Public History Internship 2025: UCF Veterans History Project

 Welcome all to our 14th, and final week here in my Fall VHP internship! Earlier today the UCF Public History Center held the Fall 2025 Internship Showcase. I, alongside my team, had the honor and privilege of presenting our work to our fellow interns in Public History, as well as the opportunity to learn more about what the other projects have entailed for interns and their teams throughout the semester. It was very enlightening to see how hard everyone has worked this semester for their projects, what results they've produced, what they've learned about their career paths, and the skills they have gained from their time in their internships. Seeing Riley's work at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind was inspiring. Despite language barriers and difficulties in communicating, she was able to pick up enough sign language to communicate with her peers and leaders. I find language acquisition to be a very worthwhile effort, though it can be endlessly difficult, and I am ...

 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...