NHD Napkins

Formulating a Fantastic Thesis

2019-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

The thesis is often thought of to be the most important component to any writing piece. While I personally don’t believe in “formulas” when it comes to subjective competitions such as National History Day, I do believe that the template below serves as a great structure for crafting a strong thesis:

Part 1: Historical Context

What was going on during the time of the event/person’s life you are researching? What are the barriers people in that time period had to face? What were barriers like at local, national, and global levels?

Part 2: The Accomplishment/History

What did your person accomplish despite these barriers? What event occurred in the midst of such obstacles? Be as explicit as possible here. It may be helpful to even include time frames, spelled out words for abbreviations, etc.

Part 3: How were barriers broken?

By accomplishing such a feat, what barriers did the person you are researching break? What obstacles did the event overcome? You can be more general here, but you want to make sure that you touch on all of the barriers you enumerate upon somewhere in your project.

Part 4: So what?

What is the significance of the person of interest breaking such a barrier? What are the modern implications for different demographics (men, women, children, people of color, etc.)? What are the ramifications for people locally, nationally, and globally? This part, in some ways, is both the easiest and the hardest aspect to write.

Winning Example

Of course, this is simply a template. While it would make sense for each part to follow one right after the other, it’s all about how the thesis reads. Below is an example of the thesis my partner and I wrote 3 years ago for our 7th place winning project. The theme is “Taking a Stand in History”:

“The need for domestic uranium saw rapid growth from the 1940’s through the 80’s, resulting in widespread mining throughout the uranium-rich Navajo Reservation, located in the southwestern United States. However, government-operated mining companies, that enlisted the help of Navajo workers, did not properly inform them of the dangers associated with uranium, nor take precautions to diminish the possible effects. As a result, Navajos were unable to object to the mining, as they did not know there was a stand to be taken. The government’s refusal to recognize the basic rights of the Navajo nation has led to long-lasting adverse health and environmental effects, still afflicting the Tribe and their land.”

Picking a Great Topic

2019-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Finding a great topic can be hard for a lot of National History Day participants. This is especially when your team has numerous interests that stretch a variety of fields. Regardless, there are three key tenets you should stick to when choosing a great topic.

Pick a topic you love

Remember – National History Day is a 9-month long research project. With that being said, you have to make sure that you love your topic and can’t see yourself getting bored with within the first couple of weeks.

Of course, you should try to pick a topic that is related to your interests, as more passion almost always yields more genuine writing.

Consider this simple exercise - imaging having to describe two different people to your parents: one who has been your best friend since preschool, and the other a stranger you saw walking down the street. Who do you think you could describe better?

Pick a topic that is well-documented

I’ll admit to nearly making this mistake in the past – in fact, I can attest that I’ve almost committed this error more than once. However, unless you’re a history buff like some of my teammates used to be, chances are, your topics won’t be too obscure.

“Well-documented” can have a lot of connotations, but in the context of National History Day, make sure that your topic has plenty of print and video resources, some professors and (maybe even) historical figures that can be interviewed, and information that corroborates among multiple sources.

Note: During the national awards ceremony in 2019, one of my teachers told me something observed as we were leaving the stadium:

Am I the only one that noticed that a majority of the winners chose topics related to U.S. history?

Looking at the recent winners list will reveal the same trend, and truth be told, I should’ve been able to deduce from our own personal experiences: our projects that dealt with American history seemed to fare better than world history projects. This doesn’t mean that I discourage you from picking an international topic, but my hunch is that the judges seem to relate better to topics they may have more prior information on and are more familiar with. But of course, do as you please.

Pick a topic that has a good fit with the theme

As much as you can say that finding a topic you like is the most important tenet to stick by, I actually think that finding a topic that fits with the theme is what makes a topic truly great. After all, from year to year, the only thing that really changes with National History Day is the historical theme.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no way to fix a topic with a poor connection to the theme. No matter how masterful you may be with rhetoric, if you can’t communicate why the topic “breaks a barrier” or “takes a stand”, you might as well consider all of your efforts wasted.

