Summer funding is one of the absolute best things about Swarthmore College. In February each year you can apply for academic division funding for a project, unpaid internship, or research plan you have for the summer and receive up to $6,000 to fund your work. I have received summer funding each summer I’ve been at Swarthmore, and it has allowed me to have some pretty incredible and exciting summers. This past summer I did thesis research in Tempe, Arizona at the Jane Goodall archive in preparation for my thesis that I have started writing this fall. A lot of my other friends were doing thesis research with college funding this summer as well, though, so I thought I’d take you through a day with all of us to show you just some of the things you can get up to with summer funding.

9 AM

LIZZIE My thesis is about the institutionalization of the Gombe Stream Research Center, where Jane Goodall did her famous chimpanzee research. I spent a lot of time digging through monthly reports and correspondence in the archive over the summer. By 9am I am up and getting ready for the day! I spent a month living in an apartment a fifteen minute walk from the archive, so I would get up around 8:30 and make myself breakfast before packing my bag and heading to the archive.

DARBY I spent the summer doing thesis research at the National Library of Spain in Madrid and Archive of the Indies in Seville. My project was focused on the impact of philosophical and literary trends that were emerging in Spain on colonization and conquest in northern Mexico and California. Seville is great location to look at Spanish colonization archival material, there was lots of material from conquistadors to look at in the archive. On a normal day of archive work I was asleep at 9 am, since I am very much not a morning person!

SHUTONG My thesis is about the development of traditional Chinese medicine in Malaysia from the late 1990s to 2020s. It focuses on how traditional Chinese medicine was part of the Malaysian nation state building process and how the Malaysian government used professionalization to integrate Chinese medicine into the national health system. I was mostly doing secondary source reading and interviews with practitioners and Malaysian international students this summer. I’m a morning person, so I’d be up at 7am, make breakfast and take a walk. By around 9am I would start doing readings and sending emails.

JING JING I spent the summer in Marseille doing research for my history thesis. My project is exploring racing in Algeria in the interwar period and its relation to colonialism. The archives I was working in were in Aix, so I would be awake by 9am, making breakfast. I would usually have 2 fried eggs and toast.

10 AM

LIZZIE By 10am I was walking to the archive. Tempe was hot in the middle of summer! Usually it would be around 90F and completely sunny for my walk, so I would cover myself in sunscreen and wear my trusty baseball cap to try to protect my face. The walk took me through the middle of ASU’s Tempe campus, which was really beautiful.

DARBY I would be up by 10am. I was staying in an apartment in Madrid with a roommate from Swarthmore who was also working on an honors history thesis. I would make breakfast and do some secondary source reading. Then I would get dressed and walk to coffee shop called New York Bagel, which I went to a lot because they had iced coffee, which is not that common in Spain.

SHUTONG I was probably doing more readings, unless it was a day I had an interview, in which case I would usually do that in the morning. I would set up an interview with an informant about a week in advance, and we would meet on either WeChat or zoom. I would record and take notes for around an hour and a half, and then I’d take a break before going back to my notes and adding to them. On a busy day I would do two interviews. The hard work is really the process of finding informants. I would have to do a lot of work to find contact information and then I would have to be really insistent. I would have to email a lot to get people to commit to interviews, and I got a lot of rejections.

JING JING By 10am I would be heading out to the archive. The train station was only a 10 minute walk from my apartment to the train station, but it was always a hot and uphill walk. I would get on the bus which would take a little more than 40 minute to get to in downtown Aix. The archive was about a ten minute walk from the bus stop.

11 AM

LIZZIE By 11am I was a few folders in. The Goodall archive was very different to many other more traditional historical archives because it was run by a lab of scientists and grad students that mostly used it for scientific research. The archive was just a room filled with filing cabinets, that were filled with tons of folders of data and documentation. I would start by setting up my computer and my camera, then reviewing my notes from the day before to find what folder I wanted to start with.

