jaydenpublichistoryinternshipucf

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Week 10 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my tenth blog entry. Much like last week, my fellow interns and I working with transcriptions have spent the week continuing our work. Now, we've moved on from our initial assignments and have pivoted to transcriptions which are in need of much more than proofreading and the occasional adjustment of information in their AV Logs. By now, I have worked on four separate interviews as well as their transcripts and AV Logs. Having this amount of experience with this work makes it much easier to move quicker through transcriptions and their corresponding AV Logs. As of writing this, I am very close to finishing the transcription for the interview of Reverand Rollie Murray of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, conducted by Parramore Speaks. When that is finished, I am hoping to move onto a fifth interview so that I may finish working with it before we conclude our final tasks at the end of next week.

This past week, the initial transcription I had worked with, the interview of Curtis Rayam conducted by Eric Thompson, had been reviewed so that we may better incorporate the elements that the city of Orlando would most like to see present throughout our transcriptions and AV Logs. I'm glad to make these adjustments, as many of them— such as footnotes explaining abbreviations and locations of places mentioned by interviewees— make the transcripts more accessible to potential readers in the future who may not be as familiar with Parramore's historic locations, institutions, and more. Returning to AV Logs I have made in the past has given me an opportunity to double down on quality assurance, as I have become much better at making them as time as gone on.

The interview with Reverend Rollie Murray has been the lengthiest interview I have listened to thus far. With that comes a great amount of history to learn. Certainly a community leader in his own right, it is a unique experience listening to someone coming from such a position of leadership and prominence in their local community speak on the qualities of that community and the character of its people. It serves as a reminder that Parramore, as well as countless other communities, are led in many different ways by many different people.

This upcoming week, we are going to begin discussing our plans for the Summer 2025 Internship Showcase. I am excited to present to others the work we've done with transcriptions as well as metadata before, but I am still surprised by just how quickly this summer has passed. I am sure that both our presentation and the presentation given by the second group of interns will go smoothly!

I would include a screenshot of some portions of the transcription I’ve been working on, but as I have mentioned the last few weeks, I don’t want to include any content which might have sensitive data, since both transcripts and AV logs contain personal information about both the interviewer and the interviewee.

See you all next week!

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Week 9 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my ninth blog entry. This week my fellow interns and I working with transcriptions had continued doing so. As we've been completing our initially assigned transcriptions, we've began moving towards working with interview folders which have much less content already completed. This week, I had found myself working with the interview of Rebecca Ford, former Orlandoan educator and wife to 1980-1998 commissioner Napoleon "Nap" Ford. This interview was fascinating, and I was able to play a much larger role in the completion of its corresponding materials. This interview needed an AV log created from scratch and a far more thorough review of the transcription, as well as the creation of original abstracts for both the AV log and transcription. The work we've done these past few weeks leading towards this assignment had certainly prepared me for this. It is a unique experience to be able to write your own name in as the transcriber on a transcript belonging to a project as important to local history as Parramore Speaks.

The recorded interview for Rebecca Ford- conducted by Sarah Boye- was fascinating to listen to. It was longer than the previous two interviews I have worked with thus far, those being for Curtis Rayam and Commissioner Rose. It is always interesting to see the unique perspectives that so many people of different ages and backgrounds can have on the same community. Before listening to this interview, I hadn’t known who people such as Napoleon “Nap” Ford, Daisy Lynum, and Arthur “Pappy” Kennedy were. This was a great opportunity to learn about the history of this city while also contributing to its preservation. I hope that other interns in the future will have similar experiences.

Much like I had while working on the Curtis Rayam transcript, I made sure to listen to the audio of the Rebecca Ford interview in advance prior to working on the transcript (and then listening to it while working on the transcript). Doing so helped me make a mental note ahead of time of how I could best handle trickier situations, such as speakers quickly changing or speech that might be hard to write out for a variety of reasons. This allowed me to keep a sort of flow while working on the transcript as opposed to constantly pausing for prolonged periods of time due to running into a more difficult point in the interview to transcribe for the first time. I would certainly recommend listening to the interview in advance to anybody else who may be doing similar work in the future.

I would include a screenshot of some portions of the transcription I’ve been working on, but like the last few weeks, I don’t want to include any content which might have sensitive data, since both transcripts and AV logs contain personal information about both the interviewer and the interviewee.

