In the Thick of It: Interning at the Smithsonian (#2)

I want to start with this: I’m still in awe of this opportunity. It’s so exciting and full of learning opportunities for both digital humanities type things and just how the Smithsonian works. I’m still working on getting my background check and credentials sorted, so I still have limited access to some of the resources that are going to be helpful when creating the digital products for each trunk, but I’m still able to find things to do.

Some highlights so far:

• I got to try out the Extra and Ordinary trunk for myself after it was shipped to my apartment. It was super cool to see sort of what the teachers and students see, and I got to take my time working through the material and activities, and I had a lot of helpful feedback for the trunk (They especially liked my research so much that they’re sending me the Nice Tu Meet You trunk next).
• I got to go to an in-person event at the Hirshhorn to see the field trip for Art Mystery in action before we start making it into a trunk. I was able to meet a lot of the other contributors to the trunk who aren’t on our team directly, learn about the trunk, and sit in on a wrap up meeting to discuss what were wins and critiques of the field trip to find ways to improve it.
• I’ve been able to discuss my ideas and work with other members of the team, and learned some interesting things from them. For instance, one of my colleagues and I were talking before one of our weekly team meetings and she recommended that I attend the Smithsonian Education Summit next month. I likely would not have known about that event without her suggestion based on things we were talking about.
• Created a really cool mock-up for a storymap for Extra and Ordinary which features images, primary sources, fun facts/ quotes/ stats, and even simple mapping for major locations in each of the women’s lives. (Unfortunately I can’t finalize this yet until I get my SI credentials in order)
• This week I created some fun faux social media profiles for four of the characters in the Nice Tu Meet You trunk, and they turned out really well, which is pretty fun. (Unfortunately, I don’t think I can share them quite yet).

So how can I try to foster more of these highlights?:

• For the trunk, they liked my feedback on the first one so much that I get to give feedback on another one, and it should be in the mail sometime this week. So I’m very excited about that. Hopefully I’ll get to test and give feedback on all four trunks once they’re ready.
• I don’t know how many more in-person events I’ll be able to attend, but if I’m offered, I think I’ll try my hardest to go to another, it was a super cool experience and helped to make my mostly remote internship feel a bit more real.
• I’ve really been enjoying talking with my colleagues when I can, and I’ve realized that I work pretty well while collaborating, so I asked Sara if I could have a slightly more active and collaborative role in some of the current trunks being developed. So far I’ve been able to collaborate more with one of my colleagues, especially as I’ve been transitioning from Extra and Ordinary into Nice Tu Meet You.
• We’re planning on making a few more storymaps, and I can feel my skills improving as I worked on E+O, so now I think moving forward I’ll be able to use some of those new skills, tips, and tricks, to make the other storymaps better (as well as E+O when I transfer it to the official account eventually).
• I really liked being able to exercise my creativity while formatting the faux social media profiles in the image editing software. It was a fun way to incorporate the materials into a medium that we think the students will really enjoy. If possible I think I want to create some more small multi-media additions that are unique to each trunk, but it might not be as simple as making social media profiles for characters.

I’ve noticed that while I can work alone (obviously as a graduate student I need to for some extent), I also love to collaborate (RRCHNM is rubbing off on me I guess), and I felt a little isolated from the team, but since I asked to be more collaborative with them, it’s been improving. I’ve also noticed that coding student evaluations from the trunks is easy, but it burns me out a bit, especially since I also transcribe documents with RRCHNM, so I had a week where all I was doing was typing what documents said, and that was not creative enough for my liking, so I’m trying to find ways to intersperse the more entertaining and creative tasks through the more mundane transcription tasks moving forward, so I don’t get stuck in a transcription rut.

Overall I’m really happy with how the internship is going so far. It’s going to be a bit stressful for the next week or two as I finish up my summer class (where I’m programming an educational video game), but I have a few weeks after where my responsibilities are a bit lower and my schedule will open back up.