Week 13 | Future Appointments

        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 tended to. This put my meetings in a tough spot: they were supposed to be in-person visits to a computer in the Trevor Colburn hall with some of Dr. Gannon's students, but now my only option is to do them online, which Dr. Gannon is thankfully willing to accommodate for.

        I was interested in getting more information about this arrangement at the meeting today, but I missed it for two major reasons. The first is that since we didn’t have a meeting last week, I wasn’t able to find the recurring Zoom meeting link as I was under the impression it had been canceled. It's not that I thought we wouldn’t be having a meeting today, I just thought that since I hadn’t received an email with an updated recurring meeting link, the meeting must not have been scheduled at its normal time. This morning I sent a message to Dr. Gannon asking if we’d still be having the meeting at 1 pm, like every Friday. This is where the second reason comes in: my parents asked me to help with some chores around the house, and I lost track of time and by the time I returned to my work, I realized Dr. Gannon had replied to my email and that the meeting had already started. She wasn’t upset at my absence but I still felt a little bad about it, given that I had never missed a meeting, that it was mostly my own fault, and that I was already making the internship harder by only being available online for student appointments.

        Dr. Gannon filled me in on what I missed. She said that her and the other interns had discussed appointment arrangements for next week (last week she had said appointments would last from April 7 to 13 not counting weekends, so that leaves Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday). She said that one of the other interns (Brett) would be helping his groups in person while the other (Jared) would also be working online. So, she asked me what days and times I would be available so that Jared and I’s appointments don’t clash. I opted for Monday and Wednesday since I have Zoom class on Tuesday; I would be holding appointment hours from 10 am to 1 pm. Students will be sending me emails for appointments. I don’t know exactly what to expect; while I assume I’ll be on a Zoom call with these students, Dr. Gannon also said that by virtue of being an online helper I might have to look up the students’ concerns on Ancestry myself, rather than just guiding them through it. I’m currently awaiting confirmation from Dr. Gannon about this. Whatever I end up doing though, I don’t think it will be too bad. Ideally the students would have gathered all the confusing points of their research by now, so the process should be pretty streamlined and limited to only 2 or 3 appointments.