What are you thinking of majoring in and why?
“I’m studying history because I think it’ll give me a great deal of flexibility in my career. History, as I see it, is a great way to build “soft” skills. These skills are things such as reading, writing, and other skills that we tend to learn then allow to grow stagnant as we get older. Those skills allow me to pursue other avenues that I can use to build other skills. I can read the works of others, I can use synthetization to tie other works together and improve my skills in a new way. Essentially this gives me a mirror, and I can look into that mirror and improve what I see. Man’s his own sculptor, and history allows me more freedom with my sculpture.”
When do you think you knew you wanted to study that?
“I came to college originally to become a doctor. I guess I just eventually came to realize that I didn’t want to be a doctor because it wasn’t really for me. I’m kind of competitive, and I think that that’s maybe not the right job environment for my competitiveness. I knew I wanted to study history because I want to be constantly learning throughout my entire life. I want to enter different careers. I’m not entirely sure what my endgame is, but I just want to start my base and work my way up. I figured it out around my second semester of my freshman year as I took a history class and noticed that I was actually developing the skills they said I would develop, and I was proud of it.”
What would be your dream career?
“I don’t really have a specific idea of what kind of job I would want to do, but I want a job where I can be creative and spontaneous. A job where the work day changes a lot and offers different challenges. This might sound kind of lame, but I don’t really want to be that nomadic, in that I want to build a relationship with a community and you can’t really do that when you’re moving around a lot. That’s my general idea, but I’m still working on it.”
– Tanner Petroske
Beneath The Crown was created by Nick Theisen (‘15). It is inspired by Humans of New York (HONY) and aims to bring the community of Gustavus Adolphus College closer together by providing the perspectives of the many different people who live and work at the school.