Week 1 | Introduction

            Hello all, my name is Aaron Connors, and I am currently a sophomore at the University of Central Florida majoring in History and minoring in Anthropology. While I am not the first member of my immediate family to go to college (that honor belongs to my father), I will hopefully be the first among my relatives to finish college with a bachelor’s degree.

            My interest in history as a discipline stems from all the way back to middle school, although at that time it was much more of a passive interest, with little actual substance. Only in my freshman year of high school did I meet someone who showed me the importance of understanding the contemporary world with the lens of past events: my AP Human Geography teacher, who was quite an eclectic and spirited man that made a class I might have found boring in middle school one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in academia so far. He instilled within me a love for history, specifically with regards to how our present day world is shaped by it. Therein lines one of my favorite parts of the subject—learning how modern structures were dictated by acts, trends, and cultures in the past (which may sound a little paradoxical), and applying said knowledge to current issues and problems in an attempt to ascertain what people in the future may understand as historical from our time period in the early 21st century. Of course, I recognize that this is largely speculative. My more “traditional” historical research interests are learning about the 19th and 20th centuries, as these eras are the source of many of the technologies and ideas we take for granted today, and contain some of humanity’s most pivotal moments: the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the airplane, the World Wars, and many other events that have irrevocably shaped our current time.

            Such an emphasis on the effects of 19th and 20th century historical developments on the present naturally leads to an interest in the American Civil War. While civil wars are nothing exceptional within the study of history, the American Civil War stands out to me as a citizen of the United States. In many ways, the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction still influences racial tensions in this country to this day, and the relative lack of care shown towards the Battle of Olustee battleground exemplifies this. Before being accepted into this internship, I admittedly knew nothing of the Battle of Olustee, only having looked into it after I was admitted. This week, Dr. Barbara Gannon linked me to a presentation done by past students in the Olustee Project, which provided some very helpful insight into the conflict and burial of its dead, and gave me an idea of the kind of research I will be conducting into the battle. I’ve never done research quite like this before, with other like-minded students working towards a goal that transcends getting a good grade in a group project. I do not know at this time precisely what I will be contributing to the project, but I am glad that in some way, I will be of assistance not only to the project itself, but to shedding some light on the Olustee burial site. The prospect of advocating for a more proper marked grave for the Union soldiers buried there is exciting, both for the experience it is poised to give me, and the comfort and awareness it can bring to those who visit the site of the largest Civil War battle in Florida.