Reflection

What did you enjoy about this project?

I most enjoyed the discovery of new information in this project. I have always been intrigued by the process things took to make life the way it is today. This means that looking backwards at history and seeing how it shaped and molded Trinity as a school, community, and home for many of it's students, which was incredibly interesting to me. In general, I let my curiosity drive my hunger for knowledge which gave me freedom to take the project into any direction I wanted which was very satisfying.

What surprised you about this project?

I was most surprised about how much Trinity has changed over the years. Everyone gets one college experience, and while I am in the middle of mine, I was able to see how it was for the multitude of people that came before me. This allowed me to see how Trinity was transformed exactly and the course it took in the 40 years between the implementation of Title IX and present day. The sheer change or transformation that Trinity has taken over the years was most surprising to me. 

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

The most challenging aspect of this project was to not only obtain as much relevant information as possible, but be able to process it all accordingly and keep it organized. Also conducting interviews was very difficult because most of my interviewees did not respond and so I was not able to talk to an actual person who lived through the Title IX era while attending Trinity. However, I supplemented by interviewing a former female student athlete at University of Portland who played in the direct aftermath of Title IX. I also asked current student athletes to make various statements about Trinity athletics.

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

If I could start over I would try to really focus on the change in sociological structure in the aftermath of Title IX to attempt to observe any changes in the overall atmosphere of the Trinity University campus life. This would be very interesting to me, however, due to time shortages I was only able to observe the transformation that the athletic department underwent as well as the programs that emerged due to Title IX.

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

I learned that a lot of the historical process is filling in the blanks because information, by nature, is incomplete. This means that much of my project needed to be supplemented with first-hand documents rather than my interpretation of the situation because primary sources are much more reliable than the intuition of a student with very limited prior knowledge of the effects of Title IX on Trinity University. However, even with the blank spaces in between the information that I found, it was still plenty to relay an intrguing and engaging story and study of Title IX and it's effects on Trinity. 

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

I learned a lot about the organization of information and how to determine what kind of information is useful/relevant, and what kind is not helpful for my project. However, mostly I learned about the researching process, especially in cases where much of the information is incomplete. This project helped my problem solving skills, informational organization skills, and really helped me refine my researching skills to the point where I believe I could research and talk about most any topic intelligently.