Public History Internship 2025: UCF Veterans History Project

 Welcome all to week 13! This week has been leading up to a special event, coordinated in large part through the efforts of my peer here at the Veterans History Project, Riley -- Story Day! This Satuday (November 15th of 2025), the Veterans History Project will be hosting a special event to highlight the stories of participating veterans and their loved ones at the Beardall Senior Center. This opportunity features interviews with Orlando veterans who are willing to share their impactful and remarkable stories, and their contributions from their service and beyond. Preserving the experiences of these service members and/or their family members is one of the primary missions of our project in particular. This event allows us not only to capture, catalog, and collect the stories of veterans, but for members of Orlando's community to learn more from a community of individuals who are, sadly, often unheard. During the holidays (October through December) my place of work does not allow e...

Welcome to week 12, and also the dreaded Cold and Flu season. Though I had a lot to report on in last week's installment, much of my momentum was curbed by the seasonal sickness that plagues many of us. I was a mess of germs and sniffles all week, and postponed a lot of my emails and communications until I was finally feeling better on Thursday. I was still able to attend one of the meetings necessary for my senior design PRINT project, luckily, but have had to miss work and class most of the week. I hope whoever reads this manages to avoid my fate!!!  Regarding the work related to my internship, I was able to finally wrap up the review of the interviews that Jayden had assigned to me. I've let him know of my progress, and requested that any other work he need done in the upcoming weeks to send my way so I can complete as much as possible with the remaining time of the semester. I wish I had more time to allot to this project, but I've learned a lot about how time consuming...

 Welcome all to Week 11 of this semester, where we finally welcome in some autumn weather (below 70 degrees)! Much of the same this week regarding my personal progress. I am wrapping up my final efforts in regards to revising the selected interview completed by my peers. As I have mentioned previously, the efforts of my predecessors of this project have been great and effective, as there have been few corrections of mention.  As for the Veterans History Project at large, and thankfully it was my opportunity to share in such, we participated in the community-led and organized Orange County Veteran Services 80th Anniversary Resource Fair. This resource fair offers veterans and their families the opportunity to connect with various organizations and services dedicated to assisting veterans in our Orange County community. There were easily dozens of tables there, from financial and legal information to benefits counseling. It was very encouraging to see how many services were...

 Welcome to week 10! The majority of my work this week has been centered on continuing my revision and proof-reading of the three interviews I was assigned, as previously mentioned in weeks prior. The members of our team who worked on these originally were clearly very diligent, as there are few mistakes to mention. Whenever the speaker, typically the interviewee, is saying something indecipherable or unintelligible, there is a "(???)" left in the space of the word or phrase that cannot be transcribed. I have, thus far, been able to only decipher one of them, however the rest are unlikely to change. These entries are usually due to the speaker mumbling or stuttering, or switching topics mid conversation that that leads to a jumbling of words that can't really be transcribed very coherently. It's incredibly common, and my work transcribing these interviews has made me realize how often I do this very same thing when talking to others. Talking over myself as I switch be...

 Welcome to week 9 of the semester! Truthfully, I have nothing much new to report from my previous update, as this past week has been largely unchanging for me. I essentially have two tasks at hand that I have been chipping away at slowly but surely. Midterm projects and exams have been eating up so much more of my time than I anticipated, so there hasn't been much in the way of any breakthroughs or major developments with these tasks, though I continue to work intently! For the first task, I am completing the finishing revisions of my transcript for the interview with veteran William Smith. As said in my previous blog post, transcribing takes up so much more time than I had expected! It's included a lot of replaying and rewatching certain clips over and over to determine exactly what my subject is articulating. The main source of conflict arises from trying to copy one's exact words while also adhering to proper grammar structures -- people stray from the rules of grammar ...

 Hello everyone, welcome to week 8 of this lovely semester. The Veterans History Project had the opportunity of being visited by guest speaker Brendan O'Connor to share about the history of the Orlando Army Air Base, as well as his work as a content creator. He is deeply invested in Orlando history projects, and it was enlightening to hear from him the behind the scenes processes that one must undergo to bring projects like his recent Reflections Magazine  article, "Baldwin Park in Orlando". As always, my peers in the Public History Center had engaging and insightful questions, and some even work on similar curation projects.  On Monday, Jayden Flores, my team lead, provided 3 batches of interviews to begin working on. Myself and my peer Matthew Fedewa, who joined the internship slightly delayed and at the same time as me (due to some last minute scheduling issues), have been tasked with looking over 3 interviews each and assuring that they have all of the necessary docum...