See you all next week!

[jaydenpublichistoryinternshipucf]

Week 7 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my seventh blog entry. This week had served as a continuation of much of what my fellow interns and I had started last week regarding transcription. We have continued our work reviewing continued transcripts, adjusting AV logs and abstracts, and more. This week I had completed only two transcripts unfortunately, in part due to how meticulous I tend to be when reviewing a transcript in comparison to what I'm getting audibly from the recording of the interview. Though it is undoubtedly a good thing to ensure that one's work is as accurate as possible, it is also important to keep things moving forward and to trust your ears and judgement when working with a transcript, so that you aren't left re-listening to the same section of an interview countless times.

So far, I have been giving the interviews a full listen before listening again with the intent of working on the transcript. Not only does it help me better mentally digest what is being said in the interview and what to expect, but it also comes with the added bonus of learning the fascinating stories of those who have been interviewed thus far. I had learned much about the opera scene from the Curtis Rayam interview, and listening to the recording of the interview of Orlando's commissioner had been a fascinating experience in which I learned much about the character of Parramore and the history of its residents. Though I have never personally been as big of a fan of microhistories as others throughout my history classes, projects such as these certainly imbue me with a newfound appreciation of the stories of individuals who might otherwise not have the chance to have their stories heard were it not for groups such as Parramore Speaks.

I'm glad to be able to listen to the interviews conducted as part of the Parramore Speaks project. As I had mentioned before, I have known of these interviews for quite some time through Eric Thompson due to a class we had taken together during the Spring semester. At the time I was informed that there were plenty of materials which were in need of processing, and I'm glad that I can be a part of that effort. Considering the role that the university and the construction of its downtown campus has played in the Parramore area, we have a responsibility as UCF students to contribute to preserving Parramore histories, no matter how small that contribution might be. I would share an image of the things that I've worked with this week for the blog post, but like last time, I don't want to include any documents that might have sensitive data listed. There is plenty of personal information to be found in transcripts and especially AV logs.

See you all next week!

[jaydenpublichistoryinternshipucf]

Week 6 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my sixth blog entry. This week had been a noteworthy turning point for me and my team for the internship. While the other team of interns has continued their work with metadata sheets, my team has begun working with transcriptions as we've finished the metadata sheets that we were assigned thus far. Our newer work has seen us review completed transcripts for imperfections, adjust secondary paperwork, and other edits. We are doing it in preparation to do more advanced work with transcriptions in the future. Two of the three interns that I am working with in my team are new to me. I'm certain that the two interns I had originally worked with are going to keep doing great work, and I'm also excited to work and talk with new interns.

The most challenging part of this transition has been making sure that everybody I'm working with is up to speed on their new assignments, including myself. We were given many resources to help us learn to work with transcriptions at the beginning of the internship, and now we're starting to utilize them anew as we work with transcripts, AV logs, and more. Transcripts and metadata sheets couldn't be any more different, so there was a lot of information to convey to the fellow interns regarding how these new assignments would work. Nonetheless, everybody has done a great job with their new assignments and Sarah Boye and Jessie Oldham have gone the extra mile to make the change easy for us.

I am excited to continue working with these materials in particular. The transcripts my team has been assigned were collected as part of the oral histories conducted by Eric Thompson and Sarah as a part of the Parramore Speaks project, which I am somewhat familiar with. Eric and I had taken a Public History class together in the Spring semester, and we had made frequent reference to Parramore Speaks, RICHES, and more in our final project for the class. It will be nice to be able to get a closer look at the interviews I had referenced during that class, in addition to working with Eric again.

As always, it's great to experience new things as an intern so that I can build my skills in hopes of fulfilling similar positions in the future. I'm glad to be able to work on transcriptions due to how different they are from metadata- it gives me a greater range of experiences to benefit from. I was also happy to write notes for midterm examinations this week, as I had nothing but great things to say about all those that I've worked with so far. I would share an image of the things that I've worked with this week for the blog post, but I don't want to include any documents that might have sensitive data listed.

See you all next week!

