HIS 5944 (2/6-2/12/2021)

 

The COVID-19 project continues to be a fascinating project that allows me to practice oral history within a real-life event. This week acted as catching up regarding administrative work as I was still organizing, and filling paperwork related to the interviews I have conducted for the past semester or so. Some interviews’ paperwork still was not filled out or completed that dated to last year in the Fall Semester. The paperwork usually consists of the interviewees name, private information, and some description of the interview to be filed into the process for when it is published. These documents allow for the Special Collection and University Archives workers to use these metadata sheets to enhance either their transcription or review process to assure proper quality control. However, I will admit that the paperwork end of oral history becomes more tedious than the actual interviews.

Progress on marketing or interviews have stymied due to the administration process yet we have a good sample size of participants willing to be interviewed. This includes my previous discussions on professors such as Dr. Murphree or Dr. Hardy to share their perspective on the pandemic. While Dr. Hardy politely declined, Dr. Murphree expressed interest and it helps that he knows me personally from my classes. I hope that this does not affect the interview itself. As for professors such as those within the departments outside of the History department, I have been patiently debating on whether to send an email. Because of this administrative process, it was my thought that adding more interviews would only exacerbate the process.

This week taught me more about filling paperwork and understanding the importance of responsibility. It is my responsibility to fill this paperwork so that the other workers can properly perform their tasks. A failure within the process results in a lower quality and reflects poorly on both the project and those working under it.

The internship has mainly been focused on working from home this week which brings its own challenges. I will be frank that being at home can be a large distraction and it is easy to slack off because of the inability of someone looking over. However, I have found myself being more productive at home than at work due to my comfortability of home. The COVID-19 pandemic has tested some workers and students from dealing and being properly motivated to work through a pandemic.

I have learned the value of motivation and self-worth through this internship that I never properly valued as much as an undergraduate. Being motivated to solve or complete a task lets you focus on the important things instead of being distracted by outside factors. It is a quality that many of us do not dwell on due to our own motivations to stay focused. I recall that interview with the freshman student who shared their story that motivation was critical in the pandemic because it is easy to fall into the rabbit hole of boredom and sloth. I hope that when I find myself in said hole that I can dig myself out of it easily.

HIS 5944 (1/30-2/5/2021)

 

This week continued to run administrative tasks with some interviews sprinkled into the week. I have been attempting to catch up with providing the collection with consent forms from myself and the interviewees which takes some time. In addition, I must fill out sheets that include data about the interview which can be difficult as interviews begin to pile up. However, the internship has taught me endurance when faced with a large task and to work at it slowly. The light will eventually be at the end of the tunnel. While tedious, the quality of the interviews has continued to be high quality for university students. Most students seem comfortable with discussing the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on their lives.

When I conduct an interview, typically, I remind them that it is public, and I may ask questions they have already heard before during the interview. Lately, due to my commitment to empathy, I have begun incorporating other warnings or reminders. I often ask the student or faculty member that if they ever feel uncomfortable with a question, they can move on which I think is acceptable. Empathy is always a good thing to have in oral history and with such a topic that is fresh in their minds that sparks tragedy. I was blessed to not have any significant tragedies during the pandemic, but from hearing so many dark moments, the interviewees may have already coped with it. Oral history can be a dangerous practice when you skew people into having to relive a certain dark time. I cannot fathom how Holocaust survivors conduct oral histories and not crack under the stress of having to relive and remind themselves of the horrors they have seen.

I’d like to talk about aspects that seem to be less accentuated during these interviews as notes on what the collection does not seem to have. One aspect is the dorm life that seems missing as students seemed content with the university’s response regarding management of dormitories. Another is the faculty which I have not conducted an interview yet as setting appointments can be difficult. These aspects seem less accentuated from the interviews I have seen. However, it is nice to know that students were not too worried about housing in the long list of troublesome events within the pandemic.

 Some of my tasks at the internship included helping move archival documents or furniture into a new storage room. A physical task was unexpected for me yet it seemed important to be able to move objects from one place to another in archiving. I did not expect it to be so difficult for me. It certainly has taught me that archival relocation takes longer than what I had thought. I am thankful that there was a dolly to move the cabinets to a new room as my arms would have collapsed. While humorous, the physical task of moving has also taught me the tendency of moving collections to different places. The new room that we were assigned to move the equipment to was only given within the last year which the Special Collections and University Archives seemingly did not have. It makes me wonder if digitization will have that same troubles of requiring physical space for collections.

