Reflection

What did you enjoy about this project?

The thing i enjoyed most about this project was getting a glimpse into what life was like at Trinity during this time period. Being in a greek life organization, you always hear stories about what it was like "back in the day" so it was a really cool experience to go into the archives and look at these old editions of the Trinitonian and see images of guys wearing the same insignia you do or playing the same intramural sports you enjoy playing. 

What surprised you about this project? 

The thing that surprised me most was the amount of time that had to be spent on each source. For some research projects, you could use a section from a certain paper and that was it, however for this project the time period that your information was about was critical to it's usefullness, so you had to make sure that each source you used was appropriate to the time period you were working with as well as the topic that you were researching. 

What was the most challenging aspect of the project, and how did you manage it?

In all honesty, the time constraints were the biggest challenege in getting this project completed, and the only way to manage it was to create a schedule and then make sure that I followed it as strictly as I could. This applied more so to the interviews than it did to the research though. The databases were always there, but in some cases the gentlemen that i interviewed had busy work and family schedules so I had to make sure that I reached out to them in a timely manner and was not trying to schedule an interview for 10 minutes after I was introducing myself. 

If you could start over, what would you do differently?

I would've conducted my interviews earlier. Periodicals and other information from the archives was good, but the best information I have came from the interviews I was able to conduct, and giving myself more time to schedule more interviews would've done nothing but helped my project.

What did you learn about history and/or the historical process through this project?

The biggest thing I learned about the historical process was how to use information from interviews and information I found in the archives in conjunction with each other. When I would be stumped on where to go next in my archival research, I would go back through my interview notes and search through it to find a specific event that my interview subject discussed that I had not searched yet. Oppositely, if I found something in my archival research that looked or sounded interesting, but I was having a hard time finding supporting information about said topic, I would write it down and make sure to ask about it in my next interview(s). 

What did you learn through this project that can be applied to life outside of the classroom? 

Obviously, getting to interview people was a huge help. In the professional world I'll be faced with situations every day where I'm inquiring for information from people that I have never met with before, so learning how to establisht that connection right away so that the conversation can flow naturally was a very usefull thing for me. Along with this, the patience and persistence to find just the right piece of information, and the way to manipulate my search phrases in the database search was something that got easier the more I did it and will most definitely come in handy in the professional setting.