The term is over!

I'm back home from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where I'm running hard after a Master of Liberal Arts in Florida Studies.  This term was hard, but I also goofed off a bit.  In grad school, there are no Latin Honors (cum laude and all that), no honors in the major, so I have decided to study, yes, but also not to get all knotted up about it, and if I make a B, that's fine.  That's all I need.  But so far, I seem to be heading toward A's.  That's fine, too.  I certainly do not mind.

The toughest class was Theory of History.  Theoretical stuff makes my head hurt, anyway, but historical theory can get really out there.  The professor is a young neo-hippie (doesn't even own a car) who is uber-smart.  He's very fond of the French Revolution, so we read a lot of translations of French historians.  I've already talked about being a bit of an Annaliste in my own methods. I like background in my histories.  We explored other theories and methods, some of them I liked, some I didn't.  Post-structuralism (post-modernism) can only, in my opinion, lead to paralysis.  If you believe there's no such thing as "truth," what do you do as a historian?  Why bother?  I think there is such a thing as "truth," though it may not always -- or ever -- be absolute.  I think we can say things about the past that are true, and from which we can learn.

The seminar in Modern Florida was not that tough, but there was a lot of reading, some of it absolutely excellent.  One of those was Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, an account of a very dark incident in the history of the United States and of Florida.  Dr. Arsenault, who conducted the seminar, assigned the book, and almost all of us agreed that it was the best of the books we were assigned.  The author, Gilbert King, won a Pulitzer Prize just last month for the book, and it is well-deserved.  I did my paper for this course on "Prohibition and the Coast Guard in St. Petersburg, 1927-1933."  I'm waiting for feedback from Dr. Arsenault on that.  It was fun to do, and interesting to me because Prohibition is one of my favorite periods of U.S. history, and I served in the Coast Guard.  My husband also served (he's the reason I joined), and was stationed in St. Petersburg in the early 1970s.  Our younger daughter was born there.

And Dr. Arsenault gives great parties!

The last class I took was in Feature Writing (as in newspapers and magazines), which I took to satisfy the writing requirement for the Florida Studies degree.  I chose that course, as I figured there would be far less reading in that than in a literature course, which was another way to satisfy the requirement.  I didn't need 10 books to read on top of what I had to read for Theory and Modern Florida, and I hate having books assigned and then having to dissect them looking for what I think is often not there.  But I won't get into that.

The Feature Writing course was interesting, though the professor in the beginning was too enamored of the technology of the online component.  The University of South Florida is switching from Blackboard (used for mounting assignments, receiving submissions of homework and papers, e-mail service to the class, and other functions) to Canvas.  We used Blackboard at the University of North Florida, where I did my post-bacc work, and I thought it was a dog.  I think Canvas is a pig.  Paper works.

The other reason I took Feature Writing was that we actually WROTE!  We had to do two major feature articles (2500 words or more).  Mine won't be published -- that's not where my interest lies.  But it was fascinating to do the articles.  The first one was on suicide, a rather grim topic.  I learned a heck of a lot, and once I get back home, plan to do some awareness work.  It's just so important.  The second article was on the great white shark.  That was most fascinating.  I chose to focus on the shark that was tagged in March off the coast of Jacksonville, FL, and the efforts of OCEARCH to tag and track great white sharks around the world.

And that was my term.

Journal advice

I had lunch with my friend Barbara today.  We met in 1986 at a Star Trek movie.  We were big Trek fans then, and accumulated a circle of friends who were, too.  We had some great times.  We have moved on, yet we fondly remember those days.  Our friends have moved on with us, and we still keep in touch with the hard core.

Barbara is optimistic and a fountain of positive wisdom.  She has encouraged me to keep a daily journal, even if only to write one sentence.  So I'm going to do that.  The journal will be hard copy, and sometimes I will record in there things that I wish to keep private.  But I will also, from time to time, reprint here the entries that pertain to the subject of this blog: the journey of a historian-in-training.

The first entry will probably be tonight.  Tomorrow is the day my husband and I lug a bunch of my stuff -- mostly books! -- to my new digs, in the home of a family friend, four hours south of where we make our home.  I'm looking forward to the living arrangement, which is eminently suitable for both of us.  Our friend has just painted the interior of her house, and is also going to install a new ceiling fan for me in my room.  I saw the color she had in mind for my room, and I like it a lot.

