Week 13: Platforming Veterans

 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 employees to ask off for certain days in advance, so I am attempting to convince one my fellow servers to take my regularly scheduled Saturday Lunch shift so that I may attend this event! Riley, and many others from our team, have put so much love and effort into this project, and I will be honored to take part in it. Not to mention that our VHP table garnered plenty of interest at the recent Orange County Veterans Anniversary event, and I would love to see some of the familiar faces we encouraged to attend the Story Day event.

As for my personal work at the VHP, I have wrapped up my interview transcription and documentation process for William Smith, my assigned interviewee, and have completed reviewing the documentation for three other interviews completed previously by my peers. I await further instruction from either my team lead Jayden or another administrative team member, whoever gets to me first in this very busy time of the year. Many of us are busy orchestrating and/or studying for finals, various UCF events, and of course personal holiday plans, so I understand why pacing has slowed a little recently. After recovering from my cold I am, frankly, grateful for the moment to catch my breath and put things in order so that I may move forward towards the rapidly approaching end of the semester with grace and efficiency (...fingers crossed).

Good luck to you all in these last remaining weeks!

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