Alexander Shapanka, B.A. 2013

NYC Department of Small Business Services — New York, New York

2013 Major: History

How has being a History graduate from Duke helped shape your professional success?

"Studying history at Duke is not about learning facts and dates. It's about understanding different narratives of how events unfold. It's about analyzing common experiences across time and space. It's a challenge of finding a new way to interpret subjects that have seemingly been exhausted. My degree taught me to be flexible in my jobs and made me predisposed to searching for fresh ways of analysis."

What advice would you give students in History?

"Bring in the knowledge you're learning in your non-major classes. History is a subject that lends itself well to being interdisciplinary. You can use statistical modeling to support your research papers. Wear lenses from your linguistics or cultural anthropology classes. Let your foreign language requirement guide some of your history work in school. Once you graduate, things are not so cut and dry as being given an assignment and finishing it by a deadline. If you want to grow, a lot of the time you'll need to find the work yourself. Knowing how to combine dissimilar ideas to produce something new will help in that process and help you stand out."

Alexander Shapanka