So far, throughout my time at Longwood, I have been able to participate in two different research symposiums that Longwood hosts every semester. They have helped me become a better public speaker and see just how many ideas people come up with through their work at Longwood. The first symposium I did was for the Honors class where I went to Pittsburgh and it took place during the Fall 2019 semester. The project I presented there was done with a partner, Hannah Moonis. We showed the different ways that sports bridged the generation gap in Farmville and in Pittsburgh. We did so by taking the information we looked up about sports in the Farmville area and comparing it to what we saw when walking throughout Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh had many more ways for sports to connect multiple generations but Farmville had ways to connect generations that were more intimate. Parents could still watch their children play sports and be a team player, but it was not as big of a deal as in Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, people live and breather their sports teams like the Steelers. This was also the symposium where I got to speak about it with whoever wanted to know more about the project because we were in-person. There were a few people that came over and heard Hannah and I discussing the project. I even got to present the project on my own when Hannah had to be gone for a few minutes because she was also presenting another project. Also, this symposium allowed me to see all the work that was done in other classes and the different work that was done by my classmates in the Pittsburgh class too. This symposium was my first one and helped me realize that I can speak well about topics I have researched and know a lot about, so I gained confidence doing this symposium. I also learned what good professional dress was at this symposium and have taken that with me since. This symposium helped prepare me for what I could be doing in the future.
Attached below is a picture of the poster from my first symposium:
The next symposium I went to for Longwood was a year later, in Fall 2020, and it had to be completely online because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The work I submitted for that symposium was a group video project called Queering Longwood Housing: Being Transgender in Dorms. My group mates were M Heimburg and Hannah Elmore and we did this for our Citizen 410 Honors course on the Queer History of Virginia. This video can be found under the videos tab on our class website at https://queerheartofva.wixsite.com/queerheartofva/post/queering-longwood-housing-being-transgender-in-dorms. Through this project, I learned how to make a good video from footage from three different people. We did our best to use what we felt was most important and developed a good script that allowed us to voice over the footage when necessary. When we submitted it to the symposium, I realized we would have to wait for people to watch it in when it became available to everyone, so there was some waiting involved. It was not too bad though because people actually viewed our video and I was worried that people would not look at the video because there were so many other projects that could be viewed as well. When people commented on the video, I did my best to reply to them even if it was just to thank them for their feedback. This was a different sort of symposium than the first one because of the pandemic and I am glad that I got to be a part of it and see how something like it would run online. This knowledge may help me in the future if we have to be online for conferences and research symposiums for a couple more years while waiting for this pandemic to die down. Hopefully it is gone sooner than later though. These are the professional development opportunities I have had so far in my years at Longwood.
Leadership positions:
Longwood Gaming Club treasurer since April 2020
Phi Sigma Pi parliamentarian since Spring 2021
Honors Student Association Co-Outreach chair Fall 2020 semester
I am hoping to get an internship at some point during the remainder of my time at Longwood, but have not had much luck this summer (2021).