History Museum Rest of First Week (Thursday & Friday)

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Ella Alt

Thursday:

Thursday, I worked from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. When I first arrived, I packaged up invitations for one of the museum’s upcoming events. I would fold cards, put them in envelopes, and then glue them shut. I think I did this to over 100 invitations (I am not kidding)! Even though a lot of people think it’s boring, I liked it because it was just very easy and sort of gives your mind a break. It was similar to working at the thrift store for community service at school. The second time we went, Mrs. Bryan said something really smart and true and it was like, “You spend all of highschool and college learning these things and you can’t really see a clear cut goal with them, even though they’re paying off. So, with something like this it’s just really simple and there’s a clear cut goal, which makes it really satisfying,” well said, Mrs. Bryan! That morning I also got to meet Ray. Ray is retired and has been volunteering for five years. He is super cool and we talked a lot about my senior project and my future career paths. He is preparing to give his third gallery talk next week on the Dred Scott case. At about 1:15 I finished up the scavenger hunt paper from yesterday and took a bit of a break. Then I got to tour the kids clubhouse with Andy. After that, I got to meet Ryan and Julie. I didn’t talk much with Ryan because he had to run, but I talked a lot with Julie, who also works in the kids clubhouse. She is really cool and asked me different stuff about where I go to highschool, what college I’m going to, senior projects, and what I want to do for a career later in life. She also has some totally sick tattoos. Then for the rest of the afternoon, I took a tour of the kids clubhouse and had some training for my work there Friday with Andy. He was super helpful and nice as well. After that, I had a little downtime than I toured and met with Victoria who works as a data analyst and collector for the museum, so it’s likely I will help her do some surveys in the coming weeks. Lastly, I spent the last portion of my shift helping out at the Thursday Night event from 5:00 – 8:00. Maggie who works in the kids department and for Thursday night gave us the run down. Basically me, and two other volunteers, Tyler and Sophia, helped on the floor level, then greeted guests and handed out surveys. Then we got to watch a talk from authors Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein (they are father and daughter) on their book “Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under The Color of Law” and Richard’s solo book “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” it was cool to hear about these books since they are pretty big in the history/academia world and it was cool that I was able to know a lot of terms and events from taking U.S. History. They had a Q&A and I really wanted to ask about what it’s like working as a historical scholar/writer and if they have multiple jobs, how they got published, etc. but I wanted to give the opportunity for guests to ask questions and we ran short on time so I didn’t get to. I then thought I would talk to Leah at the book signing, but the line was super long and I was tired so I headed home for the night. It was also cool that I got to talk with Sophia a lot because she is on a research project at the museum and is a junior at Kirkwood Highschool and she was super fun.

Friday:

Friday morning, I finished packing some envelopes from the other day. Then I headed over to the kids’ clubhouse at 9:15 to set up for their story telling program. The story telling program is targeted at young kids and is hosted every Friday morning. Then from 10:30-12:00 we had the actual story time. It was super fun and I got to work with Julie and Maggie, and then also met and worked with a different Emily and Elena, as well as, meet Rachel and Lindsey. After story time and the craft, I spent about an hour at the clubhouse cleaning up and helping families out. Then I worked from 12:00-2:00 at the Key Bistro, the museum’s restaurant with Pierre, Anthony, and Garth. I sat at the front desk and gave menus out. I also brought people drinks and cleaned up after they were done. I got a free meal out of this and I had a burger and fries, which were really good. During the last portion of the day, I was going to help out Kat and Eric (a student at Maryville University), but Kat was out sick and it is better with in person training so I just got to explore the museum. I did get to briefly say hi to Eric, though. Sorry, that these are longer posts and I am tempted to just do three a week so it isn’t all so much (but what else could you expect from the girl who wrote over 25 pages for her research paper, and a 20+ page scripted draft of a “Freaks and Geeks” reboot in a single night?!) even though I only have to do two a week. Some other cool life updates are that I’ve made myself a Substack account to post my writing on, which I will link later. I’ve also been working on writing up a resume for jobs during the summer, getting my housing application together for Webster, which has been a mess! And then lastly, I have recently become obsessed with dance and aerobics for cardio because I don’t like just running that much and I wanted to add in cardio with my strength training. It is so much fun, I dance for like 30 minutes two or three times each day to various up beat 80s and 2000s songs. I think my dad is horrified because he told my mom, “I’ve seen so much of me in her these last few weeks,” and I said “Oh, did you dance and do aerobics in your living room, too?” He replied, “No, I didn’t do any of that goofy S***,”(I am blurring out this EXPLICIT WORD, however, he said the real deal…). I may want to become an aerobics instructor as a side gig because it would legit be so fun! I also think it would be cool because it totally juxtaposes my scholar dreams and also if I would want to be a contestant on “The Bachelor” (also something I would seriously consider. I could promote my writing and books, go pretty far, but probably not be picked and give a devastating heartbroken speech) that would make me so legendary!