You've been written up for insubordination for the third time. You may not agree with everything the administration says, but too bad. You're history.

You're in the fourth year of teaching history at a small college in the Midwest. There's no history degree offered, so your classes are taken mainly so students can earn a humanities credit.

You're just a few years away from tenure as a history professor at a large university. You've told your joke about John Hancock and the three-fingered monkey about a thousand times, but you still find it funny.

You've achieved tenure as a history professor at Harvard. Time to reward yourself with a trip to your favorite historical site.

Same deal—you're tenured at Harvard—but you have also had a number of hugely popular history books published and sold worldwide. You're so important, history teachers of the future may be teaching about you.