Fall 2018
For my first semester at college I enjoyed my new experiences. My physics and calculus classes were good intro classes for understanding the scientific side of education at IWU. My Latin American history class and my humanities class were great classes for leaning about the Liberal Arts and the expectations for being a great student at IWU.
Physics and calculus were not new classes for me, as I had taken very similar courses in high school. I was glad to take them as they allowed me to realize that I would continue on with a physics minor at IWU along side my History Major.
The Latin American history class and the humanities class were very new classes for me and they allowed me to learn deeper about the history around me. I enjoyed learning about many myths from the conquest of the New World in my Latin American class and learning about the history of IWU through the humanities class.
Spring 2019
I enjoyed my Museum project the most this year, as it allowed me to work on a museum, which I want to do after school. The essay about the Observatory was good because it helped me get experience with archival research and presentation.
I wouldn’t say any of my other classes had much in the way of history intersection. But in all of them, I look deeper into the history of the courses and other activities. I have had a chance to look deeper in to many of my courses with assistance from professors at the school, such as professor Spalding’s assistance on learning the history of Physics both at IWU and within the physics community.
My three strengths this semester were having better study habits than in high school. I also did better in finding and working with groups from my classes this year to work harder and get different views of my courses. Finally, I did better about meeting more people this year, and I have more friends on campus than I ever did in high school.
My three weaknesses were my scheduling, which I didn’t do well enough this year, but have learned how to do better next school year. I also needed to studied more, so while my study habits were good, I need to study more. And finally, I was a little lazy this semester, and definitely could have worked harder all year.
Fall 2019
I have learned about the broad history of Latin America, from the history of the native peoples and their struggles against the invading Spaniards and Portuguese. We also learned about the administrative control that was required to rule these distant and valuable lands, something that I have also covered in Britain’s East India Companies control over India as and Hong Kong. I have covered many parts of western slavery, from it’s roots in the earliest trading voyages from Portugal, to the mass forced migration of millions of people from Africa by many European countries to the Americas for cheap labor in the most difficult conditions as the backbones of burgeoning empires, to our modern understanding of the horrors this trade brought to fellow humanitarians and the difficulties that historians have treading this fine line when presenting this history.
My favorite genera of history so far has been museums. My favorite project in my freshman year was when I had a group project for designing a history museum to talk about slavery, emancipation and the modern consequences of these actions and how they affect our world today. In London my favorite classes are any in which we get to visit museums and see and talk about the presentation of the history we are seeing and how deep and informative well designed museums can be.
I am dead set on a pathway in public history, and my time in London has further reinforced my desire to work in a museum as I have been able to see so many different yet all are captivating and have made me think deeply how I would design my own exhibition to teach history to the world.
I enjoy talking with others to get their thoughts and I will happily take the reins to lead a project, so working with other people in designing an exhibit would be a strength I believe I have. I also enjoy teaching others and I will happily talk about any history that I know, so working in a museum as a guide also appeals to me and I believe I would be a good presenter of history at a museum.
I don’t think that I would find it difficult or challenging to pursue a public history pathway because I know that I want to be a historian and I feel that this pathway best represents my skills and interests in history.
I would say that both of my artifacts from my freshman year coincide with my thoughts on going into the field of public history. My fall artifact was talk about presenting a researched historical topic, and if I had the chance, I would love to make an exhibition on the history of the recently exhumed artifacts from the Mark-Evens time capsule to further both my own understanding of this monumental time in IWU’s history as well as helping others understand this important moment and the relics of the past that the school wanted future generations to see. And my spring presentation on designing a museum also connects with the public history pathway and wanting to work in a museum.
Reflections for 2020-2021 (Pandemic Year)
Following my broad understanding of Latin American history in 2018 and in 2019, I got to really dive into the history of the country of Brazil in the Fall 2020 semester, and this deep dive into the history of a Latin American country that escaped their colonial overlords by just becoming a kingdom of their own with a Portuguese king, turned to democracy and began growing as a nation in economy, culture and world recognition, only to see long years of repression at the hands of Military Junta. It was an amazing history that really opened my eyes to the growth, decline and historical events that led to the Brazil we know today.
When I had my environmental science class in the Fall of 2020, towards the end of that semester we learned about the affects of red lining, racial prejudices and out right racism in America that stemmed from slavery and the failure of reconstruction and the rise of confederate sympathy in the south in the early 1900’s to malign and scare tactics against African Americans. In my 2019 spring American History course we covered the history of racism and how it grew following the civil war, really connecting these two classes to give me a full view of how historic events surrounding terror tactics against African Americans in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds caused the overt environmental affects that disproportionately harm them in our modern America.
In my Fall 2019 class in London I had to do a 20 page research paper, which I chose to be on the Battle of Chinkiang, the last and deadliest battle of the First Opium War. It was a good paper to write and really allowed me to look deep into a singular topic and give a broad view on the day of the battle and the effects it had on finishing the war. I really enjoyed it as an essay.
I do not feel that I have gotten much experience in critiquing the works of other scholars and will definitely be working more on this in my final two semesters at Illinois Wesleyan.
My favorite work that I have done with public history has been my work at the David Davis Mansion. I really got a great experience in learning how to present history as you see in a whole house, getting to build a living history of the Davis family while also giving our guests a great experience that I would hope they remember for years. Part of working at the mansion also allowed me to work on a project re-aligning the butler pantry and getting to have some say in how the presentation to guests would go when the project finishes.
Fall 2021
- While it was not new for me, this year I have been able to focus more on ancient history then I have in the past years at Illinois Wesleyan between my Ancient Greece class and my honors project. I find these eras of history to be important because they really let me build a deeper understanding of how the practice of historical studies began in the western world.
2. Unfortunately I did not have much overlap between my history courses and Physics 207, but I did enjoy when we did cover the historical people and actions that build the understanding of the physical world we have today.
3. I wrote many papers this semester, and while all of them helped me look even deeper into the world of historical studies, they did not develop any more confidence in me from my past years and papers have.
4. I feel that my honors project has helped me in this way, and my final paper, a lit-review of modern articles on “The Civil Wars” by Caesar, let me look at arguments from three different authors and compare and argue them against each other while also allowing me to discus my own views as well compared to them.
5. My favorite public history work has been my whole year as an intern and then paid worker at the David Davis Mansion, which has helped me work on how I see my future working in a museum as a public historian.
6. My honors research is on Julius Caesar and very specifically looking at Caesars missives as written in “The Civil Wars”. I am finding the research and writing to be very long and arduous, yet it also a very informative project for me.
7. My plans after school is too look at working opportunities near home or in Palo Alto, California, and too work for a few years before heading back to Grad School.