DARBY I am coffee in hand, walking half hour to National Library of Spain, which houses the biggest collection of colonial documentation in Spain. It was a very cool place to do research! It functions almost completely as an archive, and anyone can obtain a readers card to access reading rooms and request material published post 1960s. Since my thesis focuses on the early modern period, I had to get a researchers card with a letter from my advisor saying I was under his advisorship to access the documents I needed.

SHUTONG I was able to go to a clinic of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and shadow a doctor for a few days, which was a really cool experience. A lot of international students studying there would intern in the clinic to learn. The doctor I worked with worked at the acupuncture clinic, and she had some really interesting patients come in. There was one old guy who thought he was gonna die and he had very strong ideas about his treatment, and the practitioner just did what he wanted. Chinese medicine fosters a much more collaborative relationship between practitioner and patient than western medicine. There was also a man with AIDS who’s been coming in for years, and kids with mental problems. The practitioner specialized in mental problems, sleep disorders, turrets, and shifting menstrual cycle.

JING JING I would get to the archive, check in with the receptionist and be assigned a desk for the day. I would take some pieces of paper, my computer, and pencil to my desk. After going up to reading room, I ordered what I wanted at desktops on the wall. You could order 2 things for your first order of the day, and I would usually get them around 11:40. I would go through those boxes and order another one by 1:30pm.

12 PM

LIZZIE More work! Usually the professor who ran the lab would come through around this time and check in with me and see if I needed any help. He and all the grad students were super welcoming and helpful as I developed my research.

DARBY I spent most of my time in the cartography research room, which was so beautiful and there were so many maps! Most of them are digitized, so I was focused on looking maps that were not digitized while I was at the archive. I would put all my stuff into a locker and only bring in my laptop, phone, charger, and headphones. I would have to go through multiple security checkpoints before getting to the archive desk and getting assigned a desk for the day. At noon I was continuing to go through archival materials.

SHUTONG Lunchtime!

JING JING Working through the material! There was some cool correspondence I looked at between the automobile clubs and the police to make the races happen.

1 PM

LIZZIE Lunchtime! I would finish the folder I was looking at and head to the kitchen, where I would warm up my lunch in the microwave. I brought my lunch from home most days, usually leftovers from whatever I had for dinner the night before. I would take a break to eat and text my parents.

DARBY I would spend a lot of time keeping record of my citations and putting in more requests. The whole summer I was in communication with the wonderful interlibrary loan Swarthmore librarian to get scans of secondary sources to read alongside my primary archival work.

SHUTONG Around 1pm I would wash the dishes from lunch and take a nap.

JING JING I would order the next round of material and head out to get lunch. I would go to a little supermarket around the corner. Once I went out to a restaurant and once I got lunch at the university, but usually I would get a very cheap little meal for 10 euros from the supermarket. I usually sat at the supermarket or come back to the university campus to eat.

2 PM

LIZZIE I would head back into the archive. I would find some more folders to look through and take notes on, usually transitioning into material to photograph to look at later.

DARBY Lunchtime! I would meet up with my roommate and go out to lunch. Sometimes we would make and bring lunches, but we really loved going out to Honest Greens, small chain in Madrid with a hot counter. We would spend about an hour eating lunch and getting a coffee. There is also a cafeteria in the basement of the archive that had a full cafeteria style hot lunch.

SHUTONG I would bike to the gym near my house and exercise.

JING JING Around 2 I would head back to the archive. I usually got a 50c coffee from the vending machine, which was pretty good for being 50c!

3 PM

LIZZIE By 3:30 I tried to be finished looking at new material. I took my camera and uploaded all my photos to my computer and organized them. I would then make a plan for the next day and mark what folders I wanted to look at next.

DARBY The level of security to get in and out of the archive was pretty intense. I would put all my stuff into a locker and only bring in my laptop, phone, charger, and headphones. I would have to go through multiple security checkpoints before getting to the archive desk and getting assigned a desk for the day.

SHUTONG At 3pm I would be biking back home after working out at the gym.