HIS 5944 (1/23-1/29/2021)

 

This week shifted the priority of the COVID-19 project towards an administrative focus instead of conducting various amounts of interviews. The process of transitioning has begun to conclude with Mary providing as many interviews as possible that were conducted last semester in the fall. In addition, I have begun to upload my own interviews that I had in my own files that were temporarily lost due to a computer malfunction last semester. The administrative portion of the process consists of documenting and uploading the files while marking them correctly. This includes providing consent forms, cataloguing interviews, and properly placing them in the process. The internship taught me much about archiving and the importance of small details such as dates, names, and other aspects of an interview. It allowed me to understand the immense amount of work outside of the actual interview that has made me appreciate the behind-the-scenes portion of oral history.

While covering the administrative responsibilities of the COVID-19 project, I still conducted interviews this week with students that have shared insightful perspectives about their response to COVID-19. Due to the lecture given at Dr. Murphree’s Native American history class, I was able to get a few students that wanted to share their perspective on COVID-19. One particular student even catching COVID-19 during their studies which has helped me understand the virus from someone directly affected by it. Empathy has been a critical trait to hold during these oral histories. I often read accounts of people going through the virus, yet it always shocks me when I hear the stories told by those that have caught it. Another aspect that has been captured in this collection is the freshman experience from the Fall of 2020 to the Spring of 2021. Freshman students coming to the University of Central Florida often experience a lack of motivation from the transition of high school to college level courses. One interview discussed this trouble and the lack of a good first year experience. This pandemic has robbed freshman of truly experiencing what the college life has to offer by restricting them to the prisons of their dorms or homes.

These perspectives only highlight the importance of the COVID-19 project and capturing these insights that the university students have. Sometimes, I feel the need to switch my thesis to the study of the pandemic’s effects, yet I am still dedicated to the study of digital history. However, I hope that in the future a historian will use this collection to define how Central Florida university students handled the pandemic and inspired hope for those that may live through another pandemic to “charge on.”

My academic endeavors in graduate and undergraduate school have helped me hone my skills to properly address this project. The project has again taught me time management and attention to detail that the history major prepared me for. The internship has also promoted empathy towards those affected by the pandemic. My experience with oral history has been very good and I am confident that in the future, I will be able to transfer these skills I am learning now into future employment.

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.

HIS5944 (1/11/21 - 1/15/21)

Hello, my name is Scott Galloway and I am a graduate student at the University of Central Florida. I was given the wonderful opportunity to be an intern at the University of Central Florida’s Library in Special Collections and University Archivists. I received this internship due to my volunteering that I had previously done at the SCUA while I was in undergraduate. From that volunteering service, I was able to understand the importance of archiving and processing a collection. I had processed around four collections that ranged from a box or two to around four or five boxes to process. I’d like to think that I had performed well enough that Mary Rubin and the SCUA wanted me back.

My research interests are still grounded in digital history which aligns with this internship with the COVID-19 Collection. I began on Monday this week to discover the digitization process along with Mary guiding through the steps that it takes to process an interview for public consumption. I would oversee the interviews and reviewing the transcription and captioning process. However, I was still trained to perform these actions if needed. Already, I have performed two interviews with UCF affiliated graduate students to test the process and do it independently from Mary as she is pushing the project for me to lead.

What I hope to gain from this internship is skills tailored towards digital history and preservation. I want to understand how the process works and the potential it has on the field. In addition, the COVID-19 Collection deals with a recent pandemic that the United States has continuously been affected by since early 2020 in the spring semester. Most of society has felt it’s impact in some shape or form and this collection sheds light on how, at the local level, the university’s constituents coped with the sudden change. I have been given a wonderful opportunity to make the most out of a dark time by preserving the memory of COVID-19 and understand how students dealt with a massive pandemic within the twenty-first century.

So far, my plans are to expand the project to incorporate more departments besides the history department at UCF. I began the project with some contributions from the History Department but I want to include more than just one single department. Interviews will begin to incorporate faculty such as professors to understand a perspective that is missing from the collection. It is vital to understand how both the student and the professor copes with dealing with a pandemic. No two students or professors share the same mind and have their own unique ways of handling the solitude of quarantine. My hope is that future research can be done by using the University’s COVID-19 collection to explore the effects of a pandemic within Orlando or anything of that nature. It is still a wonderful opportunity to historicize this event and has always been an interest of mine. This interest has always been to “make” and “record” history in the best way possible.

