29 Jun Park History Program & First Weeks in D.C.

I am so happy and privileged to be working in the Park History Program with the National Park Service. I absolutely love my internship and I cannot wait for next week, when I get to help lead a workshop in teaching high school students,  in the Richmond, VA area, how to conduct Oral Histories and collect stories that matter. I also feel blessed to be working in our nation’s capital, seeing, visiting and even touching our remnants of our national history.

My first week of my internship was spent getting acclimated into a new setting and into my role as intern for the Park History Program. Within my first week, I learned how to pull and research archival records at the National Archives and Records Administration I an II. I also visited the Library of Congress and received my research card for both institutions.

Other places that I have visited in the last two weeks include the Department of Interior, where last Friday the D.C.- area interns met and interviewed the Director of the National Park Service, Jonathan B. Jarvis. Following our interview with the Director of NPS, we took a tour around the National Mall where we visited the Lincoln Memorial, the National World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument.

Just recently some of the interns went on a architectural tour of some of D.C.’s lesser known historical places. One of our stops included Wok n Roll, a restaurant in Chinatown, which was the former site Surratt Boarding House, where conspirators planned to assassinate President Lincoln following the end of the Civil War.

Can’t wait for my next D.C. adventure!