One of the ways to check if a topic fits well with a theme is to try the old elevator pitch technique: set aside your friend or teacher, and tell him/her about your topic and its connection to the theme in 30 seconds. If they can’t repeat the main points of your argument back to you, then either (a.) your delivery is convoluted or (b.) your topic doesn’t connect to the theme.

Where can I find good topics?

Pretty much anything is fair game for National History Day, as long as the topic/event occurred at least 20 years ago (this number should be fact-checked, but this is the rule of thumb I like to keep when brainstorming topics). If you’re having trouble, try checking out these resources:

Theme Book
History behind News (make sure to matriculate non-partisan news sources)
Family History
Personal Passions
Pop Culture (my teammate stumbled upon Alan Turing while watching a trailer on the The Imitation Game.

The Things that No One Can Imagine

2019-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

Written originally for my high school newspaper.

I’ve always been a “math” type of guy. I enjoy puzzles, computation, and the challenge of utilizing both memorized formulas and ingenious intuition to solve some of the hardest problems and to find some of the most beautiful solutions. For years, it has been somewhat of my art form, a way of representing the obvious, the odd, and the unimaginable. Furthermore, as a quantitative subject, there has always been one answer - not necessarily one way to get the right answer, but only one possible solution. No nuances, no bias or inferences, just numbers. Yet, when I think of the things that have changed my own persona over the course of my academic years, mathematics is not the end all be all.

In middle school, I was introduced to the National History Day (NHD) competition. Every year, students would have to respond to a theme by presenting a historical topic and interpreting its importance in history. Students can choose from different presentation mediums, such as websites, performances, and documentaries, and have the chance to compete with students from all across the country who had a passion for history and storytelling. Certainly quite the contrary for the competitive mathematics.

My 6th grade year was, as some people call it, a “trial run”. Having no clue what I was getting in myself into, I chose a topic that I was familiar with but had no clear connection to the theme at hand. The large amount of research I had to do was overwhelming, and compared to my quirky math problems, I did not find that much enjoyment in it. My occasional jubilation, quite frankly, would come from being with other competing individuals from my school. While I had not always shared the same love and passion for history as my peers, I found that we all shared a thirst for knowledge, a fire for competition, and the desire to be normal kids in every way else - I found myself some people who I could vaguely call my “friends”.

Looking back on things, I wasn’t really even considering competing the next year - I just didn’t feel as if NHD was the type of competition I was fit for, nevertheless one I could win. However, upon hearing that a group of my friends had placed significantly high as 6th graders in the state competition, I saw a window of opportunity - a chance to make a name for myself and for my peers, and to go farther than any other group in the history of our school before. Despite the reluctance of our teacher, my friends and I decided to come together and form a “super team” - not only because of the fact that we had a large amount of experience and skills, but also because of the size of our group and the diversity of our strengths and weaknesses. It would be an interesting risk, but one that would pay off big time.

As always, our first task was to choose a topic. Going through a variety of various historical figures and events, anywhere from the historical people pertinent to the creation of the Big Bang Theory to even Vasili Arkhipov, a man who prevented a possible nuclear war. After all of this brainstorming, one person came on top - a man named Alan Turing, whose work lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code (which saved millions of lives and cut the war short in the process) as well as a new line of research that ultimately lead to the development of the modern computer and the study of artificial intelligence.

Clearly, based on my love of my math, I loved the idea of being able to study Turing - his contributions to my life and the world of many others is immense, and I felt that there was no better way of honoring his leadership and legacy than by presenting his accomplishments and achievements. But really, something else about his story, an idea that perhaps still confuses me to this day, made everyone on our team just have a connection with him, a connection we all would not feel with any other topic we had researched. Maybe it was the fact that he committed suicide as a result of being gay and having to deal with chemical castration; maybe it was because of his other fields of study, such as in-depth analysis of chemical morphogenesis; or maybe it was because of how despite his quirkiness and awkwardness, was able to be such a great leader and leave such an important legacy in the process.

