Thesis Title: A War in Their Heart: The Pieds-Noir Rhetorical Construction of Identity After the Algerian War

What Now: Third-year law school student at Harvard Law School

I started college knowing that I wanted to go to law school. In my search for a concentration at Harvard College, I looked for a program that would give me the skills that I needed both to get into law school, and to eventually become a successful lawyer. History & Literature teaches those skills; as a History & Literature concentrator I learned to write, research, analyze, edit, form and critique arguments, and clearly articulate my ideas, both in writing and in speech. The first year of law school is especially difficult; there’s a lot of new material, unfamiliar ways of thinking, and dense reading assignments. Thanks to having gone through the History & Literature program, and having been exposed to an extensive list of types of literature, from different time periods, places, etc., I had the foundational skills necessary to hit the ground running with the new material law school brought. And, because I went straight through from college to law school, the fundamental capabilities I’d cultivated through History & Literature were particularly integral to my success that first year.