Reflection

What did you enjoy about this project?

This project gave me the opportunity to do reseaerch on something that often would not be researched in a project type of assignment. When doing research assignments, often it can be tedious and the material not very engaging. The stories that we are writing about in these projects are fascinating, and connect on a human level. When I talk about the dominating nature of this team caused by the depth of the squad, people want to read about that. I think that makes this project a whole lot more enjoyable for everyone. Plus, I really like tennis.

What surprised you about this project?

The biggest surprise was certainly how many historical records are kept for things that I did not think were necessary to keep records for. It suprised me to find information and statistics and things from tennis matches that took place now around 50 years ago. It shows that people really hold on to information and things a lot, and that history is very well kept around the country. It is something that interests me, and shows that overall there are things that people really care about, and even matches and teams that took place 50-60 years ago are still fresh in a historical sense.

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

The most challenging aspect of this project was the interview stage. Getting important people to give you even tidbits of information is very hard. I tried to get a comment from Athletic Director King for basically the entire semester, to no avail in the end. I get that people are busy, but in the end, I think it comes down to that the things that I am working on are not viewed as important enough by big time people, and therefore they do not see it as a worthy use of their time. I tried to manage this by having two outstanding interviews with the people that would talk to me, and in the end, I can say I accomplished that. I got good interviews that helped the project and paper a lot, which I can say that I am very proud of.

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

I would probably go ahead and try to get interviews from different people than the ones that I did reach out to unsuccessfully. I thought that the subject of the project was engaging and interesting and that the process that I followed was mostly on track. I was a little late on some things, which was a mistake, but, simultaneously, I feel that had my interview attempts panned out better, I would have done a lot better. So I would have tried to interview different people. 

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

When it comes to learning about history, I would revert back to what I was saying originally about how surprisingly well records of things that I would consider pretty random are kept. For instance, who would have guessed that we have such detailed records of the original paper leeroy's from back many years ago? But in the archives center, I saw those very leeroy's and yearbooks and things. These were very interesting to me.

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

This project taught me great interview skills. Though it was hard to get the interviews that I did, the ones that I got were great. I think it had a lot to do with us practicing our interviews beforehand in the classroom with my other classmates. I also take away from this project, and really this class as a whole, the importance of history and having a historial perspective. Everything has history, and if we do not understand our history, we are bound to repeat it. There have been a lot of things going on with me personally and really this whole school year was a time for change for me. But to be able to look back with fond memories of a team of dominant tennis players helps ground me. And I think that looking back on all history serves a similar effect. We all suffer issues and problems but we need to look back at past problems and say, "Its great we do not live in that era" so that we can understand the one we live in now successfully. I have always enjoyed history for this reason, because it develops a sense of perspective that many people do not understand.