By: Ellen Glover, Bicentennial Intern, Class of 2018, Journalism, Bloomington
I’ve never really been interested in history. I always enjoyed hearing about cool things that have happened in history; but as a journalism student, I never really thought about researching and covering history all that deeply. This changed, however, when I was hired as an Indiana University Bicentennial Intern for the summer of 2016.
Over the summer, I was tasked with researching for and writing a script for a tour of the oldest part of campus—the Old Crescent. It aimed to look at the interesting history and beauty of the area in a way that had never been done by the university.
I never thought that experience would influence my perception of IU as much as it did. I was doing all of this the summer before my junior year here at IU, marking the midway point to my college experience. I was beginning to feel nostalgic, nervous even as I began the second half of my journey. Through my research I’ve learned to appreciate this campus and the opportunities it gives us in a whole new way and I am so lucky I was able to learn all of it while there is still enough time to enjoy and embrace it.
Learning so much about IU also influenced me to extend my internship into the fall 2016 semester. However, this time I am working podcasts that will go in-depth on interesting aspects of IU’s history and beauty.
One of the perks of the internship is I get to see how much the campus has changed over the years.
This process has been much more of a learning experience for me. Going into this project I had to learn how to write, produce and edit a podcast all on my own.
Incidentally, the creation of a regular podcast has been a difficult and slow process.
But the project is slowly picking up steam as I learn and the podcasts will soon make an appearance on the bicentennial website https://200.iu.edu/
Despite the hardships, this project has proven to be a lot of fun to work on. I’ve enjoyed conducting more in-depth research on unique pieces of IU’s history that interest me.
I’ve also really enjoyed working with my supervisor James Capshew and my mentor Amy Gastelum who has given me advice on how to create the podcasts and make them as interesting as possible.
Working with two dedicated professionals on a project such as this has made all of the frustrations worth it.
Now, I view this entire Bicentennial project as my oyster. I am looking forward to conducting more research and getting quality historical podcasts up on the website so that everyone can enjoy and learn something from them.
I have learned so much from working with the Bicentennial but I think my biggest lesson has been to go out on a limb and get out of your comfort zone. I definitely didn’t think I would be spending my time in history and it has been an amazing experience. I didn’t think I would be producing my own podcasts but it has been one of the biggest learning experiences so far for me in college.