In the morning of the second day of the conference, I attended the Delegate’s meeting. In this meeting, I heard from officers of Phi Alpha Theta and learned more about their work that had made the organization a great organization. We also elected new officers and heard about some future plans. I was very grateful for Phi Alpha Theta as it not only provided me a national setting to present my research, but also to hear from other students and scholars, more importantly, it also connected some history majors at Rollins College together, a group of smart girls whom I feel lucky to have as friends.

Speaking of these friends, I unfortunately missed Cami’s presentation the day before due to flight delay, but I was able to attend Wendy’s and Sydney’s presentations on the second day. Wendy’s presentation was on the alternative lifestyles of the utopian communities, while Sydney presented on the sexual revolution of the 1920s. Both of the girls did an amazing job with their presentation and I am so proud of them.

Between Wendy’s and Sydney’s sessions, I attended a session on the Vietnam War. After my presentation the day before, Aaron Fountain from Winthrop University approached me and asked about where I looked for my primary sources. It turned out that he was also interested in San Francisco. He was working on high school student activism during the Vietnam War in the Bay Area. His topic excited me as I also worked on a research paper on student activism during the Vietnam War, but my focus was student activism at Rollins College. It was so interesting to see how Aaron’s research overlapped with my two distinct research projects, so I decided to go to his presentation to learn more. In my opinion, his presentation was the best one I attended. Through some external funding, he was able to go to some of the high schools in the Bay Area, talk to the administrators, and look at their records. His paper was so well-organized and in-depth, and even included further research topics, which made the panel chair comment that he had his dissertation laid out right there.

Besides going to conference sessions, I was also able to enjoy my time at the resort.

Since I was going to run a full marathon a week after the conference, I took full advantage of the natural trails at our resort and did some training after my presentation and the day after. The view was absolutely gorgeous: the grasslands, the forest, the red mountains at sundown, and the Rio Grande in a creek form. There was also a stable on the resort, which, in addition to the view, distracted me from my runs. Besides the natural trails, the resort also offered other recreational activities that I wished I had more time for. At least I hope that this meant that I will come back to Albuquerque in the future.

After being forced to stay in Dallas overnight because of the horrible weather in New York City, I finally arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the morning of January 3^rd. Soon I found myself at the registration desk of the Phi Alpha Theta Biennial Convention, picking up everything I needed for the weekend.

Phi Alpha Theta (ΦΑΘ) is an American honor society for undergraduate and graduate students and professors of history. It was established on March 17, 1921 at the University of Arkansas by Professor Nels Cleven. Today, the society has over 350,000 members, with about 9,500 new members joining each year through 860 local chapters.  The 2014 Biennial Convention was open to faculty and students at all levels undergraduates, Master’s candidates, Ph.D. students, as well as students who have graduated. Besides me, three other history majors from Rollins were also going to present their research to the history scholars around the United States.

Although I arrived in Albuquerque a day later, I still had time to spare before my own presentation at 3:30 that afternoon. So I met up with my friends Wendy and Sydney and attended a session on LGBT history. In that session, Daniel Manuel’s presentation, “Lafayette is No Exception’: Sexual Revolutions and the Development of a Gay Community in Lafayette, Louisiana, 1968-1975” amazed me because of how much oral history work he had done to support his arguments. The presenters and the audience also engaged in discussions after their presentations. I was impressed how the presenters could answer some of the tough questions, which showed how prepared they were and how much extra work they had invested in their projects.

When the session was over, we headed over to lunch. Having been a poor college student traveling in New England over winter break, I consider the lunch buffet to be the best meal I had in weeks. What is even more awesome about the lunch is the engaging speaker on the first world war, and the diverse students at our table. I made friends with a Chinese student, Mengyuan Zhu, from Pepperdine University at my table. She and I clicked immediately as we discovered that we were the only Chinese students at this conference, which speaks to how rare and difficult it was for foreign students to study history in the United States.

For support, I went to Mengyuan’s session next, in which she presented on the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool beyond soccer. Her paper was interesting in that it dealt largely with the impact of industrialization in the two cities. It brought back a lot of my memories when I visited Manchester and Liverpool in the fall semester of my junior year to collect primary sources on the conditions of child labor during the industrial revolution. In the same session, Victoria Conlin from Georgetown University presented on “Peddlers, Prostitutes and the Plague: Debunking the ‘Golden Era for Women’ Myth of Late-Medieval English Economic History.” I was intrigued by the contrast between her paper and mine, since both dealt with prostitutes but in a different country during a different time period.

After keeping myself busy by going to other people’s sessions, it was finally time for me to present my paper: “Sold, Sexed, and Discriminated: The Chinese Prostitutes in San Francisco Before the Exclusion.” This was a paper I wrote for the History of American Sexuality class in the spring semester of my junior year. As an upper level history class, I was to pick a topic for a research paper. While our professor provided us with a list of themes, none of them stood out to me. I read Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, a collection of documents and essays, to frame a research question. In the book, the letter from Wong Ah So to her mother caught my eye. Wong Ah So was a Chinese prostitute in San Francisco. When she was nineteen and still in China, a Chinese man persuaded her that he was a rich man in San Francisco looking for a wife. She followed him to America, only to find out that the man had tricked her and sold her into prostitution. Luckily, a missionary worker rescued her from her misery. The story of Wong Ah So intrigued me. I knew that many Chinese men came to the United States with the discovery of gold in 1848, but I had assumed that their wives came too, until Wong Ah So’s story suggested otherwise. Her story spurred me to think about the experiences of Chinese female immigrants. Further research showed that there were many women like Wong Ah So in San Francisco, women who had been kidnapped and sold into prostitution. I decided to set my research paper topic on exploring the experiences of these women.

