HIS 5944 (1/18-1/22/2021)

 

This week saw a continued transference from Mary’s documents to my own purview. I have felt as though I am responsible for the project and have continued to do my best to be professional as possible. Leading projects was not something that the history major fundamentally provided for as it was attuned to research and papers. Projects like the COVID-19 collection aid me in handling the sheer weight of this. There are many interviews still being reviewed and transcribed for processing to publish to the public. As I review the transcriptions to correct errors, it reminds me of how synthesizing and reading comprehension continue to be a vital role in the real world that the history major did provide for me. The internship has helped me see how the process occurs and how just a minor thing such as transcribing can take a very long time to process. Time management continues to be a vital part of our role in both writing and researching historical knowledge.

So far, progress on the COVID-19 collection has been moving smoothly with the transition between Mary Rubin’s interviews and my own. I’ve already begun to reach out to students and other faculty that I wish to interview. A few of the faculty have come forth to be interviewed from the History Department at UCF which I am eager to hear their perspective. It is a very often occurrence where students lack the other side of the classroom: the professors. I suspect that the professors from the History Department are going to completely differ from the professors from the Computer Science Department at the university. Our major does not require the use of computers and most professors seem to lean towards the physical approach to their classes. From my own digital history research last semester, historians, arguably justified in this approach, underestimate the abilities that technology can provide us.

Another divergence is professors that taught the general education within the History Department versus the professors that were more specific. For example, a professor that was teaching American History tailored for the general education students who are not majoring in History may had to work extra hard. Classes that are specific for the History Major typically have students who are already passionate enough to learn the class no matter the modality.

The internship has led me to investigate the perceptions of the victims of COVID-19 both from the students and faculty point of view. Some people recall different things such as the BLM movement in the summer, dorm situations in the spring of 2020, and other details that are not shared by two individuals. This only makes my resolve to document and historicize these perspectives grow as I cannot imagine that the posterity of historians may have access to this information. Oral history is a vital part of research and I am happy that I can participate in this opportunity. I hope that the COVID-19 project will expand to capturing more diverse interviewees as only focusing on one singular department may lead towards a skewed perspective.