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Two Raiders Progress to State History Day

March 31, 2020

Emma Coty '22 with her winning paper. At the Regional History Day competiton earlier this month, the top twelve research papers were chosen to progress to State, which will be judged remotely this year. Two of those papers were written by Raiders!

Chloe Anderson '22's paper was titled "Poetics of Revolution: Pablo Neruda's Verses Against Neoliberalism in Latin America."

"I learned how activism can take many different forms," she said. "Going into my project, a social revolution achieved by literary means seemed near impossible. However, as I continued my research, I realized that there are many components involved in effective activism, and the arts are an essential part."

Emma Coty '22 wrote a paper titled "How Harvey Milk Broke Barriers and Opened Doors."

"I was interested to learn how much Harvey Milk did for other underrepresented minorities in California besides the LGBTQ community (such as the elderly and racial minorities) by things like starting programs to provide housing or jobs," Coty said.

History Day is a long-term project that aims to teach students research skills and time management.

"The most valuable skill I gained from this project is definitely time management," Anderson said. "When given a far-out deadline and 2,500 words to compose, it was easy to put off the work. However, it wasn't long before I realized that saving a project of this magnitude for the last minute was a disaster waiting to happen. I was able to split my paper into multiple sections and make goals for each of them, which was absolutely essential in not only managing my time, but also for managing my stress."

Both students had advice for future Raiders doing History Day projects:

"Use the databases that you have access to through CDH! Pick a topic or person that you find interesting but don’t know a lot about, it makes it a lot easier to research and write about," said Coty. "Lastly, it might be hard, but keep up with the weekly goals because they make it so much easier to put everything together in the end!"

"My biggest piece of advice for future History Day students is to take your time picking good sources," Anderson said. "Use Google Scholar! It's a separate search engine that looks exclusively for scholarly articles from accredited people and universities. I felt infinitely more confident in my information knowing it was from a certified source.

As well, I highly recommend choosing a topic that you know little about. You'll remain interested in your topic for the long duration of the project. If you're disinterested in what you're researching, it shows in your project. Lasty, challenge yourself! Have fun! Learn something new! Open up the conversation about your topic to whoever will listen. That, I believe, is what History Day is all about."

The papers will be judged remotely against projects by students across the state. The results will be posted online on May 3 at 7pm. The top two Minnesota papers will progress to the National competition, which will also be judged remotely.

Congratulations Raiders, and good luck at State!

Tags: History Day