[jaydenpublichistoryinternshipucf]

Week 5 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my fifth blog entry. This week, I was able to continue generating metadata sheets for the materials from the Summer 2024 History Harvest folder that I had been assigned. After having created metadata sheets for the first half of the materials last week, I was able to utilize some of that information to complete the second half and finish creating metadata sheets for all of the scanned artifacts contributed by Sherilyn Scott.

The materials that I had been working with this week had presented challenges unique to those I had dealt with last week. Certain artifacts, such as photographs without any complementary text, have often proven difficult to generate historical background for or identify for the sake of creating a title or listing the contents of the image. As of now, my solution has been to do all that is possible, as I would rather describe something to the best of my ability than to overextend and write an inaccurate description. It can also be confusing to work with images which depict a building that is no longer standing, or has been replaced with another building today, since many of these since-removed buildings have never had any internet presence to work with.

An unnamed building, photograph scanned during Summer 2024 DeBary History Harvest

It is very interesting to compare the locations shown in the photographs (like the one seen above) to that which can currently be found in the same spot today in DeBary. I had not expected to learn so much about the development of not just DeBary, but the larger community nearby US Highway 17-92. Though I have never been in the area myself, I have now seen my fair share of what the region has to offer through both the historical images from the History Harvest and my many google maps searches conducted in hopes of finding the would-be locations of these historic sites in the present day.

Unfortunately, I had not been able to attend Thursday's event, as I hadn't returned from Tampa until later that same day. I'm glad that some of my fellow teammates were able to attend and contribute to the VFW Women's Veterans Day event. Hopefully there will be similar events in the future that I will be able to attend in person.

I'm excited to learn anew next week, as I begin to work with a new group of materials. Working with these metadata sheets has taught me much about navigating Microsoft Teams and Adobe Acrobat. As I'll be shifting to a new type of materials, I'll be able to learn new skills moving forward. I'm thankful for the diversity of assignments, as well as having others to work alongside throughout the process and turn to in case any questions or concerns arise. I've always been one to double- and triple-check assignments before declaring them finished, so it's nice to be able to get a second opinion on the metadata sheets before they're truly done and over with.

See you all next week!

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Week 4 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my fourth blog entry. This week, I was able to begin utilizing Microsoft Teams to work with the material retrieved at the Summer 2024 DeBary History Harvest, and create metadata sheets for said materials. At the end of last week, I was assigned the branch of artifacts contributed by Sherilyn Scott at the History Harvest. After familiarizing myself with other metadata sheets and the materials at hand to better understand my assignment, I got to work.

So far, I have made metadata sheets for roughly half of the Sherilyn Scott artifacts. I can’t help but be fascinated by the artifacts themselves as I have been going through them, as many of them are images of places that no longer exist or provide step-by-step locations to destinations featured in said images, which is something that simply isn’t done anymore nowadays. Something I found especially interesting was an advertisement for a food-place which no longer exists. On the advertisement, hamburgers are listed at prices as low as 21 cents. Nowadays, that would be unimaginable!

1964 Advertisement scanned during Summer 2024 DeBary History Harvest

While creating the metadata sheets, I ran into an issue that had forced me to redo portions of four sheets I had already created. It took me a while to realize that two files in particular were two sides of a booklet formed by folding a paper in half. Originally I had mistaken them for four individual card-sized pieces of paper.

This week, I had also finished conducting my 1-on-1 meetings with my teammates. It was a great experience being able to finally talk to my fellow interns after having missed so much time, and these opportunities to schedule and host zoom meetings have at least partially helped me develop professional meeting hosting skills. I’m glad that all of the other interns have been doing such a great job and have found much to enjoy throughout the internship so far.

Throughout this past week, I have been at home in Tampa. Thankfully, I have had access to my computer and thus have been able to continue working and making progress through my assigned branch of the DeBary artifacts, unlike I had been able to in Barcelona. I am hoping to have my assignment completed soon, hopefully by some time next week. The first few metadata sheets have proven to be a learning experience that will make filling out other metadata sheets much easier moving forward. Reviewing the sheets created by others as well as reflecting on the mistakes I have made thus far have made me much more confident in the metadata sheets I create. I was saddened to have not been able to make the first in-person meeting of the semester this Monday (6/2). Hopefully I will be able to attend future in-person meetings to both build professional skills in a physical space and meet the people I have been working with in person.

See you all next week!