JING JING I got through about four to five boxes a day. Lots of them were planning for the 1930 centennial in Algeria, so I went through a lot of meeting transcripts, budgets, and correspondence planning the races. There were cool maps of circuits, as well as some material from the Oran automobile club and booklets clubs put out about races.

4 PM

LIZZIE I would leave the archive by 4:30 and head back to my apartment. If I had thought it was hot in the morning, the 115F heat for the afternoon walk was a real smack in the face after spending all day in the AC! Luckily it really wasn’t that long, and then I was able to collapse in my apartment. I would often call my parents to tell them what I found in the archive that day.

DARBY One of my favorite things I looked at was a facsimile of a Portolan atlas, which was a popular style of map in the 15th and 16th century for sailors that showed coastline views from the sea. This one was made by a popular Venetian cartographer from the 16th century, and it was one of the first maps showing California.

SHUTONG By 4pm I would be back home and start cooking dinner. I would usually do some more secondary source reading too.

JING JING I would leave archive at 4:30pm and do my commute in reverse.

5 PM

LIZZIE Once I dropped my stuff off in my apartment I would head down to the Whole Foods, which was conveniently located right underneath my apartment! I would usually get a protein and fresh fruits or vegetables.

DARBY The archive was not super busy, and requests were usually filled same day since the materials were mostly on site, which was really nice. They had a huge collection of indices of different ways maps of the Americas have been categorized, which was super helpful for my research and gave me a good sense of what to request.

SHUTONG I would have dinner with my mom. I know my time may sound a little boring, but I really enjoyed being home with the support to be able to continue my thesis work all summer. The interviews and secondary source work was incredibly helpful preparation as I start writing my thesis this semester!

JING JING Still commuting…

6 PM

LIZZIE After getting food I would make dinner. I usually made pasta or some rice and tofu dish. I had a lot of fun with the kitchen over the summer, especially over the weekends I spent a lot of time experimenting with cooking.

DARBY I lived right near the tower of gold where ships coming back from the colonies would dump all the gold they came back with.

SHUTONG I would take a walk with my mom after dinner.

JING JING I finally got back to the apartment! The supermarket was conveniently located right under my apartment, so I would grab something to make for dinner. I would usually make easy Chinese home cooking dishes, salmon, or tuna pasta salad. I would make dinner immediately since I was usually very hungry and eat out on the balcony, which was one of my favorite parts of my apartment.

7 PM

LIZZIE The unfortunate thing about living alone was that I also had to do the dishes. Which I would put off as long as possible and finally get around to, usually after going out on my balcony and reading or writing for a little bit.

DARBY I would work at the archive through seven, and then walk back to the apartment! I would get back around 7:30, stopping and grabbing groceries on the way back. There was a normal grocery store on the corner, but the big chain has more meat and fruit options. I would talk to mom or listen to music on the way home. I really loved just walking around and listening to music around Madrid. The metro system was quite good, it just didn’t work for super well for the path between the archive and my apartment.

SHUTONG Work time. I would do more readings in the evening on weekdays.

JING JING I would usually go for an evening walk by the sea or in the hip arty neighborhood in Marseilles where I was living. There was lots of street art and nice bars.

8 PM

LIZZIE My apartment building also had a gym, which was really nice since it was so hot it was hard to exercise outside. I would try to go a lot to stay active.

DARBY I would usually be reading a fun book, or planning stuff for family when they came to visit Spain. And of course there were always more emails to write. I would start making dinner around now as well. I made spaghetti and meatballs a lot!

SHUTONG On the weekends I would watch a show with my mom or play games with friends.

JING JING I would hang out on my balcony more and do some prep work for the next day in the archive.

9 PM

LIZZIE I usually had some emails to write and some work to do for some other projects I was working on. Then I’d shower, watch a show and get ready for bed.

DARBY Heading to my room to wind down before bed!

SHUTONG I would do a little more work, and then head to bed!

JING JING I would watch a movie, and get ready for bed.