The next few months were spent avidly researching, conducting interviews, and aggregating content to place on the website. Assuredly, it took us some time to get into the groove of things - while we had all known each other, we still had to get used to each other’s tendencies, utilizing our strengths to contribute to the project while delegating tasks to other individuals who were better at other things. The research process was enlightening - I learned a lot about Turing, more information than I had really known about any piece of history in all my years of learning, and began to become a better thinker, writer, and even technological creator.

Amidst all of the research process was a genuine feeling of having fun - and no, I don’t mean citing our 100th source or figuring out a bug to a program, but being with other people and experiencing great things and making genuine memories. Throughout this journey, I developed great bonds with every single one of my teammates as well as our teacher advisor. They were relationships that extended past the classroom into our own personal and social lives, and while not everyone in my group might feel the same way as me, I definitely think that I changed the most - from being this very meek, doubtful kid, I became a stronger, more confident, and more outspoken young man. This may just be a result of time and growing up as a whole, but I don’t think my life would be where it is if it weren’t for those four individuals. Plus, I realized that life was not all about math, or even logic and algorithmic thinking - life, just like literature and history and writing, has nuances and can be interpreted in various ways. This may have lead to the this notion of me being fairly sentimental and too hung up on the past, but to me it represents a way of feeling and a way of feeling that I had never employed until then.

Eventually, we got past the county competition and arrived at the state competition. As much as I felt like we had a lot at stake, we were still relatively new to the competition, especially with a playing field filled with groups that had worked together in the past and had even more experience than us at this level. And yet, somehow, someway, we did it. I’ll let this excerpt from an essay I wrote as a freshman tell the story from the moment we first won:

“I stood up, smacked my chair in genuine ecstasy, and proceeded with my group towards the stage. As I walked across the stadium floor, I could smell the strong scent of the hardwood floor, and also saw an emphatic crowd surrounding us, with cameras flashing and our parents and teachers crying. All eyes were on us and on our journey to the stage. As my medal was placed around my neck, the strap felt silky, releasing the tension in my body and creating a serene feeling that filled my brain with the same memories and sentiments I had felt just a year ago. I then looked at the medal itself, whose figure was shiny and sleek. Although it was no different from the medal from the previous year, my reflection in the medal was not the same: rather, it had transformed into something brighter, more elegant, and more golden; it was simply extraordinary.”

I will admit, hyperbole was heavily used throughout this two paragraph section; however, the feelings are still authentic. A milestone that big, and quite frankly improbable for five young 7th graders, is something that I am still proud of to this day. Furthermore, perhaps what was best was that I got to do it with the best team I’ve ever been a part of, commemorating an individual who should forever be remembered. While we never found true success at the national level of the competition, making it that round was an accomplishment in and of itself, while the journey was even more rewarding.

Last year, I once again competed in National History Day, but this time without three of the people in our original group due to their commitment to other extracurriculars. With more experience, the two of us left got all the way to 7th place out of over 200 websites at the national level, with even more websites at the state, district, and school levels. There were some times that I missed the experience of being with my other group mates, but I learned to have an even larger fire for the competition, as well as contributed more to the bulk of the project. Only time will tell what our ceiling is for this year’s competition…

It feels weird knowing that it has been over 3 years since our team first came together and went on our remarkable journey. As time has passed, a lot of things have changed regarding the scope of the relationships and interactions among the individuals in our group. Regardless of this, I am forever a changed person because of this adventure, with every memory with every person etched into my brain. As much as I can attribute this feeling to the National History Day competition and the opportunity that it gave to our group, this memory is less about the milestone and more about the trek. And with that being said, I believe this story made all of us believe in one thing: Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

A Potpourri of Project Tips

2019-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

With students getting ready to turn their ideas and notes into a polished project, I offer a couple of tips to help guide your work.

