Battle of Olustee Project | Aaron Connors

  Hello all, Aaron here for the final week of the Olustee internship. I’m in the thick of finals and working on my internship presentation, and it does feel overwhelming at points. Admittedly I’m excited for the lesser workload that the summer semester will provide, as I’m only going to be taking two classes, one in Session A and another in Session B. I’ll also be looking for a first job over the summer…so I can only hope that goes well enough.           During our meeting today, Dr. Gannon answered many of our lingering questions about the internship. She didn’t comment much about the students and their continued work on the project; given that this week is the end of the semester I imagine many of them did not get the good grades they would have liked. Earlier in the week, Dr. Gannon said she had given her students clearance to email the other interns and I to answer any questions they might have about their work, and just like last week, no one re...

          Hello everyone, Aaron here for the penultimate week of the Olustee project internship. Finals are practically here, and while I haven’t been significantly stressed over their looming threat, I’m aware that next week is going to be packed with work, both from other assignments and final projects. I have an exam, a final essay, a smaller writing assignment, a video project, and the internship showcase presentation to contend with for the next two weeks. This week in the internship was pretty tame, although this actually was not the expected nor optimal outcome.           Last week I mentioned that I was assigned two time slots, on this Monday and Wednesday from 10 am to 1 pm, that I would be available to help Dr. Gannon’s students with their research into the Olustee dead. I had prepared my schedule for those days around that time, saving the most intensive work for after the “office hours” were up and postponing my dai...

          Hello all, Aaron here with another update on the Olustee Project internship. This week, while more eventful than the last, has been complicated by an external factor that I hope won’t continue to be a problem for the rest of the semester. Said external factor hasn’t done much to affect the work for my other four classes, but it has definitely impacted the internship: my car isn’t working.           I don’t own my car; it’s my parents’ car that I typically use on Tuesdays and Thursdays to attend my singular in-person class at the UCF Main Campus. I was planning on using it this week and next when our appointments to help out Dr. Gannon’s students started up, but last week we discovered that there were a multitude of problems with the vehicle. I’m not a car person, so I couldn’t describe precisely what happened, but it required us to surrender our vehicle to a mechanic for repairs about a week ago, and it’s still being ...

          Hello everyone, Aaron here with the twelfth week of the Olustee internship. This week hasn’t been very eventful, both in the internship and outside of it. I had an exam in one of my classes that was relatively easy, and I have one more coming up on Sunday that I unfortunately cannot do before then. So, I’m stuck with work on the weekends, which is fine, but isn’t something I try to allow often if I can help it.           The most significant thing to come out of this week is the attempts the other interns and I have initiated to get everyone on the same page for the internship showcase on April 26. It's been harder than I was expecting: I emailed both of the interns working with me a day or two after the message was sent out, and while one of them replied, the other hasn’t. I’m sure he has a good reason to have not replied, but I am worried that the time slots the other intern and I agreed upon won’t be available by t...