HIS 6942 ( November 14 - November 20)

 The classes before Thanksgiving break were about elevator speeches including my own. The last student’s elevator speech, while long, indicated that they had come a long way from where they started. It made me reflect on how the other students were all quiet during the beginning of the semester, yet their elevator speeches showed all of what they learned in Murphree’s class. In a way, I was proud that I had some level of influence regarding their elevator speech and tenure within the undergraduate degree. Still, some students required more time to fully blossom and I wished that the pandemic situation did not impact how the class was taught. The students also demanded that I give my own elevator speech which I will elaborate on at the end. These elevator speeches reinforce the importance of the class in training the students to understand the professionalization of the major.

Regarding the COVID collection, the students have all submitted their transcriptions and their interviews to me. I reviewed them and forwarded them to Dr. Murphree as well for further review. A mistake I made was not understanding if I was supposed to send these emails to the Special Collections and University Archives or if they did. Luckily, one of the students had asked and Mary Rubin clarifying it made me redirect the students to submit them. This lesson will help me in the future and allow for Dr. Murphree to outline how to submit these interviews in the future. These interviews will be a great contribution to the collection.

My elevator speech outlined a lot of what I had learned within my undergraduate study while incorporating elements about graduate school. While other students were unable to give me feedback, I understand that it was generally accepted as good. I voiced my experiences with the major and how I conducted my research and studies. My elevator speech originally revolved around being a teacher in the field, yet working on this internship and my archival experience with SCUA has shifted it towards interest in pursuing it as an occupation. Dr. Murphree also asked me a thought-provoking question of how many times I gave it, discussing how elevator speeches become more normal in conversations. The usage of elevator speeches could always be helpful in daily situations whether that be convincing a parent, a teacher, or your graduate application why you study history and its importance to you.

The internship allowed me to have a deeper understanding of a teaching environment courtesy of Dr. Murphree. He understood that graduate school was a daunting task and always offered to help as best as he could. In a way, I envy the position of being able to teach history students what the major entails and what opportunities are available to them. While one student did drop out, I am glad that student understood what the major gave them and judged it as conflicting with their own goal. It is my general belief that this course’s importance continues to be that education of students to learn the opportunities a history major gives them. Learning that teaching is not the only occupation will guide students to seek other paths in their career. I am glad that I was able to give some level of influence on them and act as somewhat of an advisor, passing along my advice to students in the future.

HIS 6942 (November 7 - November 13)

 This week saw the continuation of students’ elevator speeches as I and Dr. Murphree provided feedback for them. Two more students provided us with elevator speeches that stood out as unique. Both had some timing issues as they were opposite of the first elevator speech in length. They struggled to get to the required five minutes and only reached four minutes roughly. Still, we provided feedback and gave them some options to extend their speech to improve upon it. However, these speeches accentuated why they were apart of the history major and learned skills that could be applied for future employers. I was impressed by how students were already beginning to understand what the major’s benefits were. Some even spoke of going to graduate studies, though admittedly giving some hesitance on where. The elevator speech remains a vital assignment within the course as it is an amalgamation of what the class is about. It promotes the student and allows them to professionalize themselves for an audience, convincing them of their selection of majors.

Critique was provided as best as I can afford without being too meanspirited. Jokingly, I referred to Dr. Murphree and I as judges similar to American Idol or other popular shows with judges. Dr. Murphree was far more positive than I was, as I became more of a Simon Cowell. I only do this to strengthen the students instead of pampering them. It is good to focus on their weaknesses as their strengths will not change. Peer review is a vital part of the historian’s job and articulating it for the students is difficult.

The COVID project is going too slow for my tastes as we have not provided the SCUA any interviews from the students respectively. I have submitted my own interviews, but these were for my own interest versus the actual assignment of the students. I voiced that the students should have their assignments done by Monday and emailed to me so that I can send them to Mary Rubin. Hopefully, the students will finish up as I have heard they are nearing the end of their transcription.

I was informed on Thursday that a student had dropped the course due to reconsidering their choice in major. In a way, it is good that we clarified the major and that they knew that this was not their interest. I would hate to be going through a major and graduate while inwardly being dispassionate of my work. The student was very professional with their departure from the course and I wish them luck in their new major. This class allows for students to understand what the major entails and how to professionalize it. Dr. Murphree has always told me that students can understand what a history major can do and sometimes a student may not be able to historian for a variety of reasons. The course continues to be a requirement for history majors and clarify their purpose within the field. I’d rather have history majors that want to be here instead of those that are begrudgingly ones.