HHIS 6942 Week 3 (9/5-9/11/2020)

 Going into the third week, I was ecstatic to see students already beginning to involve themselves with the COVID-19 Collection project in class. I assigned students to select people who they’d like to interview to push them to start thinking on it early. The assignment saw half the student email me with assigned interviewees while the other half did not provide me anything. This was concerning to me with such a small group of students unable to provide me with the email, yet I realized that I was overly ambitious. Dr. Murphree corrected me that students were only required to do one interview for the collection, yet I was under the impression that it would be multiple. This pushed me to conduct above what was expected of students by interviewing more than one student for the collection.

The third week’s classes consisted of discussions regarding historical discourse such as what it means to be a historian and the relationship with the public. Students seem to be breaking the ice with these discussions as some began to speak up. Dr. Murphree conducted this discussion as he tried to provide thoughtful discussion on who is a historian and the classifications in the field. I was able to provide some insight on this from a graduate perspective, discussing the authority of historians and interaction within the public domain. The Thursday class saw a guest speaker from the American Historical Association, Megan Connor, discussing the importance of internships and professionalization. Students seem to be very interested in internships due to both Connor’s talk and my participation in the class. It reminds me how blessed I am to be able to participate in an internship.

The internship with Dr. Murphree has propelled me towards contributing to the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Central Florida. I worked with Mary Rubin, head archivist, prior with volunteering work at the archives and I felt indebted from the volunteering opportunity. On Thursday, I conducted three interviews with students that had diverse perspectives on the pandemic. These interviews were conducted as oral histories and were recorded over Zoom. Two students were off-campus while another student was out of the country on an oversees internship. The internship helped me conduct these interviews and provided practice with oral history. On Sunday, September 13, I will be conducting two interviews with students that graduated in Spring 2020 as they were denied a physical graduation ceremony.

Mary Rubin discussed some semblance of a paid position as a lead on this collection. She was careful not to say it was confirmed, which is understandable with the budget cuts, yet I still am eager to contribute to this collection. Still, I am focusing on my graduate studies and Dr. Murphree’s class.

I held office hours this week which have been a little slow with student participation. One particular student was very eager to meet me in office hours. However, I must confess that Labor Day forced me to have only one office hour meeting. Though, it is my hope that students will continue to open themselves up and talk to me. Interacting with the students has strengthened my teaching abilities within the internship.