Ha, I came across the internship promotion video that I made last summer when I worked with the Delaware Museum of Natural History.
It was a lot of fun, really, of all the internships I've done. I think it helped that interns were really allowed to interact with one another.
Alright. So, it's (unofficially) summer, and I got the idea in my head to highlight a song from a particular summer every Monday and encourage people to share songs/memories from that year. I'm starting with the summer of 1995...this is my choice:
Kiss From A Rose by Seal
Kiss From A Rose. God, what a classic 90's pop track.
Summer '95 was the summer I moved to Delaware from Texas. I was 9 years old. My sisters were 12 and 13, and those lucky bitches got to spend the summer on th
So I spent basically five hours in the ER with my friend Josh and this guy, Steve(no, not Stoner Steve or Long Island Hipster Steve). Steve was a guest at Josh's party in the University Courtyards at Newark. I didn't know him, but Josh somewhat knew him. A bunch of the guests decided to hop the fence surrounding the UC pool for a late night swim. To impress some pretty girl, Steve decided he'd do a cannonball into the pool- only he did it at the shallow end. He got a gnarly gash on his head and
I earned a 3.66, with my final cumulative GPA as a 3.75. Nice.
I spent high school and college(that's 11 years), freaking out about grades and hoping against hope I'd pull out a passing grade. It's weird to be past that now.
It went off pretty well, for the most part. The departmental ceremony in the morning was nice- it was kind of weird in a way. I remember at my departmental ceremony for my UD graduation, noting when the M.A. students graduated, just how small the group was. And then two years later, I was on the other side, with my two other fellow masters. (Other people graduated, but they didn't come.) One of my professors joked with me that I was graduating despite her best efforts, but then congratulated me
Day 53, May 8
I'm nearing the end of Box 1 and therefore the end of processing this collection.
I found one book that was in french, and depicted how the various planes in various countries looked. That was pretty interesting, since World War I was the first war that was really fought in the air as well as on the ground.
I also found a 1902 calendar, which was cool, but didn't really fit in the scope of the collection. I talked to my adviser about that, and she agreed. It was put in
Day 50 -May 2nd
Finally finished Box 4. Just one more box to go.
There's a woman who keeps visiting the Historical Society with her kids. They like seeing the guns. It's great seeing the importance of the historical society as a free place for families to go and entertain their children.
I think hands-on activities would be great to add, like maybe teaching children how to make haversacks or marching.
Day 51- May 4th
Interestingly, I'm starting on Box 1 as my final box. Lucki
Day 43, April 17th
While working on Box 9, I came across three religious service books. It made me think about how important religion must have been to the soldiers who fought. It may not have been their personal beliefs, but they definitely had to consider religion as part of their daily lives. I wonder what it might have been like to have been an atheist in World War I- would one have even admitted to such a thing back then?
I went on a ghost hunt at IUP this weekend, over at Keith and Leonard Hall. It was cool- last Halloween I went and nothing happened, but this time around, we had some experiences! Using a flashlight that would turn on and off by itself as well as a K2 meter, we had several ghosts communicate to us. One was named Danny- he had identified himself as a founding father of IUP, and had been around during the 1870's and 1880's, and died of an illness in March. I had literal chills going down my back w
Day 40, April 11th
I finished work on Box 2. Finally.
Day 41, April 13th
I started work on Box 9. It doesn't look as if it'll take as long as Box 2 did. Hopefully.
I gave one of the other grad students a tour of the military exhibit at the society. He's into military history, so I pretty much let him lead the tour. I imagine that something like that will come up when gving tours, running into people who know more about the exhibit(or at least believe they do) than you do. I kept
Day 37, April 3rd
Continued working on Box 2.
Day 38, April 4th
Continued working on Box 2.
Day 39, April 10th
Almost finished with Box 2.
There was a woman in here with her kid today, basically planning on having him volunteer over the summer. He didn't look all that excited, but my hope is that they'll find the right hook with the kid, and get him to enjoy the place.
I feel like that's a major part of what I'm supposed to do in this field- figure out how to make peo
Day 33- March 27th
Continued working on Box 2.
Day 34-March 28th
Someone showed me a diploma from the Indiana State Normal School, from 1910. (That was IUP's name when it was a teacher's college.) It was interesting to read it, because the diploma listed all of the subjects that the person was able to teach. It was a quite a list as well- everything ranging from politics to geometry. Nowadays, a person needs a master's in education just to teach elementary school, it seems.
I had
Day 29- March 9th
I was interviewed for the museum newsletter. It was kind of nice, getting to talk about myself and what I've been working on for this semester.
