Friday, February 26, 2021

HIS 5944 (2/20-2/26/2021)

 

This week continued to see the collection progress to the approval stage of a plethora of interviews. Unfortunately, they have not all been approved nor public access quite yet. As of the publication of this blog, a few other interviews were slated to be approved and published to STARS. The process of publication requires approval from Mary Rubin so it is out of my control. However, we hope that it is published next week and will have a large bulk of the interviews that we have slated. As a reminder, these interviews include students that experienced the pandemic through different ways which I implore you to look at. Patience seems to always be a good characteristic to have as one cannot rush through oral histories as it requires a great deal of attention.

Mary and I came up with Marketing Mondays where we discuss marketing for the project. Up until now, Mary has refrained from posting the existence of the project to social media for several reasons. Posting on social media may give us a large influx of people that want to be interviewed that will overwhelm the project. In addition, we must question the morality of these people wanting to participate, only wishing to muddy the true purpose of the project. I have sent emails to professors who still have not come back to me with a confirmation of interest. This includes professors from outside the History Department which does disappoint me. This upcoming Monday will see Mary and I contemplate if we need to post this on social media to draw in more people as interviews have slightly slowed down.

I have also been working on perusing through a few reviews of interviews that were done last semester from my previous internship. A student from Dr. Murphree’s Professionalization the History Major interviewed students from Student Government within the University which gave me an insightful look at an often-overlooked perspective from a student. The student was very skilled at discussing and properly giving questions to the interviewee. Upon my reviews, I have tried to incorporate some characteristics exhibited by the student into my own interviews which I have planned.

This week also was my mid-term evaluation that I had emailed Mary Rubin about. Reviewing it again, I was happy to see that Mary was eager to have me on the team as a part time intern. She commented on my hard work and addition to the team which gave me more motivation and self-worth. There was only comment that gave me something to think about which was my dress code. Working as a part time student in a pandemic has certainly made me dress a little less formal than usual. It has illuminated that most oral histories seem to have a professional aspect and yet the COVID-19 project contrasts this with students or faculty being at home. They are in their regular clothing that they would wear at home which is slightly more relatable than being in a standard interview room with a crew there. While I do need to think about my choice of clothing, it also has led me to believe that the appearance of these interviews may seem more relatable to the viewer.

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