The National Museum of American History - Carmen's First Week

 Hey Guys! :) 

Hope everyone is doing great.😊

I started my internship at the National American History Museum on July 5th, 2022. Although from what I’ve seen and heard from most of y’all, it seems that I may have a slightly different experience. My internship is hybrid; I’m not on-site most days. On my first day, I had a meeting with my supervisor (?) Magdalena, which we all met during Washington week, through Zoom. To refresh your memory though, she’s the Director of the Program in Latino History and Culture and Civic Engagement Projects at the National Museum of American History. We went over getting to know each other better, things we’d be working on, and just a rundown of the overall experience we’re going to build together. She assigned me to familiarize myself with The Smithsonian’s online platform, Learning Labs. Learning Labs is actually an interesting educational tool, that could be used for self-study as well. It allows you to compile folders/portfolios of different information and photos in the Smithsonian’s collection and even add information from other sources. Later that day I met with Magdalena’s other intern, named Gonzalo Appiani, a Peruvian graduate from NYU, and Lauren Safranek, an exhibit developer at NMAH. We discussed a future exhibit hoping to be displayed in Fall 2023, which hopes to land on Hispanic Heritage Month, showcasing Latina Journalists and the impact of Spanish-language television with a focus on news broadcasting. Throughout this meeting, we talked about floor testing, where we go on the floor ( public spaces in the museum) and see how the visitors react to titles with follow-up questions. This meeting allowed us to be deliberate with the questions we wanted to ask and the approach we would take to gather this information. By collaborating we came up with a short set of questions to use. Then we planned for floor-testing to occur the following Monday and Wednesday. That was a wrap on my first day :).

 Here's me at my desk for my first day :)

During my first week, I went on-site only Thursday (07/07/2022). It’s an hour-plus commute via bus and metro to my internship location. You already know it was an early day for me! Luckily this day my mom took me to the Metro station, but first, we got to McDonald’s ( thankfully, it was early and I needed food with coffee to function) at around 8 am I got to the station to start my morning rush hour commute. Although I had been on the trains many times at this point. NEVER had I been that early or during peak hours. Reason one: IT COSTS MORE TO RIDE.  Reason 2: I like not having to run towards a seat like we’re all playing a game of musical chairs with two seats left. Anyways, I sat down with my coffee.

I had arrived about a half-hour early (9 am while meet-up was 9:30 am EST) I spent this time outside, sweating a little, to be honest, reading over material I had been sent about NMAH’s audience and a document explaining the framework of NMAH’s projects ( their interpretive plan). Both honestly gave me a lot of insight into what staff at the museum consider on a day-to-day basis. In incredible detail, it refreshed my mind about academic standards in writing, well-delivered infographic, and plan. Anywho, time passes and I join Magdalena to meet for the day, we head to her office on the fourth floor. We spent probably about two hours in three different meetings, the first discussing an event to be held at the museum to showcase Latinx breweries and the logistics involving the event. This allowed me to see firsthand how people from multiple departments work together on a joint project. They had to rethink approaches to ensure maximum efficiency while also considering funding and ideals. After this meeting, we joined another that discussed the multilingual maps offered at NMAH, something I didn’t expect to hear about to be real with you. I have to say, every tiny piece in the museum truly has a team of people behind it who continuously devote time to reevaluate, redesign, and improve it. Things that visitors wouldn’t think once about are deliberated and debated. Definitely helped pique my interest in museum work. Afterward, Magdalena helped me debrief everything I had just heard and honestly took the time with me to make sure I understood what was occurring and the importance of it. Immensely helpful. Afterward, we took a walk of the museum to scout areas that would help us do the title-testing for the project I mentioned earlier. While we did this, we also went and collected two museum maps so we could discuss what I had heard about in the meeting we attended shortly before. Once we settled on a few spots, we departed ways. It was only like… 12 pm. I did not want to head home, I ate my lunch outside and spent a few hours at the MLK Jr. Library, headed home around 4 pm. My brain had too much information. My outfit though... Amazing.

On my way to the Library, Thank you for reading :) I look forward to reading everyone’s posts! Carmen, out 😁