Week Two

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Weekly accomplishment

During the Course of week two the project has become much more real as we have gotten our hands on the letters as well as beginning to use many of the tools that will mark the rest of our time here. My biggest accomplishment has been coming up with a actual thesis. Having gotten my hands on the letters I began to realize some of my previous ideas did not have the proper letter evidence I would need. Thankfully my new topic fits the letters perfectly. I am going to write about how the different counties of Mississippi handled the funding and day to day operations of schools in the period of reconstruction. Various principals and local leaders wrote to the governors to express both joys and pains of their local school systems from lack of funding and issues with Black and White schools to sharing the successful growth of their districts and the excess cash on hand. My second accomplishment is beginning to learn qgis. While I have used Mapping products before like Story Maps, I had not used a proper mapping tool yet. I've begun to plot points as well as create filters to show data in various ways. For the projects mapping component I hope to have enough actual school locations that I can showcase were schools were and have a heat map to show where the most students were and where money was. The third, and to me most important, accomplishment has been learning how to navigate the letter archives. They hold over fifteen thousand letters in totals so know how to search for the proper tags has been a big help in making my work easier. Also because these letters are the focus of the REU, getting familiar with them quickly is a big win.

Roadblocks

This week has seen a few roadblocks most of which I have been able to solve. The first and biggest roadblock, that once solved led to one of this weeks success', was learning how to search and navigate the tags of the letter archive. Searching terms like "school" or "school funding" would yield thousands of results, thankfully I was taught how to use quotes as well as looking for related letters to yield much more applicable results. My second roadblock was actually settling on a topic. Fifteen thousand letters is a lot to work with making hard to find just one topic that worked best and fit my interests. Also because the letters and the time period must be the main focus, my usual style of looking at the cause and effect of reconstruction to the civil rights era and modern times was not possible. I also wanted to make sure that the work I would be doing was new and unique to me; that if I was going to work on something for eight weeks it should be something completely new as that would benefit me the most in furthering my education. I am very happy with my topic I have landed on as it fits my interests in education and literacy while being new enough that I will benefit greatly by filling a gap in my knowledge. My third roadblock, that I know will be solved over time, is my lack of familiarity with qgis. I am used to primarily just writing and researching so I know the Microsoft suite and search engines very well, what I am not familiar with is mapping software's. I have begun to learn things with Fridays lesson, and I know I will become more proficient with time, but being a tool I am not familiar with means it will take more work on my end.

Things I have learned

I have learned a ton of new skills and pieces of info this week. The first thing I learned is how to better read cursive through exposure therapy. I do not often read cursive in my day to day so reading one hundred plus letters from the late 1800's has given me great practice. Now luckily the letters have transcriptions, but many times I will want to see how a person wrote something or read a bill they sent. The second thing I learned was how to use qgis. While I have mentioned this several times before, qgis and mapping programs in general are not my forte. As a Historian however, it is important for me to learn these things as they will be greatly beneficial in my career. Even though I would still count myself as a early beginner I am happy with the progress I have made so far. The third thing I have learned that I wanted to note was that the letters have given me a better understanding of how some counties who were not directly fought in, essentially just moved from one government to the other. Of course they still dealt with the casualties of the war, but schools and town halls were still standing. I always saw the south as being deeply scared by the war and reconstruction was both a political and literal term for them, buildings and town literally needed reconstructing. Though that was not true everywhere in the states the war was fought in.

What's next

Next week I look forward to having a finished intro. I am excited as this will mark the start of the paper itself, and for me once I begin to write it helps me hone my research quite a bit. It will also allow me to start putting some of this great things I'm learning to paper.