Coming to the close of these two months intensifies my gratefulness for being a part of, and contributing to, the commitments of this fellowship. I appreciate the seminars because they bring everyone together from our separate enclaves of work and offer chances for us to check the progress we are making against each other, whilst learning about each other’s research and professional and/or personal interests. As this summer was my first of conducting research, I would have liked to see more seminars that were grouped by research discipline, to be able to observe and compare notes with the work that other humanities researchers were doing. Placing the seminar dedicated to developing humanities research skills at the program’s forefront, perhaps right after orientation or within the program’s first full week, should be a change that the program considers. It would enable researchers to practice developing their humanities reading and writing know-how, whether they had fallen out of touch with it or had never practiced it in the classroom before. Also, I am almost touched to have observed faculty, UROP staff, and my mentor showing genuine interest in helping students as they climb along the way in reaching a potential that will be as full as it will come to be. I’ll take this post back to a moment, the benevolence of which affects me still: sitting in my mentor’s office, she and my research partner busily turned to their laptops, looking at articles that they had studied before, to decide whether they would be relevant to my project interests or not. It was a simple and clear moment.