My presentation attracted a lot of interest and a lot of questions. Fortunately, I was able to answer most of them as my interest over the Chinese prostitutes had prompted me to write my senior thesis on the perceptions of Chinese female immigrants in San Francisco. Nevertheless, the panel chair gave me some suggestions as to how to further my research, and some audience’s questions also provided me with some areas to look at that I never thought about before. I was glad that the audience enjoyed my presentation. An editor of a history journal approached me and suggested me to submit my paper to his journal, which made me very happy.

Now that my own presentation is over, I could finally enjoy everything that the resort and the conference has to offer…

January 2 Thursday

This Thursday our group just spent the day traveling. Although it was the first day of the conference, we did not arrive in Albuquerque until sometime after midnight. Overall, I spent the evening and most of the day traveling and getting my paper ready for the conference.

January 3 Friday

Today was the first day of the conference. We decided to see a couple of presentations, especially on topics that we were interested in. On this Friday, two people in our group presented their papers. We had breakfast and networked with some really nice historians. After breakfast we went to one of the sessions where one person of our group was about to present her paper. Her paper was on sexuality from our History of American Sexuality class. We heard one paper on women and their portrayal in advertisements, which was really interesting to hear. We were proud for Cami, who was the first person in our group to present. Each person in this panel got asked one question about their papers.

After one session, the group decided to split up and visit sessions that we found interesting. Since I love social and gender history, I went to a panel on gay rights and homosexuals in a small town in Texas. I really enjoyed this panel because it was on a topic that I am interested in and have taken classes on. I also enjoyed how numerous people came to panel and asked all these questions. One paper was about a small town in Texas and how the gay community was developing, but also restrained by religion. Sessions, such as this one, got me interested in attending more conferences like this in the future.

The last session we attended that day was one on early American history in which another person in our group presented their paper. This was also an interesting panel because both papers were very different. One paper was an overview of early American history, which was nice, but I prefer papers that focus on a more narrow topic. Most people that attended this session were interested in the paper that our friend presented, which was on Chinese prostitutes. Almost everyone was interested in her topic and asked her around five questions, which was a lot for a single session.

After lunch, we decided to explore the resort, which is on a beautiful Indian reserve. We decided to walk the trails around the mountains and visit the Rio Grande. The history in that area fascinated us as did the scenery. We walked throughout the trails and then went to dinner. After hearing a speaker talk about the 100th anniversary of World War I, we stayed in the resort for the night and hung out with people around the lounge.

January 4 Saturday

This was the day that I was scheduled to present my paper on the alternative lifestyles of utopian communities. Since this was the first time at a history conference like this, I was very nervous and excited at the same time. I spent my morning after breakfast preparing for my panel. My session was at 10:45 so I spent the morning in the lobby doing work. I was second to present my paper. The first person to present wrote a paper on medieval religion, specially Zoroastrianism. I read my paper with ease, but then I got numerous questions because so many people were drawn into my topic on sexuality in pertaining to the Mormons and Shakers. I learned how to answer questions the best that I could. Some of the questions did not deal with my topic precisely and went beyond what I researched. Overall this conference taught me how to professionally present a paper and answer questions properly. After my presentation, I stayed and talked with people who were interested in my topic, and made numerous connections. Another major part of this conference that I did not realize before is the importance of networking.

After my session and lunch, I walked the trails around the resort more and even visited the stables. It was a lovely and cold afternoon. The last session we attended was one on America in the twentieth century where another person from our group presented her paper. This was another interesting session because the papers were so different and covered different topics. The person from our group wrote her paper on young adult college students and their sexuality in the 1920s. She did well and answered the questions in a nice manner.

Tonight’s dinner was an important banquet. Our group made a choice to sit at tables where we did not know people so we could network and get to know more people. It was a nice way to end our stay there. The speaker also talked about a great story that made the evening good.

January 5 Sunday

This day we spent the day traveling, but it was the longest day of the entire trip. Once we got to Texas, we found out that our flight to Orlando got cancelled. The airport was a mess with numerous cancelled flights and people not being helpful. Our group of four split up with everyone at the end finally making it to Orlando after a long day of finding different flights.

This conference was a great and beneficial experience for my goals of getting my masters and pursuing my love of history even further.

Another session that spoke to me both as a current writing consultant who deals with a lot of first year writing as well as a potential high school teacher was “I Thought I was a Good Writer: Investigating Perceptions of Preparedness for College Writing.” Two students from Ohio State University – Newark observed and interviewed students from a local high school English class that was purposefully trying to prepare their students for a college writing environment.

The high school classroom was different from most typical high school English classes. The students sat in a lecture hall format, with 72 students assigned to two teachers. The class only met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with the teachers available for office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The class’s entire grades were based on a few papers and exams.  This environment mimicked many local college writing classes. All of the students agreed on one thing: they hated it.

Even though the class was set up like a college classroom, the students felt like the workload was not rigorous enough. Almost 60 percent expected more writing to be assigned, and all of them expected the writing assigned to be more difficult than the common 200-word blog response post on their version of Blackboard. Teachers were searching for critical thought in these blogs and papers, but students just quickly learned how to parrot one another’s ideas so they could do as little work as possible.

While the session was eye-opening, the discussion afterwards amongst the high school teachers and writing-center coordinators was even more educational. Both sides agreed that large-scale standardized testing was causing many writing problems, but, since that is not something that can be easily changed, they concluded that professional development between both sides—local high school English teachers and local first year college writing professors—would be an ideal way to start to bridge the gap.