Day 30- March 20th
I continued working on Box 2, and got my picture taken for the newsletter.
Day 31- March 21st
I corrected some stuff about the article that was written about me, and continued working on Box 2.
Day 32- March 24th
The Cub Scouts visited the museum today, and I watched as Herb gave another to
I just got back from a week in Tennessee, helping to build new paths for the Cumberland Trail. We stayed at a lodge in a small hole-in-the-wall called Soddy Daisy, with kids from schools all around the East Coast and Mid-West.
I can't put into words just how wonderful that experience was. I came into the trip expecting that we'd be putting down gravel and trimming weeds for some biking/cross-country trails. I had never hiked a day in my life, unless you count walking around flat Delaware
Day 27, March 6th
Today I continued working on Box 2. I found an envelope of newspaper clippings- the envelope was a big manila envelope with "Philadelphia Convention July 1958" on front, so we kept the envelope.
I also found a 50th Anniversary Gettysburg Commission memo, which was great because there's a photo of the 50th Anniversary Gettysburg camp out displayed in the museum. I told my adviser about it, and she copied the letter and eventually intends on displaying the copy.
That
Day 23, February 28th
I found the 1966 bibliography that had been written for the collection when it was housed at the old museum. It's a pretty great thing to have, in order to understand how this collection had been processed and cataloged before.
Day 24, February 29th
I continued working on Box 3. There was also a visit from someone who was a consulting, which I'm interested in doing as a career. It was neat to hear the advice from her.
Day 25, March 2nd
I finished work on
Day 22, February 25th
I continued working on Box 5.
Today, there was a presentation given by someone who wrote a book called Native Womb, about his journey into learning about his biological family once he got adopted. He talked about his usage of Ancestry.com, which makes me think the usage of genealogy to help people learn about where they come from. That's what the Historical Society helps with a lot- we've had so many people come in wanting to learn about their family history. That's
Day 20, February 22nd
I finally finished Box 5. It came out to about 130-something items.
Day 21, February 24th
I started work on Box 3 of the collection. It holds a lot of correspondence that Richard Watson got while being in charge of Camp Hancock in Augusta, Georgia. Some were regarding people who were prisoners for being AWOL, or simply getting drunk and disorderly. One was about a boy who lied about being 18 years old to get into the army, and was therefore getting discharged. I
Day 18, February 17th
I continued working on Box 5.
In terms of the different ways that archives can be used, we had one patron who was learning about the house that he was working on. The man was a college landlord, who was dividing up this house into four apartments, and he was interested in learning about the house.
The house was once a college female dormitory, and it was a TKE frat house all the up to last semester. It was cool to hear about the history of this house. Kind of ma
Day 16, February 14th
I continued working on Box 5. I found a couple of pamplets that discussed gas warfare, as well as trench warefare. Those were the two big hallmarks of the Great War, because they were such new ways to fight in a way that still believed in the Romantic Napoleonic way of fighting. I wonder what it must have been like for the soldiers who read these pamplets to get a sense of what they were going to face.
I looked up the online orbituary of Colonel Richard W. Wa
Day 15, Feburary 10th
I continued working on Box 5. One interesting find was a pamplet on what soldiers should do if they find a Boche gun, aka a German machine gun. I suppose that must have been quite a boon for Allied soldiers, as the pamplet seemed to suggest that finding a German machine gun was something desirable. I wonder if that means that they were state-of-the-art at the time.
Someone from a local newspaper came in today to take pictures of the clothing and items from a 1960's
Day 13, February 7th
Today I finally finished sorting out Box 10. Finally. 111 items in that box and done.
Day 14, February 8th
I started on Box 5. There are a lot of manuals.
Day 10- February 2nd
I found a letter from the War Department of the United States, dating from 1917 or 1918, which gave a list of desirable books for which to start a camp library. That would explain so much about why George Watson had so many different books, and often in duplicate.
I also found a manual on physical training. It was interesting to see what the physical training standards were for the army in the 1910's- it seemed to be mostly focused on calistenics, swimming, and gymna
Day 7 January 27th
I finished sorting through Box 8. Now I'm working on Box 10.
Day 8 January 31st
Going through Box 10, I found a manual for young officers. It was from 1907. I know that George Watson was born in 1881, which means he would have been about 26 years old when he got that manual, and presumably became an officer in the army. It was interesting to think about that- I'm 26 years old, and I just can't even imagine what it would be like to have that kind of responsibility a
I somehow, through some miracle, got a B in the class I thought I was going to fail. My GPA went down a little bit, from a 3.83 to a 3.77, but I'm pretty happy with it.
