UCF Internship Blog

  Hello everyone, Patrick Callaghan here for one final update on my summer internship. This week is not only important due to it being the final week but also the weekend that I move from home to the University of Central Florida for the first time. This week has been busy with working on the Battle of Olustee project, packing getting ready to move and the final PowerPoint for our group. Although I have been busy with these things, I received a file from Dr. Gannon that consisted of the official records from the battle. These documents have completely changed my summary from the sources I was using in the beginning. The dynamic between Maj. Gen. Gillmore and Brig. Gen. Seymour and the complete and blatant disregard of orders is astonishing. Another interesting aspect of the records is how many people there at the battle had differences in their stories like when the battle began and how big the enemy force was.   Brig. Gen. Seymour actually said that the Confederates, by the...

  Hello everyone, Patrick Callaghan updating everyone on week number 10 as we come ever closer to the end of our internship. This week was filled with the usual tasks and some new ones as well. Also a returning challenge has reared its ugly face once again during this week making progress move a little slower. One thing throughout this internship that has been the biggest struggle has been the experience of working from home. Although at first it may sound nice but when everyone is doing so in your area, as well as using air conditioning and other electrical utilities causes the power to go out multiple times a day. This week was an all-time high with three days of power lose occurring multiple times throughout those days. I think the greatest challenge this brings is staying focused and trying to not lose to many productive hours even if access to resources is not there. This has been a struggle because I can imagine no one as well as myself likes to continue working without you...

  Hello everyone, update on week number nine is here and this week was a little different from the normal ones having meetings more one on one to talk about what we were doing and how it was going. Progress is going smoothly on all fronts as I begin to fact check and prepare multiple versions of drafts that will go into the summary of the battle. As mentioned last week the progress of reestablishing and recognizing the faults of my writing being non-active has been a main objective through this week as well.                One way I am practicing being more active is using more complex words in place of words like went and going. Synonyms are just one part of the process, but it forces you to search for new words and adjust the sentence properly to work in a way to make sense. Not only this, but it also allows the opportunity to learn words. No one likes to read the same words over and over so having a grand an...

  Hello, Patrick Callaghan providing an update on my 8 th week of the internship. This week’s progress on most of the things for my projects were stumped for a day due to the hurricane/tropical storm Elsa but in no major way. I have been experimenting with storyboards and attempting three to four trying to note the best way to depict the Battle of Olustee. In my mind it is a crucial part of our project, but I find myself pressured to add enough information to make the summary grip someone’s attention. Reading has always been a hurtle for me to vault over during my educational experience so far. Staying invested and locked into the information on the pages of a book has pushed me into long nights of reading to prepare for class the next day. Even in other sources from which reading is provided all I search for is the hook or information that does drive me to read more. This objective might be the hardest to learn for something that may seem simple. Writing holds numerous cons whe...

  Hello, Patrick Callaghan updating everyone on a rainy week seven of my internship. This week appears to be the beginning of the rain season as it has begun raining everyday once or twice. Also the emergence of the storm Elsa is alarming as it could move to the east day by day. However other than this I have been working on the previous mentioned goals in my past blog posts: learning more about animated maps, working on the summary of the Battle of Olustee and more. But today I wanted to drift a little from the everyday work to my thoughts on my own future and what it may bring. Due to the writing class Dr. Gannon has been gracious enough to hold and present, I have had many thoughts on what is the future? As someone who has come from two other colleges that were more focused on getting through the here and now I have come to the University of Central Florida a little behind in exactly what is to come in my future. What jobs interest me? How much school is required for that type...

  Hello, Patrick Callaghan here posting about internship week number six. It is actually crazy to think how long it has been, being that this is the halfway mark already. Perhaps staying more indoors throughout this long Covid-19 year and to think it could last longer and get worse with different variants popping up elsewhere in the world. I just hope more and more people get vaccinated as quickly as possible. Although it may be gloomy, it has just given me more opportunities to learn, research, write and try new things I have not thought of doing before.                One of these parts of our Olustee project is the map. I have just about completed the basic script for the battle overview and plan on making my first story board for the events soon. So, in my free time I have been looking at how I was going to make this map. Being that I have not made a map or done anything that deals with aftereffects on an i...

  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 th...