I'm looking forward to the program in which I will be working on my master's degree.  The Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is an interdisciplinary program, and in addition to history courses concentrating mainly on colonial Spanish Florida, I will take courses in other subjects which are related and which I think will enhance my research. 

For instance, this term, in addition to a seminar in Early Florida and a seminar in Florida Politics Since World War II (which is required of all Florida Studies majors), I will be taking Geologic History of Florida.  I think an understanding of the geology is important to my understanding of the soils of St. Augustine, which in turn is necessary to an understanding of what food crops would grow there!

Related to that will be a course or courses in the environment and environmental history of Florida.  I have already had one course in Florida's environmental history at the University of North Florida.  That course concentrated on the area of the St. Johns River, which includes St. Augustine.  I had not anticipated the course would be so deeply relevant to my inquiries, but it surprised me.

I also anticipate taking a basic economics course, because part of my study of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period is to study the economy, possibly to find new material to bring out about that economy, from information I will be digging out of the East Florida Papers and other original documents.

 My car is packed, and tomorrow we put the rest of my stuff -- including a bookcase, a file cabinet, and my office chair -- in my husband's F-150.  This is going to be an adventure.
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All Graduated

Yesterday was graduation day at the University of North Florida.  It was a lot of "hurry up and wait," so it reminded me of having been in the Coast Guard!

But the "hurry up and wait" was made bearable by friends giving good wishes and making happy talk, and by making acquaintances in the hallway where we were waiting, and just having a good time.  (Read "Six Degrees of Karen Rhodes," today's entry in my blog Karen About Genealogy to see how connections worked yesterday). 

Finally, the time came to line up and filter into the arena floor, where quite comfortable (thank goodness!) folding chairs awaited us.  I was in the last row, but that made me visible to my family, and they got lots of pictures.  The young man sitting to my right, Ray, had acquired his 5-year-old son from grandma and grandpa, sitting nearby in the audience, and held him on his lap for most of the ceremony.  The lad was quite well-behaved, and Ray took him on stage with him.

After being photographed by three photographers as I came off the stage, I was waylaid by a friend who gave me a big hug.  We exchanged congratulations.  Moving down the aisle back to the seats, I was ambushed by three professors and given big hugs.  One professor admonished me that I need more degrees (this is my fourth college degree, and my second Bachelor of Arts).  I said I was working on it!

Another professor accosted me before I got back to the row.  Then it was time for the recessional, and it was all done.

So my time at UNF passes into memory. It was fun!  It was challenging.  It was an experience I would not trade for all of anyone's money.  I may have received my Phi Beta Kappa key at Florida State University in 1969, but I feel like I earned it at UNF in the last four years.

Stay tuned for the further adventures of a historian-in-training. Next step:  Get my application in to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
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DEE-fense!

Happy to report that I lived through the defense.  My husband accompanied me, for moral support.  Also, it's part of the entertainment, and one thing I do is keep him entertained. 

Before the session started, we talked to Dr. David Sheffler, the medievalist in the history department.  He was the other member of my thesis committee.  Undergraduate honors theses need only 2 committee members.  I asked Dr. Sheffler if he was prepared with his rubber hose, and he did let me know that the department had outlawed waterboarding last month.

Kidding aside, we began the session.  Dr. J. Michael Francis, one of the latinamericanists  in the department, and the department chair, came in and we started after I introduced my husband.

They began by asking me how I had come up with the idea of my thesis -- that is, that godparenthood in St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period served as a vehicle for the transmission of values, influence and status -- how I developed it, and what methodologies and sources I had used.  That was not difficult.

Then they -- particularly Dr. Francis, as he is more familiar with the location, though his period is the 16th century rather than the late eighteenth and early nineteenth that I'm working in -- asked more penetrating questions, which I was also able to respond to.  The idea is not, as some may think (and some may experience) to tear the thesis and the argument to shreds, but to bring up the questions that the material may demand.  They both said there was a lot of meat in my paper, which generated lots of questions.  And the questions were not necessarily designed to challenge either my thesis or my argument, though some were.  There were plenty of questions which dealt with collateral study opportunities which may arise naturally out of the material I am uncovering.

