Undergraduate research was always an early goal for me coming to Dartmouth. I had read about the opportunities available at Dartmouth as part of my diligence during the college search process and had it at the top of mind when I matriculated as a freshman in the fall of 2016. I was fortunate to take a class with Professor Bonner (also the Chair of the History Department) and mentioned to him that I was interested in working as a research assistant for the department at the very beginning of the year during as we were chatting at the department open house. When I mentioned that I was interested in undergraduate research to Professor Bonner, I had thought it was something I would get involved with far later in my Dartmouth career - perhaps sophomore or junior year at the earliest. However, to my surprise, during office hours midway through the term, Professor Bonner asked me if I had considered and applied undergraduate research opportunities with the history department. Though I had initially thought I was too early to start looking into it, Professor Bonner assured me that I should be getting involved with undergraduate research as early as possible. He then took the time to walk me through our database of undergraduate research opportunities, and gave me some more insight that helped me get started right away. It was due to this that I was able to join Professor Moreton's book project as her first research assistant my freshman winter (2017), and I view my time as an undergraduate research assistant as one of my most important and rewarding experiences during my time here.
As a research assistant for Professor Moreton, I was tasked with searching EBSCOhost to find potentially relevant primary source materials, request them through our interlibrary loan system, DartDoc, analyze these to see what themes I could start seeing, and finally create an internal database using Zotero that would store these documents and citations for easy access once she started writing. Learning these skills - all of which are tools of the trade for professional historians - was incredibly valuable, and moreover allowed me to gain a much better understanding of what historical research actually entailed. Being on a book project from inception over several years also allowed me to more fully appreciate the length and scope of such an undertaking. Additionally, both for the FSP archival project as a thesis writer in the department, I have absolutely used the skills I learned while working as a research assistant for Professor Moreton to help increase my productivity, efficiency and output as a historian undertaking my own original work.