It has been apparent in my experience here at UCA that therapy can be very self-constructive and transformative.

I also feel that the UCA Department of History does an excellent job facilitating critical thinking and in-depth knowledge of this field.

Why bring these two things together? Honestly, majoring in history has been triggering and at points, very depressing.

This semester, I am enrolled in professor Zachary Smith’s class, Asian American History in the South.

We began our semester by building an understanding of early Asian migration into the Western Hemisphere.

I would say the bulk of our content picked up when we reached our second unit, “Chinese Americans in the Age of Exclusion.”

I was in a group with two other wonderful historians and led a discussion over a chapter in Erika Lee’s book, “At America’s Gates: The Exclusion Era 1882-1943.”

The chapter we discussed brought up several key ideas, including what it really meant to be American. 

Migrating into the U.S. during a time when racial prejudice was essentially a social norm, Asian migrants were often manipulated into paying high amounts to get in or abandon their cultural connections to their respective countries.

To put this into perspective, I am a first-generation Mexican American. 

My parents immigrated to the United States around the ’70s and ’80s, and my siblings and I are the first in our family to receive American education.

Reading about racial prejudice and xenophobia made me feel like an academic victim. 

I could not help but think of my parents as I read about the experiences of Asian immigrants during the Age of Exclusion. Especially knowing that it would lay the foundation, as well as a precedent for the treatment of future immigrants, such as my parents. 

Alongside Smith’s class, I also took a Latin American studies class with professor Sonia Toudji. Our main textbook was “Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America” by John Charles Chasteen — an amazing historical read, by the way.

The most profound idea I took away from his book was his section about “A Power Called Hegemony.”

Essentially, hegemony is a form of soft power, an indirect form of control. 

Instead of using a forceful approach, such as a military invasion to control a colony across an ocean, hegemony uses social manipulation to keep the natives of that land from resistance to a degree.

Chasteen claims, “When they accept the principle of their own inferiority, and in the old-fashioned phrase ‘know their place,’ they participate in their own subjection.”

As the girls of my generation would say, I was crying, screaming and throwing up.

Week after week, I read, discussed and analyzed the way racism has slowly implemented itself into society. I have read about how imperialism has permanently harmed the economic development of the Latin American countries that I originate from.

I have also learned about how racial prejudice has guided presidential decisions such as Executive Order 9066, signed by  Franklin D. Roosevelt, which put Japanese Americans into internment camps.

For months, I have been learning about the foundation of the racial prejudice I have experienced and witnessed in my lifetime.

So yes, historians should consider therapy. The topics we study in depth as history majors are sometimes very disturbing, and anxiety-provoking. To prevent burnout and continue with our studies, therapy provides an excellent form of self-care.  

Racism is ongoing, and studying its history can be infuriating. But therapy is a safe way to explore that rage and how to cope with it when it comes up in your studies.