Battle of Olustee Project | Aaron Connors

               Hello everyone, Aaron here for the seventh week of the Olustee project. The workI had this week wasn’t too bad in terms of difficulty, but again I found myself with less time than I would have liked to work on research for the internship. I had another essay to write this week (in essence functioning as a midterm) that I only completed on Thursday, so most of my work was contained to that morning and most of today so far. Next week I have an exam, but I don’t anticipate it interrupting my work too much, and luckily for me I have some new leads to follow up on.                In our meeting today, Dr. Gannon presented to us interns the work that had been finished on the Olustee story map; the most notable revision is the now-completed “Legal” section that outlines all of the federal and state laws that could be invoked in response to the government’s mistreatment of the dead at the ba...

               Hello all, Aaron here for another Week in the Olustee internship. This week was pretty brutal in terms of work, as I correctly predicted it would be last week. I’ve been hard at work researching and writing an essay for one of my classes, and it has unfortunately taken more time out of my schedule than I was expecting it to. As a result, I did not get as much work done for the Olustee project as I was hoping to do (thankfully, I was able to make some progress).                 In the meantime, Dr. Gannon communicated to us some of the information she wanted for the Olustee story map. I was unable to help her with writing passengers detailing the histories and service records of the regiments that fought at Olustee, as I was busy researching my essay when she sent out the email. My fellow interns took on that responsibility instead, which I am grateful for. Just yesterday, Dr. G...

Hello all, Aaron here for another update on the Olustee project. This week has actually been relatively tame in terms of how much work I’ve needed to do for both the internship and my other classes. I better enjoy it while it lasts however; the next two weeks are going to be brutal. I have an essay due next week for one class, and a second essay due the next week for another; this corresponds to a timeframe Dr. Gannon outlined in our meeting today that we have to achieve some pretty big milestones in the Olustee project, so I’m a little wary of how these next weeks will progress. First I’ll go over what Dr. Gannon has revealed will be going down in the coming weeks, and then I’ll mention what I’ve accomplished in my research over the past week. So, in our meeting today (first communicated in an email on Tuesday), Dr. Gannon updated us on the matter she discussed with the journalist I mentioned in last week’s blog post. The journalist is aiming to have an article about the Olustee battl...

          Hey everyone, Aaron here. Just as I had expected, Week 4 ended up being very busy, both in the Olustee Project and in the work for my other classes—although I can say it could have been worse. This week, I worked from home every day. The professor for my in-person class unfortunately caught COVID, so they emailed us over the weekend and told us that our class on Tuesday would be online via Zoom. Fast forward to Tuesday, and the Zoom class was canceled altogether; I can only assume that my professor didn’t feel up to it. Hope she feels better soon. I had already known for a while that my Thursday class would not be in-person as I had an exam that day. My studying evidently paid off and I got a great score.           In an odd coincidence, Dr. Gannon also wasn’t able to make our normal Friday meeting since she’s on site at Olustee in north Florida meeting with a journalist that intends to interview her about the battlef...

          Hello everyone, Aaron here checking for another week of the Olustee project internship. From what I’ve been through this week, both concerning the internship and concerning my other classes, I can tell that next week could potentially be my busiest week yet (an outcome I should have expected, honestly). Next week, I have an exam in my anthropology class, my first one this semester. I’m not particularly worried about that exam content-wise, but the simple mention of an exam naturally puts me a little on edge. Rather, I am a bit more nervous about what I will be doing for the internship. Granted, the progress the project has made in this last week is superb; I am not upset about that at all—it's more the fact that I think I’ll be outside my comfort zone next week.         This week, the other interns and I received an email from Dr. Gannon detailing how one of her associates took the information from the book detailing the O...

                 Hello all, Aaron reporting in again for the second week of the internship. This week has been a bit more work intensive, not in the internship itself, but in the work for all of my other classes. Even though the Olustee Project is not technically a “class” at UCF, it practically functions as one, meaning that this is the first semester I’ve had more than four classes. With a greater focus on my upper-levels and my Anthropology minor this school year, the workload has increased by a fair bit; it provides an obstacle for me to overcome when finding time to peruse the materials Dr. Gannon has been sending me and the team. Nonetheless, in the first few days of this week, I was able to read some of the material Dr. Gannon sent out, including a paper that summarizes the situation at the Olustee battleground (a summary more succinctly reiterated in the meeting we had today). I’ll give a similarly short summary for any students ...

              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 academi...