Week 1:
New Experiences and Spider Friends

June 3, 2021

In-Person at AAMI

My first week started on Wednesday, so I got to slowly wade into this exciting new experience. In adapting to the pandemic, I am only going to the museum in person twice a week and spending the other three days working from home. My first day at the African American Museum of Iowa (AAMI) was in-person at the museum working with Felicite. I got to tour the museum, and begin learning about things like the process of moving historical items. For most of the day I learned how to use PastPerfect to catalogue books, which is the program the Museum uses to keep track of everything such as books, items, and documents in their storage. It was a little tedious, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and was able to go without looking at the directions for every step by the end of the day. My initial mistake was forgetting to bring a jacket (I read Felicite’s email advising me to bring one a little too late). The area where all the archive items are is climate controlled and kept quite cold so that the items will not be damaged. It was very cold and I won’t be making this mistake again. I ended up eating lunch outside at one of the picnic tables to warm up a bit, and it was quite nice. The museum is located right next to a river, so it was a pretty spot to eat. I made a little spider friend while I ate as well. After lunch, I (virtually) attended a staff meeting and met LaNisha and Brianna. It was a bit boring as I was out of the loop on what they were discussing, but still interesting to see how the staff communicate and problem solve. The end of my in-person day was spent starting some initial research on the upcoming exhibit.

Working From Home

My online days were spent working from my apartment. My initial plan was to set up a desk and a nice work area, but since my car has been in the shop I have not been able to do this. I ended up with a good rotation of switching from working at the table, to the couch, to outside. I have been researching for an upcoming exhibit. I have done this type of extensive research in the past, but it has been a while so it took me a little bit to get into the groove of it. I started off pretty broadly searching, but have since been narrowing my research down. I was also assigned to work on a small display, so I wrote a bit about that.

Perspective on Researching History

It is definitely nice to have research resources from Cornell, as well as experience navigating academic journals from working at Cornell’s library. I was a bit worried about managing my time without a schedule, but I felt like I did pretty well at focusing and getting a good amount of work done. Being at Cornell, I have had many long days of researching, reading, or writing so this felt kind of like that. It is difficult sometimes, to read and learn about all the horrible things that people have experienced in America’s history. I realized this week that I often do feel really empathic (and sad, even) when learning about history and that offers me a more humanistic and maybe understanding approach to how I learn about history. 

My Career Goals

I have so far been a bit indecisive about what direction I want my career to go so far, so I am learning both the archival side of things as well as educational. I have had interest in working in a museum as a career for quite a while, but my initial plan was to try to get my PhD and work at a college or university. A big goal of mine is to use this fellowship as an opportunity to get a glimpse into these careers and see which would be a good fit for me. Even within a museum there are many different people working in conjunction with one another to put everything together, so I am hoping to get a better understanding of all these different responsibilities. 

Finally out of Mt. Vernon

I am living in Iowa City with my partner this year, which was a bit of an adjustment from Mt. Vernon but overall has been very nice. We have friends nearby so we get to spend a lot of time together (all vaccinated, of course) and have fun. As well, being walking distance to downtown has been a blessing since I am without a car right now. I have been very excited about having lots of things nearby since Mt. Vernon can sometimes feel a bit small and isolating. I am homesick for the Colorado mountains but overall, I am very excited about what this summer has to offer.