HIS 5944 (4/16-4/23/2021)

 This week I began to compile a list of the people that we have interviewed to assure that we cover as many perspectives on the pandemic within the college as possible. When discussing the project’s parameters early on, I wanted to use the “ark” system with compiling two perspectives from each respective college or group. For example, we wanted to have a minimum of two History students or faculty perspectives to not overwhelm the project with only History majors. In addition, the project was concerned with only garnering responses from males, so it was important that we did not interview repetitive subjects. These parameters made that aspect a priority going forward as I believe that the interviews we have could be improved upon with further perspectives.

Prioritization has been a unique skill to learn through the internship both with the work I need to do and the interviews I conduct. Certain individuals may seem more important to contributing to the purposes of this project more than others. I believed that everyone has a voice to be heard in these times, yet we must remember that everyone experienced it differently or suffered in different ways. In addition, I will confess that marketing has become a focus for me lately yet the timeframe of the end of the Spring semester has slightly hindered the process. Most students or professors remain focused on the end of the semester with examinations which has given them less time to give interviews. Perhaps during the May and Summer semester, students and professors may be more open to giving interviews due to the break usually taken.

Conducting the list helped validate my contribution as our interviews grew from 2020 towards a wider range. When I was given the project, I only saw six interviews given from the contributions from Dr. Murphree’s Professionalization Class. Upon creating this Excel sheet, the project encompasses roughly fifty interviews. This achievement was a collective effort with the Library’s Special Collections and University Archives helping the process. I cannot take credit that these interviews rose due to my expertise and am grateful that, as a team, we were able to have an improvement in the quantity while maintaining the quality of these interviews.

As I reach the end of the semester with this internship, it has taught me much about Oral History and conducting interviews. In some part, I feel more confident in giving oral histories about events that remain fresh in the interviewees’ minds. Knowing what questions to ask or reading the room only comes from experience instead of the typical book experience. How to market yourself and the project to others who could provide a unique perspective on an event is important and a worthwhile skill to learn.

I would like to thank Mary Rubin, Dr. Scot French, and everyone involved in the COVID-19 project that has helped me understand more about the effects of the pandemic on UCF. I believe that future researchers will be interested in getting a social history of the effects within Orlando.

HIS 5944 (04/03-04/09/2021)

 

The week consisted of continued captioning and further marketing for the internship. The project has been running smoothly with my transition as the lead of it. I am glad to say that this week was more reflective of how far this project had come in comparison to back in January or even in the Fall of 2020. The month of April always seems to be a busy time due to the closure of the semester, but I am happy to say that the project has not slowed down nor suffered due to the timing. So far, the project has a plethora of interviews online or in the process of being published that will set out to expand upon the perspective of COVID-19 on UCF’s constituents.

One aspect of this project that surprises me includes the aspect of reproaching those interviewed to have a follow up after a year. Reading that within the instructions Mary gave me made me think on how collective memory shifts between the time you experience an event and what you remember. Details or subtle things may seem more pronounced when given a fast discussion of it in comparison to after a year. For example, I recall in a class a professor remarked on how a holocaust survivor wrote extensively about the concentration in Warsaw about the three chimneys always smoking before the brief attempt at breaking free. The professor stated that, by historians’ accounts, there was no chimneys nor smoke during the time. We often think about things in the moment and so reading the instructions to take these interviews again makes me wonder what will be different.

In Alfred W. Crosby’s America’s Forgotten Pandemic, the historian writes extensively on the pandemic that occurs roughly a hundred years before. Comparisons aside, the 1918 Spanish Flu collectively is whisked away according to Crosby. Crosby studies a vast amount of area such as cities, military bases, outposts internationally where Americans were stationed due to the war. These perspectives quickly did not remark on it even if the sickness killed more than the war did.

Crosby asks the question how does this happen? How do historians notice this lapse of memory within the collective public on an incident remarkable?

Crosby speculates that the impact of it was overshadowed by the perception of the war or the nature of the flu being so fast. In comparing this to the COVID-19 pandemic, do we have that same luxury?

These interviews have shown me that the pandemic has severely hampered academic or private life from students to faculty. Students experienced blockages in their academic routines, inability to see friends, and having to respect safe guidelines to stop the virus. We live in a society that has a vast amount of communication and ability to attend class from home. However, that does not mean that the virus lacks any depth to it regarding severity. The internship has taught me how collective memory works and how people remember their experiences during a pandemic. In a few months, after this internship, I’d like to know how people remembered it in comparison to their first interview. Differences could provide me more knowledge on a subject and a second chance for the interviewee to share their perspective.

Even after a year of the virus, the participants in this project certainly continue to feel the struggles of living within a post-pandemic world.

HIS 5944 (03/27-04/02/2021)

 

This week continued with the administration process with me catching up. The metadata sheets continue to be an interesting reminder of the interviews that I have given. As I participate in this project, the number of interviews that I have given has only increased that I may forget the details so these data sheets are useful in that regard. Next week should see me doing captioning which I further describe later within this post. For now, the administration process has concluded.

Regarding marketing, I have reached out and received some feedback from some of the people of interest. I was disappointed to hear that one professor from the Computer Science department declined to speak to me due to their busy schedule. While their perspective would have made it interesting, there was no way of convincing them nor any reason to push further. Perhaps a follow up question to see if they are still interesting would be acceptable. Other professors have not given me a response, but I suppose this is merely a skill to hone regarding communication and email ethics.

One of the interviews given was from a professor I greatly respect, Daniel Murphree, a professor at the UCF History Department. Contrasting with Gerber, Dr. Murphree was far more interesting on the professional side. The interview covered much of the professor’s dealings with classes and handling students in different ways. This may be due to Murphree’s smaller class sizes instead of Gerber. Murphree brought up a rather interesting suspicion that some students may take advantage of the COVID situation and may get away with certain things. The interview provided another perspective of a professor dealing with the pandemic and it’s effects on students.

In some ways, the pandemic has fostered some cynical perspectives throughout the year as students have begun to show some distrusting of those without masks. There is no way of each professor verifying if a student is overexaggerating their sickness to be more sympathetic which could be a possibility. Although, faculty and students continue to have some optimism with their continued adherence to safety guidelines placed into the university.

Due to the substantial amount of interview given, parts of the project have halted with me attempting to aid in streamlining the process. Captioning is one of these stages for the oral history as it allows for people to follow along the transcriptions and understand what the interviewee is saying. This can be helpful in case they have a particular accent or somethings may be hard to hear. I watched an instructional video given to us by the Special Collection and University Archives which use a program to caption the interviews. The process is slightly tedious as you must make sure that the captions are correct and within frame. Sometimes a student may be talking fast so the caption may not be there, and you have to be sure that it does not linger either. The process is grueling, so it has taken up a substantial amount of time for me to complete. However, this is a new skill of transcription and video editing which I have only been slightly familiar too. I am grateful to have this opportunity within the project and internship.