The Fulton School
WARNING!!!! This post exceeds my word limit and I am sorry! I am not trying to be a rebel, but this will be the only time this happens, again. I could split this into two parts, but I also work Saturday, so I was going to post three times anyway this week most likely and four seems excessive, even for my standards. Either way I slice it, one big post or a bunch of little ones I am going to take up space on this blog, and I am sorry if it is inconvenient, but I am trying my best and these past two days have been very interesting!
So, we are all nearing the end of our time on our senior project and I am near the end of my time at the History Museum, but potentially it won’t come to an end (I am putting this here at the beginning and I am not gonna tell you what I mean until the end of this post. It’s called foreshadowing and a literary device! As always, if you don’t know what it is, look it up!). I also work Saturday this week for our kids history exploration day, so this will cover Tuesday and Wednesday.
So, my mom and I went to see “Challengers” again yesterday so I was in a very good mood going into this week. I was very excited to lead storytime, but also nervous. So, to prepare myself, I forced my family to be my captive audience and act like young children to prepare me for the various scenarios I could encounter! The actual kids were much more well behaved than my adult family members! I was nervous going into it, so I was going through my classic pre volleyball and basketball game routine that I have done various forms of for years. So, what I do to calm myself before anything bigger is do something lightly physical before it to get the blood pumping. So, I took a walk and then stretched while listening to a “Challengers” themed playlist I made to get the energy going. Then I eat something and afterwards start rapidly chewing gum. The gum chewing helps me give my mind something else to chew on (pun intended), then right before in the bathroom or anywhere I’ll do like the thing boxers do where they hop around in place. Listen, don’t knock it ’till you try it, it works. The other thing that majorly helped me going into games and longer class presentations was going into the situation with an “I don’t give a [ word I cannot say on this blog ] let’s just see what happens” attitude. So, I read three books today: “The Life of Pele,” “How Do You Dance?,” and “My Years of Firsts: Tries, Sighs, and High Fives”. As well as three songs: “If You Want to Hear a Story,” “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and “Shake to My Lou”. It went really well and was so fun! Afterwards, Julie came to talk to me to ask if after the project I would still be volunteering at the museum. And I said I would love to or if possible to work for pay at the museum. And then she told me that this was also why she wanted to talk to me because Maggie and Elena are both leaving in May and then June. Elena works part time, so if that work schedule lined up with my Webster schedule, then the job could be mine! I am soooo excited and I really hope it works out! This is like one of my dream jobs, I love it, and it looks really awesome to put on applications, but that’s completely besides the point. The point is that I would love doing it and it wouldn’t feel like work, which is what counts. And I feel so lucky to be part of a community like this and so thankful that the History Museum ended up working out for my senior project. Then we had a zoom training about micro agressions. I learned that we all committ micro agressions and probably don’t even think about it, like if you refer to everyone in a meeting as “Hey, guys!” that is techincally a micro agression because not all participants identify as a guy. For the rest of the day, I worked on Hana’s project, so just captioning photos and putting them in a slideshow.
So today was a special day because I got to go down to the Soldier’s Memorial Museum. This was cool because I actually have never been inside the museum just passed by it. The exhibits are really excellent. There are four– two permanent one on various wars and World War I and then the other is from World War II to the present, downstairs we have an exhibit on Vietnam and its impact in the country of Vietnam as well as what was happening during the war in St. Louis and the aftermath, finally there’s a small gallery upstairs on the homeless veteran epidemic. The Vietnam exhibit was what I was most interested in seeing because of reading “The Things They Carried”. All wars are tragic, but to me the Vietnam War is especially so. I think the fact that the men that were being sent to Vietnam weren’t even all men– like can you imagine at 17 years old getting a draft letter that says you’re gonna have to go to this foreign land and kill people and maybe die? And then also just the fact that so many people, and even those who ended up serving didn’t want to or believe the U.S. was right to get involved and then those same people who fought for our country watched not only the enemies, but their brothers as well die out there come home and are not even greeted with an ounce of kindness, most of the times. I mean these men get back home, where they should be greeted with open arms and instead they are met by people who yell and scream at them and try to hurt them or spit on them. I mean it’s a disgusting part of our country’s history that we treated our own people this way and have essentially on a large scale brushed it under the rug for a long time. I got to work with Gary and Hershel. They are both veterans and old dudes. They were hilarious and had some really cool stories. At one point, Gary said to Hershel, “Oh! It’s almost 11:00, you know they’re gonna fire the cannon soon,” and Hershel goes, “What cannon?” and then Gary goes, “You haven’t heard the cannon?! Everyday the fire the cannon at 11:00.” Hershel was so confused and then Gary was like “There is no cannon. I thought you would realize it and play along so we could prank Ella.” As a fellow prankster, I respect Gary’s work, afterall, game recognizes game. I got to talk to Hershel more than Gary since Hershel walked me around. He served in the Navy then in the Airforce. After that, he worked for Boeing and other companies like that and traveled and lived nearly everywhere, domestically and internationally. He’s originally from Texas and had very briefly worked in St. Louis. Since his daughter lived here and he wanted to retire (his wife also really no longer wanted to be in Florida because it was too hot!) they decided to move back here, where he then worked remotely, before finally actually retiring. He’s volunteered here for about four months now. Initially, he just worked the front desk, but then Lydia asked him if he was tired of sitting around and he was like, “Yes!” and she said “How would you like to give tours?” and he was like “OK!” so now he gives tours. From 2:00 to 4:00 I just am working the front desk. It has been a very fun and relaxing day!
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