It feels so crazy to me that I’m in my last week of my internship. A part of me doesn’t want it to end, I’ve been having so much fun and I’ve been learning so much about museum work. But all good things must come to an end, as they say.
This morning, I was put in charge of a box from a smaller collection that had newspaper clippings in it. All of the clippings were about the Angela Davis Trial in 1972. For those unfamiliar (and this is what I gleaned from the papers), Angela Davis was charged with kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy in 1972 after a shootout in California. What made this trial so remarkable, other than the fact that Angela Davis was the one being tried, was the jury. It took a while for the courts to find a jury that was non-biased. There were originally African Americans on the jury, but they were dismissed and replaced, making the jury entirely white. Even with this, Angela Davis was deemed innocent, and not a single juror had returned a guilty ballot.
In the afternoon, I put away the photocopies of the newspaper clippings. But, there were more things in the box, including eight cassette tapes. I, as a child of the early 2000s, previously had no experience with cassette tapes. I mainly grew up with CDs, the early internet, and vinyl records to play music on. We still had the cassette-to-mp3 converter from earlier in July, so I got to learn the ropes of how to work a cassette player. The main reason I was listening back was to check if there was anything on the tapes, since all of them were unmarked. It was only after I started listening to the tapes that I had to confirm with the curator what a blank cassette sounded like. But after that, it was relatively smooth sailing! I can also now say with confidence, that I have listened to a genuine mixtape.
My day was fantastic today, but I didn’t end up getting much done. In the morning, I started off helping another intern photograph the bottom of some large collection objects. My job was just to tilt them or lift them off the ground so that he could get a good photo for his condition reports. After that, it was back to small collections! We got in a bit of stuff recently in the past few months, so my job was to make an archive record for each of the things! I got through three of the four, and I managed to fill up an archive box, bringing the Small Collections box total to 21!
Normally, here I would say it was Welcome Desk Wednesday in the afternoon, but today was special! My history professor came to visit the museum and see what us interns were doing in the collections room. I hadn’t seen her all summer, and it was a lot of fun getting to talk with her and tell her all the things that have been happening this summer! It was super nice of her to visit, and she took the interns out for lunch, which was really super cool of her! She’s one of my favorite professors at Cornell, so I was really happy she came!
THEN it was Welcome Desk Wednesday! Since I was only up front for an hour (as opposed to my normal three and a half hours), I didn’t have anyone come into the museum. But I can’t say I blame them, it was a really beautiful day outside. It’s crazy that I only have two days left, but I’m going to do my best to make them good ones!
Work in the museum has been starting to wind down. This morning, I took care of one more small collection before another intern had to use the computers. So, with nothing else I could do in the collections space, I turned my attention to the office spaces in the museum. I helped clean out an office for the incoming museum educator who will be starting in a few weeks. I took stuff out of the office that wasn’t supposed to be there and put it in our garage/dock. I also helped pack up the traveling exhibit that was on display, and put up a new one! This one is on George Washington Carver, and it’s a sort-of preview for the farming exhibit that will go up in October! The other thing I did in the morning was help the museum staff move a really heavy file cabinet to the upstairs office space. It took us two interns, and two museum staff to get it into the elevator and up to its new home!
In the afternoon, unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot done. My task was to find children's books in the education office to make sure the museum still had them. But that task was a tad thwarted over lunch. The curator got pizza for the entire staff, and we spent two and a half hours talking. Oops. But, when I did get back to the education office, I managed to find a few more books before my day was over.
Just because it was my last day didn’t mean that I slacked off! In the morning, I went back on my book hunt in the education office, and I managed to find most of them! I found a place to store them separately from the other books we have so that the new educator knows which ones the museum owns.
In the afternoon, it was Front Desk Friday! My last one for this internship! It couldn’t have gone better, in all honesty! There was a steady stream of people, and there weren’t any problems! I labelled and shelved more books on our used book cart in the store, but other than that, it was fairly uneventful.
One final picture of the lobby for Front Desk Friday!
I can’t believe that my internship is done. It feels like not that long ago that I was going in for the first time and flying by the seat of my pants. I didn’t know what I was doing, but the museum staff, especially the curator, was incredibly patient with me, which I very much appreciated. My biggest takeaway from this is probably that this is the work for me. Working in a museum is so much fun, especially in collections. Currently, I’m looking at programs to get a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, or in Museum Studies. I don’t know where my path will lead, but I do know that I’m more than willing to follow it wherever it may go!
Thank you for following along on these adventures with me!