History Day: A student perspective

For the History Day competition, students must conduct extensive historical research using primary resource, articles, and books as they plan dramatic performances, multimedia documentaries, exhibits, Websites, or research papers.. All Shorewood students do a History Project their junior year. Honors students at Shorewood and Shorecrest do a History Day project every year. On Friday, March 19, Shoreline hosts the Regional History Day exhibition at the Shoreline Center.

By Rika Inouye

Shorewood Student

History day was…an interesting experience.

It was long, yes, and it was difficult, but it’s one of the most rewarding projects at Shorewood.

I spent hours working on it. Half of my winter break was dedicated to creating a 10 minute documentary about the history of jazz education in Seattle, so of course I was angry after my laptop crashed. But somehow I managed to set that aside and keep working on it.

Our honors world studies class started it during the first week of school and at first no one thought much of it. Of course, we all started regretting it when December started. Even when winter break started, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

So my personal experience with History Day? Research, insomnia, coffee, and voice recordings. Some tears and hissy fits, but not too many. Even though it sounds like a completely terrible experience, it wasn’t.

It was the most rewarding thing to watch my finished documentary, the most freeing thought, knowing that I was done with this project. And all the research and hard work? It was just preparing me for my hardest year of high school, junior year.