While Yale does not require students to declare their majors until the end of sophomore year, declaring a major early does come with its perks and also maintains flexibility as students are free to change majors throughout their time at Yale. One of the major perks of declaring a major is getting access to all the different mailing lists that are filled with gems if proper time is dedicated to browsing them. Since my friend is a History major who is also very attentive to her mailbox, I was forwarded the email sent by the Yale Military History Society (YMHS) advertising their War Gaming event to the History department.
As someone who has never war gamed and doesn’t really understand what that means, I still decided to sign up with her so we could go through this first time experience together. The event was held in Rosenkranz Hall, home of the Political Science department, and two classrooms were reserved for the event. The options were Stalingrad and Anglo-Afghan War, where we ended up with the Anglo-Afghan War.
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Although the other people at the event were well-versed in war gaming and were members of YMHS, they were very welcoming and explained the rules of the game. The event was hosted by a third-party invited by YMHS who helped set up the game and brought all the miniature pieces needed to play. My team was the Anglo side, and through teamwork we were able to win which definitely made it a memorable first experience.
Overall, declaring a major at Yale and being active in the different mailing lists are great opportunities to meet new people and be exposed to different events that would be unknown otherwise!
