Week 5 Internship Blog

 

Hello, Patrick Callaghan updating everyone on another week. This will be week number five of the internship. Not unlike the other weeks I have experienced some ups and downs with both project things and outside forces that seem personal sometimes. This week we were given a few extra items on our to do list. For me, I was given the job to learn how to make a map that depicts the Battle of Olustee visually showing where both sides started, where the battle occurred and what happened. This has been a very interesting topic to research and watch videos on due to the many cool and interesting videos that shows different programs and the types of projects you can create. Many of these creators use Adobe and it looks incredible, some of their final projects look like they could be in documentaries on the history channel or something. This was actually one way I found learning about battles enjoyable myself before this internship. The only question now is if the Adobe program is worth the price because it is a little expensive.

The issues this week were few and far between until a few storms came through. I believe I have mentioned it before, but it seems the power goes out from the most miniscule things causing everything to go out. Although it is not scary for me because I have serge protectors on most of my electronics, it cannot be good when they come on and off four to seven times throughout the day, so a few days were filled with this. Another struggle was with the project itself, who would have thought finding deep battle tactics information about a forgotten battle form the civil war would be so hard? The struggle of finding all the forces that fought there and what they did has been the main issue but there is a bright spot. With a “script” or outline from Dr. Gannon, it has helped separate the information I have collected I am able to continue gathering everything that is required to present a great page for our website.

This week I actually wanted to talk a little about the project itself and what I have found interesting so far. I just want to bring up a couple of key points I have taken from this so far. First thing I wanted to bring up is the strategy of defending the confederacy and Florida more specifically. I was very surprised learning that Florida was practically not even thought of being protected with large amounts of troops due to there need in the North even though the importance was immeasurable with their supplies feeding many troops in the confederacy. Last thing is how quickly and well the invasion of Florida started and how abruptly it halted. If Brig. Gen. Seymour was not so aggressive the state of Florida might have been a great pressure point weakening the Northern confederate forces. It is so interesting that throughout history that if one person made one small different decision it might have changed the course of history.