My Time at Vance

Prior to going back to school in 2014 I was kind of lost, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I developed a love for history, when I was about twelve. It began when I watched a National Geographic documentary about Egyptian history, and it just snowballed from there. When I was 13, my mother pulled me out of public school and began to home-school me which is when my passion was allowed to flourish. Every time I went somewhere historic with my family, I had to know everything I could before our visit and when people came to see us I had to play tour guide. At the time it never occurred to me that I could apply both my passion for history and my need to tell people what I knew together. When I started at UNCA, I could not have imagined I would have had an opportunity to put those two things together. So, when I began my internship at Vance over the summer, I didn't know what to expect. Which is understandable given that I had never done anything like it before.  I knew going into this internship that I would learn an immense amount about working in the public history field, but I did anticipate learning so much about myself. 

As an older student doing an internship, I found there was a different dynamic between myself and the people I was working with; for one Lauren, my mentor, is 3 years younger than me. Which meant that we could relate to each other better than if I had been 10 years younger than her. We are peers. There was a little awkwardness at first because she has been out of school and in the field for a while and I’ve not gotten my degree yet, but that weirdness didn’t last long. I could see us being friends outside of the workplace. At the beginning I was a little cautious because I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit into the established environment at Vance and between Lauren, Dennis, and Kimberly. I feel like it all worked itself out, though. There were a few times, however, that I was so quite at the front desk that Lauren and Kimberly forgot I was there. That made us all laugh.

Lauren was good teacher. I was very impressed with her ability to change the tour or program depending on who her audience was. Whether it was a school group with 22 kindergartners or an older couple from Florida. She knew just what to say to keep them all engaged. If I’m honest, it was little intimidating, but in a good way. It gave me something to strive for when it was my turn to give tours. I learned a lot of valuable things while I was at Vance and I had experiences with the public that were rewarding and disturbing. The disturbing experience involved a guy using the N word while I was stationed in the house during the Militia Muster. But The rewarding experiences far outweighed that one bad one. I learned that sometimes the public have a certain view on the past and are not always open to having their perspective changed (those tend to be adults), but then you’ll have a child come in who absolutely LOVES history and wants to know everything you can teach them. Those were my favorites.  I learned that there is a LOT of bureaucracy involved with getting anything done on site. For example, half the trees on the property are dead or half dying and the only way they can get them removed is, if the request for cutting them down goes through every person up the chain in the department all the way to the top, and then back down. And the paper work involved is a nightmare. I also learned that Vance is a low priority site, as compared to the Stagville plantation in Durham, so the funding is not always there. That’s why they rely heavily on Venue rentals, school groups, donations, sales in the gift shop, and other fundraising events they can do. Like the upcoming Christmas program.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time at Vance. I got to work with some really great people and gain valuable experience for future employment. I also got to work with the collections in the house and learned I really enjoy the hands-on aspects of working with artifacts and cataloging them. At the end of my internship I got to participate in the Appalachian Folk Festival where I got to interpret the herbs and medical herb garden I had planted over the summer. It was a very gratifying experience.  I would definitely recommend an internship to anyone interested in public history. Oh, and I must not forget that I found my baby girl, Hailey, at History Hounds, the Brother Wolf dog adoption event we had in August!!!