Reflection

What did you enjoy about this project?

As a current trinity golfer, I think the thing that I enjoyed most about this project, was learned and getting to better understand the tradition and history of our program. That said this project also opened up communication and networking potential with some of the alumni from our program. The more that my research turned up the more I felt a need to compare programs and see, or attempt to see who really is the better team our current men’s team or the 2005 Conference Champions. It was really fun to go back and look at numbers and play the comparisons game and get a better understanding for team history, but I think at the end of the day they have a SCAC conference championship and we don’t so they might win that battle.

What surprised you about this project?

I think the biggest surprise was not just the time it took to complete research, which by no means did I expect it to be quick and easy, but because of my lack of knowledge how many times I felt like the story took twists and turns. I felt like as I was researching, it was a little bit of an adventure through time, and I didn’t really expect myself to get so genuinely interested and to feel as much pride as I did, reading about how a Trinity team won SCAC. I remember as a kid reading the Golf Digest college ranking leaderboards, and it was an article that I had saved for a long time, so now having never expected to be going to Trinity, and being a transfer I feel pretty proud to be a part of a program that has been considered one of the best academics first universities in the country, next to top ivy league schools. I also was really surprised when I stumbled across the rankings not because I didn’t expect my own past to have in some small way overlapped with the history of Trinity golf.

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

For me the most challenging aspect of the project, was by far conducting interviews with alumni and gaining information from primary sources. I think the majority of the difficulty came simply from traveling with the golf team over the course of the semester as well as being in the height of season, which really limited my own availability and time that I could meet in person with alumni. I think that under the circumstances I did the best that I could trying to coordinate conversations and interviews via email, which obviously was not ideal I would have liked to have been able to meet with more people face to face for interviews, however at the same time email interviews also had some advantages, as I felt that it was a more open means of communication, allowing me to follow up with different alumni or interviewees as more questions arose. I also managed or worked my way around the issue, by focusing a good portion of my research in the Trinitonian, where I tried to piece together a better understanding by looking at past interviews and articles, I felt like in some ways I was almost getting a second hand interview, but it was better than no interview at all.

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

I think that it's hard really to think what I would do differently because I feel like I went into this project with an idea that I was really going to focus primarily on Carla and her role as the first woman to head a men’s athletic program at Trinity. I think at first I was a little too caught up with my original ideas that it wasn’t really until the later stages of the project that I really understood how dynamic the project was, and that the story I was going to recount was not just about Carla but about her program as a whole. I think that I was a little bit too stubborn at first to look at the bigger picture, and I think perhaps that was a mistake. I also think that if I could do the whole thing over, I would have locked up interviews at the very beginning of the research process due to the busy season that I ended up having. I think idealistically and practically it would have been better. However, looking back and understanding how set I was on focusing mainly on Carla’s role historically as the first female head coach for a men’s team at Trinity, I don’t know that having those interviews so early would have provided me with the same level of insight seeing as I had a much broader understanding of the program at the end of the semester.

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

I think the biggest thing that I learned is as cliché as it may sound is that the process takes a lot of time. I also think one of the biggest things I learned from the project is that it is so important to approach history with an open mind. I think it really taught me that you can’t approach history, expecting to find or to tell a specific story. I think with a project like this the biggest thing I learned was that the idea or story you come in researching not necessarily be story that you walk away telling. The other thing that I learned which also may sound a little silly is that research is hard. I felt like so many times I thought I was making some kind of break through or that I had found the perfect person to interview, but would then have to deal with the reality of not necessarily being able to make contact or conduct an interview.

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

I think for me the things I learned that I think will be most applicable outside the classroom, were both the research and networking skills. At times in the research process I felt like I was struggling to strike a balance between being a pest to some people that I was trying to ask the favor of conducting an interview, and letting an opportunity slip away. However, I think the project was in many ways a lesson in persistence, that every time research came to a standstill to approach the topic from a different angle and see could you find anything or even just send out one more pestering email to another potential interview target. I learning the research process is something that is so invaluable, because I think so many times people search something and settle for whatever answers come from google's first page results, or whatever is written in Wikipedia. But the research process really taught me skills helped me get understand a whole story rather than just biographical information.