Reflection On National History Day .

This year would be our second year doing National History Day projects. From last years experience I have many different views on how this year’s performance will go.

Last year the time used for National History Day was used up by other projects for other classes. This resulted in being late to class, skipping class and failing grades. We were all wiped up in National History Day that we weren’t worried about any other task to finish. We didn’t go to class and we didn’t make-up the work we missed because we still had more research to do. We didn’t have any free time designated to NHD, we were told to do it all in our history classes. It just didn’t work out.

For my project I did an essay on the shooting of Daniel Faulkner. I took numerous trips to police headquarters, libraries and newspaper stands. I also had to visit the National Archives numerous times – which took even more time out of my schoolwork. I did interviews, research and spent full days in the computer lab trying to finish in time for the deadline. Every time I thought I was done the teacher found something else wrong. It didn’t seem that anything could work.

I thought that the National History Day projects were hyped to be something that they weren’t. We were lead to believe that NHD was a golden contest that we should win. We never had any knowledge that the prize wasn’t even that good! I guess we shouldn’t be worried about a prize, when we gained so much knowledge but who wanted to do all that work for nothing?

In closing, I think that this year I won’t take it was serious because all I got out of it was knowledge on someone that I can’t even use this year. I will not be lead on this year, I’ll already know what the ‘scam’ is. I just feel bad for the 9th graders who might take it further than it should be brought. As a mentor, I would give advice to all not too take it as serious as the teachers make it out to be. I mean still do alot of work on it but don’t lose focus in other classes – they’re the ones that matter the most. Lastly, I am not the least bit excited to start NHD all over.