Nearly two years ago, Josep Romero was faced with a difficult decision: transfer or drop out of school.
The Staten Island native was studying electrical engineering at the time, but the day before the add-and-drop period for spring 2022 ended, he made a decision that would completely change his course: take three history courses.
The recent history major “never looked back” and received the Helen Ann B. Rivlin Award in History before graduating in 2024. He said his favorite history class was “Race and Racism in Modern Europe.”
“I met a lot of good people in my undergraduate degree,” Romero said, adding that the experience helped her grow as a person. “I had a lot of good professors and a lot of great classmates.”
He is a first-generation student on his father’s side of the family, and he acknowledged that this puts a certain amount of pressure on him to do well.
“You’re here to accomplish things that others before you couldn’t,” Romero said. “Just knowing the sacrifices your parents made makes you really proud and makes you never want to give up.”
Oddly enough, it was a video game that first sparked his interest in history: Assassin’s Creed Unity, part of the famous Assassin’s Creed series, which centers around the French Revolution.
The French Revolution that preceded the Napoleonic Wars intrigued him, and after taking a few classes on the subject, he realized that physical combat, even if appropriate for a video game, didn’t interest him.
“This is certainly one of the most interesting and fascinating things I’ve learned recently because there was widespread social and political change going on,” he said.
He particularly enjoyed the history classes taught by Associate Professor Elisa Khamishori and Professor Howard Brown, who, not coincidentally, is an expert on the French Revolution.
Now that he has his bachelor’s degree under his belt, he plans to start his career. He is considering becoming a lawyer or a historian, and plans to attend law school or graduate school in the next two years.
Romero stressed the importance of the study of history as a whole, describing it as unique and distinctive.
“The humanities, and history in particular, are very neglected in our time,” he says. “We don’t realize how important they are in an increasingly technological world.”
