I started my post-secondary schooling as a dual enrolment student taking classes at Valencia College. It was at this time that I started considering a degree in history. Upon high school graduation, I went to the University of Central Florida with just a few classes shy of being a junior and I quickly confirmed my choice as a history major. I realize now that I would like to attend graduate school to learn how to work in the public history field. My interests lie in the untold stories and I would like to be able to share such stories with a larger audience. I know this seems general, and it is, as I have yet to narrow down a singular place and time I would like to focus on. This idea of studying underdeveloped stories started when I was in high school, and I was storyboarding a potential book I wanted to write that would have taken place in Greece during the Age of Heroes. I wanted my story to be set in Crete and I wanted it to be as historically accurate as possible. That’s when I learned about Minoan culture, and I was infuriated by the fact that I had never heard about it before and about how little information there was available. From this point forward whenever I came across an underdeveloped historical topic, I spent extra time finding every piece of information available and made sure to give the story the extra attention it had been lacking.

 

            In the summer of 2022, I was visiting my family in Iceland. While at a museum I learned that Iceland had been invaded by the allied forces in World War II due in part to the presence of German scientists conducting “research” in the country. I was very surprised to learn this. That fall I was given the chance to write on the topic for a European history class. I pulled up everything I could find. I discovered that the records on the invasion were few and that it was even more difficult to find resources describing the Nazi research and their purpose for being in Iceland. I learned a lot about researching and finding sources in unlikely places, going as far as to reach out to a professor at an Icelandic college who had been referenced in one of the few sources I had found. Another area I have spent more of my own personal time looking into is women in medical and stem fields from the 19th century. I have written research papers about mathematician Ada Lovelace and Nurse Clara Barton, two women who helped open doors for other women by simply existing in spaces primarily occupied by men. The stories from their lives just pulled me in and I was left wanting to know more.

            Most recently, I got to be involved in a research project called the PRINT project. This project allowed me to take part in my interest in developing untold stories and it was quite the challenge. The most difficult story to tell is that of a common, working-class, unmarried woman before an age of standardized spelling and record keeping.  I got to take on that challenge when tasked with writing a bio for a woman named Margery Vosse, who was alive in the 17th century. The PRINT project brings a much larger focus to people like Vosse who created very few records while alive but were still living, breathing people, who were important to someone. After reading a letter written by Margery Vosse, I attempted to find out more about her. I combed through ancestry.com, the UCF library database, google scholar, and more, with very limited luck. While it was difficult and it did not amount to much, dealing with these challenges has left a resolve in me to do even more for people like Vosse.  

            While I know I want to work in a field where I can share these obscure figures with other people, admittedly I still have not decided as to what that will mean for me. I enjoy being able to teach about such figures because it humanizes the past to both myself and others. In my experiences with tutoring and working in public spaces where I frequently have to speak with strangers, I’ve learned that the best way to maintain someone’s interest is to make it relatable and help them have a connection to whatever it is you’re teaching. People like Margery Vosse are far more relatable than Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great. The public history master’s degree is attractive to me because it is so general and many of the professions that interest me such as being an archivist, working at a museum, and even doing government work, generally require a master’s degree, as well as the ability to effectively spread the information I’ve researched to people in the general public.