[jaydenpublichistoryinternshipucf]

Week 3 Blog Post

Hello again! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. This is my third blog entry, being the first one I’ve made since returning to the United States since having been out of the country in Barcelona, Spain with Global Advocates. I’m looking forward to truly beginning my work with the UCF Public History Central Internship program now that I have access to a computer and by extension Microsoft Teams.

I thought it best to dedicate this week to catching up on the workshops, trainings, and other assigned materials so that I may get on the same page as the rest of the interns before starting any work. Thanks to the recordings that have been stored on Microsoft Teams,  I was able to watch back the initial orientation video as well as review the lead training zoom recording. Throughout the week, I had also watched through the metadata and transcription workshop.

I chose to base my metadata sheet exercise on the UCF Graduate Program Handbook given to me during my MA History orientation back in August of 2024.

My RICHES metadata practice sheet

At the same time, I thought it best to engage in some of my responsibilities as a lead now as opposed to putting them off for the future. I was able to host two 1-on-1 meetings and intend to host a third next week. It was my first time being tasked with assessing others or even hosting an online meeting, so becoming more comfortable doing so will certainly be a learning experience alongside everything else that the internship entails.

After having gone through all of the training and workshops provided, reviewing all materials and finally catching up on the exercises I had missed, I finally felt prepared to request an assignment to get started working with. On Friday I was assigned the Sherilyn Scott artifact folder, of which contains 13 artifacts. Though I have yet to browse through the folder myself, I will definitely take some time to familiarize myself with the contents of the folder and look forward to applying all that I’ve taken this week to catch up on learning to create the metadata sheets accompanying the artifacts found in the folder.

It was nice to finally be able to meet the other interns throughout the week, whether it have been through Tuesday’s meeting on 5/27 or via our 1-on-1 meetings. I had been able to introduce myself to everybody on Tuesday for the first time, and also did so during the 1-on-1 meetings. I unfortunately will not be able to attend Monday’s in-person workshop as I am going to be in Tampa from 5/31 to 6/7. However, I will have access to a computer as well as Microsoft Teams while I am there, meaning that, thankfully, it will not impede my ability to work with the artifacts I have been assigned. I’m looking forward to getting things started this week.

See you all next week!

[jaydenpublichistoryinternshipucf]

Week 1 Blog Post

Hello! My name is Jayden Flores, and I am currently an MA History student here at UCF. In 2024, I recieved my bachelor’s in History, having minored in Pre-Law and Legal Studies. My research interests relate to nineteenth-century European History leading into the First World War, specifically that of the 1871-1918 German Empire and their internal government.

I’ve certainly had a busy start to my Summer 2025 semester. Since the 10th of May I’ve been in Barcelona, Spain (where I’m writing this blog post from). I made the journey here alongisde a registered student organization by the name of Global Advocates, and since our arrival we have been working in donation warehouses and soup kitchens which serve migrants and homeless communities by providing them with clothes, food, and a place to spend their mornings. It is a very beautiful city. I apologize for not being able to attend orientation or give this internship my full focus quite yet- I’m looking forward to being able to give this program my undivided attention when I return to the United States on the 25th of May.

Arc de Triomf in Barcelona, Spain

While I hadn’t been able to experience orientation live, I have found the time to watch back the recording through Microsoft Teams. I don’t have too much experience with the application admittedly, but I’m confident that this internship will change that.

Amongst other tips and skills that will help us be better leaders throughout this semmeser, Elio and I learned about the three different styles of leadership during our leadership training meeting on Tuesday night. Of these three modes of leadership- Coaching Leadership, Situational Leadership, and Servant Leadership- I would say that Servant Leadership best suits me, as I firmly believe in leading by example and find that Servant Leadership best fits this principle. This week had also been the first time that I'd heard of the VARK learning styles before, and I wasn't too surprised to learn that I'm (at least mostly) a kinesthetic learner. I definitely learn best by doing, especially through repetition.

I’m very thankful to have been accepted as a Summer 2025 intern and am especially grateful to have been selected as a Lead Information Specialist. This is my first time having served such a role throughout both my academic and professional career. Nonetheless, despite of my newness to the role- and my unorthodox start to the semester- I will do my best to both fulfill what is expected of me in this position and utilize this wonderful opportunity to grow my managerial skillset.

See you all next week!