NYSHA Staff Member Today

Today, was an exciting day because my assistantship went from being paid by SUNY Oneonta to being paid by the New York State Historical Association.  The reason this is exciting is because I go from having 2-3 assistantship hours a week to having 7-10 hours a week, which is a lot more money, and being a grad student every little bit helps.

Now, I can't remember if I talked about what I was doing as my assistantship, but basically my assistantship is Special Projects, which basically means that i do what needs to get done.  Right now that involves me writing and sending out letters to all the professionals who wrote letters of recommendation for students, inviting them to share our program with other students they think might be interested.   Basically, I just writing letters and sending information packets out.  Besides that I am going to be working on developing the CGP wikipedia page, so we get more information about the program out there, and I am also going to be working with a few other girls in developing the opening event for the new CGP building next Spring.  

All and all it seems like a lot of fun, and some interesting work, especially with the opening event stuff that needs to get done.

The End of Beginning

Today, is pretty much what is called the end of the introduction period for first year students.  Today we presented our orientation project at the New York State Historical Society Staff meeting and then ended the day with a President's Reception at the Fenimore Art Museum.  

During our week of orientation we were assigned a project.  The project was to create a promotional video for the Cooperstown Graduate Program based off a bunch of clues.  We received about thirty words and we had to figure out what they referred to and find a way to incorporate them into a video.  Our class decided to base our video off MacGyver  and created Museum MacGyver, the tales of a student as he solves problems and learns about the core values of CGP.  The video wound up coming out great.  Once we figured out what the clues were we went ahead and organized ourselves.  My mine role was to help write the script, which I personally think was quick hysterical.  After the script was done we filmed the video, which allowed me to make appearances in a couple of scenes.  Finally our fantastic editing crew went to work and did something magical, to make the video absolutely fantastic.  When we presented it to the NYSHA staff of maybe 60 or so, they seemed to enjoy it and laughed a lot.

Classes preceded as normal afterwards, and I handed in my first official paper as a Graduate Student.  A short four page paper about Alan Taylors book: William Cooper's Town. I also had the opportunity to dig through some of the Fenimore Art Museum's print collections so I could journal about what I found for my Culture and Collections class.  I worked off of a aquatint from what I think was at least the 1860s or 1870s, showing a picture of the Newark during the War of 1812.

The night ended with a President's Welcome Reception in honor of the first-year students at the Fenimore Art Museum.  The staff of NYSHA, the Fenimore Art Museum, The Farmer's Museum, locals from the community and the President of SUNY Oneonta were all present along with the staff and students of CGP.  It was a great chance to network and talk to different people.  Its also awesome to talk to the president of the university for the second time in a month, something that I never experienced at UConn, you can really tell she personally care about our program and the students. It made for a great night of professional socializing.