This is a picture of my National History Day project that I have been working on with Julia Abbazia.
Julia Abbazia and I have been working for a long time, about 2 months, on our NHD project. We were and are extremely excited about showcasing our work to a large panel of judges, and then be scored. Competing against schools in the region is exciting, and it was something view new for me. Going through topic selection was a long process. We had to keep in mind that the event needed to connect to America in one way to another, and we also had to connect it to the three National History Day themes which were explored, encounter, and exchange. Julia and I were both very interested in the Holocaust. We had to narrow it down to only one aspect since it is such a dense topic. we had to involve American history so we decided that we were going to research about Jewish refugees coming to America and the immigration quotas set forth by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We focused our poster primarily on the historic event that was the SS Saint Louis. Julia and I discussed his policies and his decision making during the time period. Our thesis sums up if we thought FDR was beneficial to the Jewish refugees or he did not help them out as much as he should have.
Our work in Humanities taught us about the time period, which really helped us since this is a historic project. A lot of what we talked about in class and a few articles we read related back to our Holocaust project. I think that before we did this project I did not really have a sense of time and what events occurred during certain time periods. When people said 1940 I would be like oh yeah a long time ago, but now I can actually describe what was happening in America at that time and what was about to happen to America, which is refreshing. I feel by studying this topic and events in time so in depth I am really learning about this history of the United States, nothing goes in one ear and out the other anymore.
I challenged myself to do deeper level thinking than I would normally do. I do think hard and put great effort and knowledge forward when doing a project, but I think I worked on this project harder than any other poster/ exhibit I have ever made. I was engaged in this project because it was interesting to me. I wanted to learn about it, I was not forced. I challenged myself to write less and less to qualify for the competition. In addition to being able to only write a certain amount of words, it helped my vocabulary because I had to use bigger words to get my point across using as few words as possible. I also think that designing the poster was hard. Arranging the pictures and text to look visually appealing I had to spend hours moving everything around until it was perfect.
To improve my exhibit, I think that the first thing I am going to do is switch a few things around. Hearing all the feedback from my peers and teachers I am proud of what Julia and I were able to do, but I feel that we could make revisions and make the overall project look better. One piece of advice I got from Ms. Hawes was to move the interview with Herbert to the left side and Agnes to the right side because Herbert is more important since he was on the SS Saint Louis. She told us to move Herbert to the left because people read from left to right, and Herbert should be read first. We are also going to add borders to all the pictures and text boxes so that the whole project looks better and more professional. As far as the writing goes there are most likely typos so Julia and I will double and triple check the writing.
The biggest and most important thing that I learned from doing this project and something that I will take away from doing it is the fact that I can get work done when I need to have it done. When I sit down and focus on a task I get stuff done, accurately as semi-quickly. I am also a good time manager. I can get work done each night without overloading myself on the last day before it is due. Time management is something that will benefit me my whole life and sitting down and doing a task will also help me for when I become an adult and have a job.
Even though I did a great job time managing and getting my work done there is always room for improvement. I think that on my next project I should get more done more ahead of time.
sofiadodaro 