My interest in history began at an early age. Probably because I didn’t have much relatives that told me stories of how the past world was. I only had my grandma and my father who both got me intrigued in the Vietnam War, my dad that fought in it, and WWII, which my grandfather fought in. I would stumble upon memorabilia from these past two wars from them and was naturally drawn to movies that exemplified fictional  historical mystery such as Indiana Jones and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which served to only widen my love for history and the mystery around it. For me, history had always been about the adventurers. Whether that dealt with doing research about the Corps of Discovery Expedition or writing a final paper on the Apollo missions. These activities such as seeking history may seem boring and unadventurous but to people fascinated with history it’s almost as though it’s a frontier that’s been unexplored. Of course there are others before us and in our times who may know about the past, but personally to me, it feels like something uncovered becoming known. I’m sure it feels the same for other individuals. 

When I started again at the Champaign County History Museum this year, I expected to do the same things that I did when I started there last fall. The museum is filled with passionate people about history and most especially about this county. The one thing that hinders the museum is previous employment that has caused organization errors throughout the museum. Now I’m not saying this to talk down about the museum at all, but in order to fix the problem you must be courageous enough to diagnose the cause. What the other interns, Thomas, Mitchell, and I have been working on so far are mostly tasks that deal with organization. Whether it’s pictures, documents, online archives etc. we set things in order in the museum. It may seem tedious at times, but in my opinion it’s one of the most important tasks in the museum. It’s one of our main roles as a place of history to have information easily available to the public and from the looks of how things are going now, I feel as though we’re going in the right direction.