Tim O’Brian, a UW freshman, is starting to worry about his options as he begins to search for a major. Enrolled in HSTAA 150 ½ American History for People who got a 2 on the APUSH Exam, O’Brian has been surprised at the darker parts of US history of which he was previously unaware.

“Apparently we lost the Vietnam war or something,” said O’Brian. “I also learned last week that we fought a war in Iraq! Who knew?”

As an avid “Risk” player, the board game in which players try to dominate the world through strategy and alliance, O’Brian always considered himself a “history buff.” After sitting through his first college history course, however, he’s starting to doubt himself very much. Not only is the workload more than he expected, with up to fifteen pages of reading every week, O’Brian is worried that learning more about US history might end up being “sort of a bummer.”

“History was fun in high school because we always learned about the cool stuff, like how badass we were in World War II. Then I learned that we had [internment] camps in our own country for Japanese people, which isn’t very cool. I don’t really understand the point of learning all of this extra stuff when it just makes me feel sad.”

The path forward for O’Brian is unclear, as his original plan of majoring in the “cool parts” of US history was rejected by his academic counselor. “I wanna help the world I guess, but I really don’t want to be bummed out all the time. Maybe I’ll major in environmental science. I like trees!”