I can confidently say that I’ve learned more—about history, about research methodology, about working collaboratively, and even about myself—in the past few months than I have in the past few years. 

The Brackenridge Fellowship is the essence of what undergraduate study should be: independent yet supported, rigorous but manageable, difficult but rewarding. The value one derives from completing and communicating a meaningful piece of work, whether it be one of research, creativity, or service, is, dare I say, magical. I know I’m bordering on trite romanticism and gross sentimentalism when I say this, but I really do feel like I fell in love with learning all over again this summer. 

One of my main goals for this summer was to use the Brackenridge Fellowship as a means of testing whether or not academic research is something I could see myself doing as a career. I had never before done anything on this large a scale, with this long a timeline and this amount of independence. It was scary. Especially so when, over the course of about a week at the beginning of the summer, I realized that my proposed research question wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was. After two weeks of wiping my board clean and situating myself within the established literature (read: locking myself in Hillman and pouring over decades-old histories of the Five Tribes), I finally got to the point where I was happy with my research question. Then, a few days (and books) later, I changed it again. 

Woe is me!

Seriously, though—I tell this story not to garner what little sympathy can (or should) be afforded to a “tortured ” academic. Rather, I tell it because this experience taught me something valuable about history as an academic discipline, something which I think can be applied to most fields of study: that academic work is a never-ending process of refining and refining and editing and tweaking and polishing and editing and pairing down and so on and so on. Being flexible in this regard–not giving up or throwing in the towel when one’s initial idea proves fruitless—is essential to succeeding in our practice as academics. I’m glad I was able to learn this lesson now when my livelihood and/or career weren’t on the line!

I should note that this process is incredibly difficult (impossible, even) without the help of others. History is often coded as a solitary discipline. After all, how does pouring over microfilm in the small hours of the night searching for morsels of evidence lend itself to collaboration? To be honest, it doesn’t. History does, however, because of this nature, tend to create academics who are chomping at the bit to share their findings whenever the opportunity arises. I found almost every single historian to whom I reached out for assistance (in its many forms) to be incredibly receptive and eager to help. This changed my view of history as an academic discipline; sure, it isn’t a “collaborative” field in some senses, but it very much is in others

.I think the thing that I value most about the Brackenridge experience has been the independence accorded to the Brackenridge Fellows. Not only is it nice to not have anyone constantly breathing down my neck, but I’ve also learned a great deal about how to effectively pace work over a long period of time (i.e., an entire summer) and how to keep myself accountable to actually sticking to said pace once I’ve established it. I’ve also learned a lot about how to find effective sources on my own and how to appropriately reach out to other academics in my field when I need help. 

Now that the Brackenridge is (almost) over, I plan on taking a few well-earned weeks over before the semester starts to camp, hike, rock-climb, see friends, and rot on the couch watching movies. After I’m done indulging myself, though, I plan to take what I’ve learned this summer and apply it to all aspects of my coursework. Next summer, I’m hoping to win a SURA Fellowship and continue to do more research. In completing this research project, I came up with a million new questions that I think I could take a crack at answering. I’m very much looking forward to having the chance to do so. I also hope to get my work published in the Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review (PUR) because I think that going through the editorial process would be a super valuable learning experience for me!