Thus far, a large feature of my internship has been dedicated to oral histories. This week while continuing to explore this medium, I was able to engage with new sides of it. I focused more on the preliminary work needed to conduct an oral history such as research into the person. Additionally, this dive into research extended into a publicity post for the History Center. In doing these tasks, I was met with familiar and unfamiliar trials of researching certain subjects. This week ultimately provided key takeaways in consolidating different sources into a coherent, useful tool.
The week began with the typical task of completing a few audio logs. Each week I find myself learning something new from the amazing breadth of interviews available at the History Center. This week I followed the journey of a character actor who works for the History Center. She described her numerous experiences but most interesting to me was her extensive work in mental health and psychology. She described her love of helping people, but also how she branched out to many different opportunities that came her way in life, one of which being at the History Center. More importantly, she described a very serious health crisis that affected her quality of life. Rather than dwell on the hardships behind this, she expressed how blessed she was. She detailed how her health did not deter her from living life to the fullest, continuing her acting, or helping people. This approach towards life allowed me to think of ways I could be more grateful for the small things around me. It also made me wonder if I could be as strong as her under such circumstances. Nonetheless, this oral history proved very poignant, and I look forward to continuing to learn more through the numerous other stories recorded by the History Center.
Next, I was tasked with creating a social media post to celebrate the career of a former commissioner for Orange County, Mary I Johnson. Initially, this task seemed simple. Though, I was challenged with consolidating the vast information I found on Commissioner Johnson. The social media post could only be the length of ideally 4 sentences but at the maximum 5. Therefore, I had to highlight the most important parts about Commissioner Johnson. First, this involved reading multiple articles about her and her work. She was noted for championing the Victim Service Center for Central Florida that provides resources like therapy, crisis intervention, and legal advocacy for victims of crime. Additionally, she was essential in developing more of Orlando's downtown. During this work I discovered how important it is to confirm certain facts and not assume details. For example, Commissioner Johnson was described as the first Hispanic person elected to the Orlando City Council. At first I was tempted to make the assumption and say she was also the first woman or "Hispanic woman." However, upon further research this would be incorrect. I discovered that she was not the first woman and by saying "Hispanic woman" I would be minimizing her
accomplishment as this would infer that there had been a Hispanic man before her when she was simply the first Hispanic person alone. Furthermore, the first draft of my post was a bit more fanciful and described her impact not with so many facts but instead by the hope she provided to her community. After receiving some feedback I realized what mattered more was informing the public of her many accomplishments. Subsequently, I restructured the draft in a way that highlighted her achievements. This small task was an exercise in brevity and synthesizing a large volume of information. I found it quite useful since being a historian makes me prone to at times going for the longer, more detailed explanations.
Also completed this week was research into two upcoming oral histories. One is regarding a local restaurant owner and the other a woman with a long history working as a PR agent for amusement parks. These two people provided distinctly different experiences when it came to researching a person. The restaurant owner had a plethora of articles about her past, her restaurant, her success, and philosophy towards the food industry. Though this was helpful in compiling notes for her, it also proved confusing. Some of the information conflicted with each other. For example, one source said she immigrated from Thailand at the age of 6, while another source said it was the age of 8. Then, one article said she immediately moved to New York first then found herself in Orlando. However, another article mentioned that she first lived in California then went to school in New York and moved to Florida later. When this happened, I would use a "majority rules" strategy. This meant two things: first, that I would go with the fact that was repeated among the most sources and second, that I would go with the most substantial source. To illustrate, even though I only found one article about her moving to California first from Thailand this article was very detailed and included quotes from the owner herself. Whereas the other articles that only made mention of New York were short promotional blurbs with little biographical detail. Then, in other cases I would look for facts that were repeated across articles and would feel assured of including them for my research notes.
In contrast, the other subject had little biographical information about her. Thus, I had to organize her professional details located on her LinkedIn profile. I also gathered interesting quotes from her about local parks in the Orlando Sentinel. Interestingly, I believe that this forced me to create more creative questions for her. I centered questions around any shifting trends she had noticed among visitors to parks like Disney, her opinions on being the public voice during controversial times for a company, and how she handled the closing of smaller local parks that she helped promote. But, for the restaurant owner, I felt stuck on what questions to ask. Since there was so much biographical information I felt that some questions would just flow more naturally. Therefore, I struggled more to produce unique questions but still crafted some that centered on her restaurant experience, her culture shock from moving to the United States, and how COVID affected her business. Ultimately, this week was a fun experiment in doing quality research. I was able to navigate my way around certain pitfalls as well as learn more about some notable figures in the local Orlando community.
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