Week 15

After our spring break, we are back for the last week of school and the last week of this internship. This week, we simply focused on organizing our work for the new group of interns and looking towards the future of the project. I plan on staying in the loop and helping if needed. I'd like to see the project to its completion. But it's time for the next group of interns to start their work. I have spent a few blog posts reflecting on how this internship was going, now it's a good time to reflect on the overall experience and some things I learned. 

Going into this, I wanted to challenge myself. A few years ago, the idea of writing a public blog like this would have been a reason I would have stayed away from this opportunity. Perhaps it is a weird reason, however, I have always shied away from public speaking, even if it's just online like this. After doing presentations in class and professors encouraging group work, I am more comfortable with such things. This blog has also been good for cataloging my thoughts and the things we have done in the past few months. I went back to read certain posts if I forgot something. Mainly when I was discussing monuments. I know my friends and family have enjoyed reading about what I've been doing, especially since we can't see each other because of the current pandemic. 

Now, what did I learn about public history? There is a great deal of work that goes on behind the scenes. While I focused more on the contemporary issues that I was working on. I spent most of the semester reading through sources and making sure that it's the sources are good, correcting grammar, and revising. It takes a lot of time to comb through the various sources and check information. It's important to work and needs to be done. I moved slowly with it. It was something we talked about in class, but it's different when you are preparing something for a public project such as this. Public history is also a collaborative effort; we worked with Doctor Giroux, who works on digital humanities, and Doctor Gannon reached out to their friend working in law for a few questions. 

This internship has been a rewarding experience and I hope to see this project bring awareness and recognition to the soldiers who fought in the battle, especially to those who might still be in unmarked graves. I look forward to working on other public history projects in the future and taking the skill I learned forward to grad school. Over the semesters I have been in Doctor Gannon's class, she has constantly worked to improve our writing and prepare for what working in history is actually like. I am grateful for the opportunity for this internship that she gave me, not to mention all the lessons she taught us. But it's time I end this blog post, it's been an exceptional experience and one that has taught me a lot about Florida and history.