I received my MA in History in May 2020. During the journey, I learned many new skills that I continue to use on a daily basis as I fulfill my job duties and return to school. The most important skill that I learned was finding the courage to begin sharing my community’s history. I achieved this by recording and including some oral histories in my master's thesis and writing two articles for the Houston History Magazine.

It was meaningful to me to be part of a program that enabled me to visit various locations outside of my community. During these visits, I had the opportunity to learn about their local history and help preserve it. Therefore, I was able to learn about other career trajectories besides academia and libraries. My coursework and volunteer work with the Houston History Magazine made this possible.

While I completed my degree, I worked as a shelver at Sterling Municipal Library in Baytown. My duties included digitizing several components of Baytown’s history, such as old newspapers and city council minutes. As a public history student, I used class readings and feedback from projects to help make this information accessible to the community. My biggest accomplishment was including some of these items in my thesis while also making them accessible to everyone else.

I want to continue working in libraries because they are good settings for preserving the history and memories of local communities. That is why I will begin pursuing a Master of Library Science Degree at Texas Woman’s University in August 2022. My goal is to combine my history knowledge with the librarian skills to re-enter the history world. This is important to me because I am currently the Interlibrary Loans Supervisor at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. I am lucky to currently be in a position where able to use the research skills I learned as a public history student to locate the items that my patrons request, as well as to locate additional sources to include in their research.

If I could give advice to future public history students, it would about how to find a research topic. Try to find an unfamiliar topic because it is an opportunity to learn something new. It is even more exciting if it pertains to your local community because it probably means that there are others community members who may not know much about it either. Therefore, it will be a great learning and researching opportunity for you and the community.