enough that I just kind of clicked with my mentor. I mentioned to him that software testing it’s great but after eight years I’m kind of sick of it. Also, it’s starting to shift more toward automation, and I hate coding with a passion. The market is saturated with people who know how to code at a much higher level than I could ever teach myself. So, I was not even going to waste the energy. I was telling him I wanted to get out of testing because I felt like my skills could be of benefit to the company in other ways. I essentially tried to sell myself.
My mentor ended up suggesting business development. He got me on a special training for it, and because networking is so important, I made sure to go into the office for all sorts of events they were having. I would make a point of mentioning my history degree when asked, and relate it to my love of researching. People would say stuff like, “We want people who love researching.” In the business development realm, they saw the value of the history degree.
What’s your biggest struggle? What led to it? How are you moving forward?
I would say initially [out of college], my biggest struggle was probably social skills. I was a bit of a late bloomer and that definitely held me back. I did not play politics very well. I went into the workforce thinking that it would be a lot like school where if you work hard you will do well. No, not quite. People don’t like being told no, even if they’re wrong. There is an art to telling somebody no. It took me a while to understand.
I was a bit of an introvert, so I didn’t have a lot of those social life lessons growing up, and going to the office was kind of the first time that I actually had to interact with strangers and get stuff done regardless of personal feelings and whatnot. I feel like I eventually learned them over the years.
What interests/hobbies bring you the most happiness?
In high school, I was taking a drama class and the teacher approached me and another student and said, “Hey, I’m in a local theater production called The Killer Angels, and we need some extras. Want to do it?” I thought, “Yeah, why not?” I really enjoyed it, and that awoke a deep interest in the Civil War. Right after I did the play, I read the book The Killer Angels and then I read God and Generals and the Last Full Measure.
I went as a spectator to the 145th anniversary Civil War reenactment as well. I remember being absolutely amazed watching regiments of federal troops marching by. It was just this column of blue. I thought, “My god, this looks so real.” There were 15,000 reenactors at that event if I recall. I was 15 at the time. I knew I really wanted to do it and two years later I found a local unit and I got involved. That became one of my main outlets for history. It’s not a cheap hobby, but when you don’t really have any other hobbies, everything kind of goes to that.
What’s the biggest lesson or piece of advice you wish you’d known earlier?
The importance of networking. You never know where an opportunity might present itself. Talk to people, put yourself out there, tell people about your dreams, tell people about you. What I’ve realized is that when you’re actually interacting with people, face to face, in person, or whatnot, for the most part, we’re pretty civil. People might have different opinions about stuff, different beliefs or races, creeds, whatever, but for the most part, people can be civil.
I found that people also want to help if they can. I’ve told people my dreams and I’ve had people reach out with opportunities that I ultimately never pursued. But just about every opportunity I pursued was because of somebody else. There is no such thing as a self-made man. We help each other out. Having that network is probably your best bet. It was for me. Also being able to recognize opportunity and seize it is important. Napoleon once said, “I make my own luck.” It sounds edgy and whatnot, but I think true luck is a hint of opportunity, but also being able to recognize that opportunity when it’s there and being willing to take that chance.
Another piece of advice: have an outlet for your interest, whatever that is. For me, I love history, obviously, and my outlet for that is in reenacting. I get to educate people about history.
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