I am breaking new ground, and this is an important part of a thesis.  If I can complete some of my project -- enough to really show something about godparenthood, or enough to enable a really practical, useful population picture of St. Augustine to be derived -- in three years, in time for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine's founding, Dr. Francis said I'll be "the golden girl."  It could put me very much in demand for making presentations.  That would be great.  So I have to groom some aspect of this same project for my master's thesis, so I can advance the work just that much more.

I also need to spend the summer not only reading, but also transcribing and translating original documents, either from the East Florida Papers, which are available locally on microfilm, or from actual documents held by the Florida State Archives.  I plan an archives visit this summer.  Next summer, with some of Dr. Francis's travel money for students in the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg (pending my acceptance there), I hope to go to Washington, D.C., to work with the originals of the East Florida Papers, for those portions which do not show up well on microfilm.

It is going to be a busy two years!
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And my life takes yet another twist

I like watching "Law & Order," for one thing because of the twists the plot always takes.  I think I like that aspect of it so much because it reminds me of my own life.

I despise job interviews, so I'm happy to be a historian and free-lance writer.  I'm my own boss and do not need to put up with interviews.  What I hate most about them is the awful question, "Where do you see yourself in five/ten years?"

Listen, my life has taken so many twists, I have learned that there is no way I can answer that question!  If someone had told me in 1971 that I would be in the military, I would have laughed.  I wanted to, even as a child, but it was the 1950s and "nice girls" did not do such things.  Well, I was sworn in as an enlisted member of the United States Coast Guard Reserve in February of 1976.

If someone had told me in 1974 that I would be a registered nurse working in Jacksonville's large hospitals, I would have said, "And what have you been smoking?"  I was capped and pinned in 1979, and began working in a hospital.  It did not last long. We had three deaths in the family in the space of two years, and the emotional toll was too much.

If someone had told me in the mid 1980s that I would have a book published, I would have told them they were nuts.  I started work on my first book, Booking Hawaii Five-0: An Episode Guide and Critical History of the 1968-1980 Television Detective Series in the early 90s, and it was published in 1997.  By the way, after fifteen years, it is still in print.  I have since produced a second, more seriously scholarly book, Non-Federal Censuses of Florida, 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources, which was published in 2010.

If someone had told me in 2002 that I would be going back to college, I would have had them committed to the loony bin as a danger to themselves and others.  I entered the University of North Florida with a double major in history and Spanish in 2007.

And when I entered UNF, if anyone had told me that in five years I would be pursuing a master's degree in history, I would have taken them to the nearest shrink.  I begin my master's studies in the fall.

The question is:  Where will I begin such studies?  And that is the latest twist my life has taken.

I have been accepted into the master's program at the University of North Florida.  However, my mentoring professor, one of the reasons I applied to the graduate school at UNF in the first place, is leaving.  He is going to the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg, where they have a program in "Florida studies," of which he will be a part.  He has been given an endowed chair there, with funding the like of which he did not get at UNF.  I do not think UNF realizes what they are losing.

So I am contemplating following him down to USFSP.  It will mean family separation, as we cannot move our household down there for a variety of reasons.  But it is only four hours away, so frequent visits home are certainly possible.

There are logistics to be worked out.  What my professor told me is that right now, what I need to do is look at the program of study, then if I like what I see, I need to get my application in.  Then we will see what we need to do to get funding for me.  We can pay for part of it, but with living expenses separate from home being thrown in, the tab has gone up considerably.

I do like the program, which I looked at last night.  It is an interdisciplinary program, and I get to, with the advice and consent of my advisor, design my own program.  I like that a lot.

I have to have a decision in three weeks.  Stay tuned.
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Clio's Daughter

Clio, of course, is the Muse of History.  I am a history student.  I have been accepted into the Master of Arts program of the Department of History at the University of North Florida, where in one week I will graduate with my second Bachelor of Arts degree, this one in history and Spanish.

My main area of study is St. Augustine, Florida, and its province of East Florida, during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821).  I am currently engaged in a long-term research project I began as an undergraduate at UNF, with a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research.  This project is recreating the family structure of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, to analyze the relationships in the community at that time.

I wrote an undergraduate honors thesis on godparenthood in St. Augustine during this period, as a means of transmitting values within a family, and of transmitting influence and status from the elite downward.  It's an interesting study, and vastly incomplete because the sources for this particular period are wonderfully numerous.  There is a lot of research yet to be done.

So, as a historian-in-training, I am definitely Clio's daughter.