Keep the Theme in Mind Always

I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve heard the comment “doesn’t relate strongly to the theme” or “could be better at talking about ___ about the theme”. National History Day does allow students to choose their own topic and give their own take on that topic, but it’s still important to place the theme connection all throughout the website. In many cases, including the theme actually gives ideas on how to analyze a topic further, although that isn’t always the case.

So What?

Grace Leatherman from the Maryland Humanities always gives a talk to middle school and high school competitors about the importance of one question: “So What?” All topics, whether or not they’re local or regional or global, have long-lasting repercussions aside from simply ending a conflict or being a leader (although sometimes, this may be the most important result of an event). This is what distinguishes the “book reports” from the real National History Day projects, and can sometimes give you that edge to get into cutoffs or even to the next level of the competition.

“Cheat Creatively”

Every single National History Day category has some sort of limit on time or word length. If anything, sometimes the hardest part of creating a project is trying to fit all of the content in your project while also being concise. In some cases, brevity is the issue; in other cases, individuals are being as brief and as analytical as possible but still don’t have space. This is where individuals can “cheat creatively”, otherwise known as finding loopholes in the rules of your category in order to maximize the presentation and content. For example, websites have a 1,200 word limit. Therefore, a lot of times, our group tries to include as many quotes as possible while limiting our “student-created words” to actual analysis. This is also helps to identify, once more, the individuals making “book reports” versus those creating projects. A lot of times, two teams or individuals can have the same topic and can even cover the same type of content and analysis. In that case, what are you going to do to set your project apart?

Presentation: Both Important and Insignificant

I’m referring primarily to visual aids, such as fancy contraptions on exhibits, fancy Adobe After Effects animations, or Javascript widgets. In all of the teams I’ve been a part of, I’ve always focused on the technology and visual aspects. If anything, I’ve learned about creating some cool things during the research process, things that I’ve carried on to future NHD projects and even outside of National History Day. Many judges love these features, but it’s always to remember one phrase: content is king. It is, in fact, a history competition. You could create an amazing web page with interactive this and interactive that but never have a shot because of your lack of research. Again - technological and other types of presentation enhancers will surely add points and create a good feeling of usability and style. However, it is also important to include widgets that can actually contribute to the points in the content.

Quantity vs. Quality?

As the old saying goes, “quality is better than quantity”. However, from my experiences, quantity, especially regarding sources, is equally as important as quality. This is because quantity can typically show that you have a done a large amount of research and have looked at different types of sources, everything ranging from tertiary to primary. Not all of these sources will be good, though - and that’s fine! National History Day encourages individuals to use the research process in order to create products, and realizing that a source may not be valid or may lack in a certain area of your topic is perfectly. Just make sure that you are honest when you cite your source - maybe an article gave great historical context but described the events of a war poorly or maybe an article gives a great retelling but doesn’t cite any of their sources. Remember - creating a project doesn’t mean looking at just one source, but a lot - and a lot of good and reliable sources at that.

Cooperation = Success

When my old National History Day group decided to come together, our enrichment specialist at the time was kind of anxious - she didn’t see how we could possibly work together without butting heads too often. Assuredly, we did have some struggles in trying to resolve our conflicts, but in the end, we always came to compromises, whether or not the result was actually in the project’s favor or not. Now, of course dealing with one teammate is different than dealing with four, but cooperation is still key no matter how many kids are in your group. If two individuals really have the same passion about this competition, conflict is inevitable. Thus, it’s important to always keep the main idea and goals of your claim and project in mind - what point is our group trying to make? What are we trying to imply or explain? Individuals can often times get so caught up in their research that they take stances or completely misinterpret a certain part of the topic. If that’s you, then you should listen to your groupmates comments and find a way to resolve the issue. If that is one of your teammates, do not bash them about it. At the end of the day, it’s just a project - don’t let a single quote ruin your day.