I Know What I Did Last Summer Pt. 2: Internship

Well, good morning again! I (Brenna) have returned to share more information about my historific summer. Rather than writing this as I eat breakfast (which I did yesterday), I write this from work. Let me just ask, what college student in their right mind treks completely across campus between 10 and 12 on a Sunday morning to use a computer lab? The correct answer is, the student who is getting paid to do so. No one ever comes in. Why? They are all sleeping. Lucky them. But I digress. On to the point of this post:

Besides doing tons of fun research at the Newberry Library, I had an internship in the Research and Access department of the Chicago History Museum. It was yet another wonderful summer experience. Anyone who is interested in a fun summer internship, you should look into it. You don't have to be from around Chicago; one of my fellow interns was from Florida!
(photo courtesy of http://chicagohistory.org/aboutus/building/?searchterm=began)

Anyway, my job dealt with updating the online card catalogue information for pictures from an old Chicago newspaper, the Chicago Daily News. Besides the fact that I gained a lot of useful experience with using an online card catalogue, I also got to see a lot of amazing pictures from my city's history. There were pictures of such historical figures as William Jennings Bryan and Charlie Chaplin. You can actually see the pictures I was working with at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html
The photos were digitized and put online in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Check out the site; the pictures are fun to look at.


To make up for not being able to pay us, the Museum hosted lunches with various museum personnel and behind the scenes tours of some sections of the museum. We got to meet with everyone from the president of the museum to the curator of the costume collection. I have to admit, the tour through the costume collection was definitely one of the coolest parts of the summer. There was some beautiful stuff down in that basement. And, I'm pleased to say, as a result of the increased publicity the Museum has been getting since its renovation, a museum in New York is doing an exhibit of couture fashion from Chicago, using items from the Museum's collection! Here is a link to a brief article about the exhibit: http://www.huliq.com/37917/chicago-history-museum-debuts-at-fit

Besides the fun of learning the ins and outs of online card catalogues and getting to hold 100 year old books, why was my summer fun? Because I got to work in the city. I love my Chicago a great deal and no other city could ever replace it in my heart, but never before had I gotten to experience the city as such a major part of my life. I now understand the frustration of CTA commuting, the absolute fun of walking to the train station while being monsooned on (not really fun, by the way), and why my mother does not feel like making dinner when she gets home at night (a lesson which she seemed amused that I learned).

I also think that I ate more apples over the summer than I have in my entire time actually on my college campus. My mom, being the brilliant and health conscious woman that she is, always eats an apple and some rice cakes on her train ride home to tide her over until dinner. While I would need to be practically starving before I would eat rice cakes, she always brought an apple for me as well. Obviously, this is just a natural extension of various conversations from my childhood that went something like this:

Me: Mom, when's dinner going to be ready?

Mom: About an hour. If you're hungry, why don't you have an apple?

Me: I'll wait for dinner.

What does this revelation have to do with being a History major or the educational content of my summer? Absolutely nothing. However, it just goes to show you that your mother is going to be asking you whether or not you've brushed your teeth until long after you are asking your own children. It will take some time to come to terms with this fact.

I think that is about it for my summer revelations for today. Keep an eye out for part 3, what happened with all of this once I finally got back to school...

Brenna