Week 12 | Stepping Back

        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 the time he does get back to us. I feel like I’ve kept the internship showcase organizers waiting long enough, so I’ll probably send him a personal email later today or early tomorrow to see what’s been going on with him. Other than this, we haven’t had much actual work assigned to us. Dr. Gannon was away this week, and as such we didn’t meet up for a meeting this afternoon like we usually do. Add that fact to how we were meant to give Dr. Gannon’s students a week of non-interference to start up research on their own this week, and it results in a week that doesn’t have a lot going on for the internship. I did take some time to think about what I wanted to say in the internship showcase, but given that I need to leave enough room for my fellow interns to speak, as well as a period for Q&A from the audience, I’m hesitant to commit anything to writing.

        I’ve definitely learned a lot from this internship, I could tell you that much. I appreciate the proficiency in Ancestry navigation that I’ve gained from using it so much, and I feel that I’ve gotten a greater breadth of the time of research that goes into historical questions such as the matter of who’s present in the Olustee grave. There have also been a lot of difficulties, such as reading CMSRs (compiled military service records; my cursive isn’t so good) and staying focused for long periods of time looking at tables and spreadsheets (make sure to take breaks for headaches). Balancing all this with my other four classes is also fairly difficult; while I love the goal we’re working towards, I don’t know if I will be coming back for another semester. I’ll have to make that decision certain near the beginning of summer.

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