My name is Itai Riftin- I’m a Philosophy student who worked as an intern in the Collaborative Research Internship on the Project “Collected Letters of Ford Madox Ford”.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I signed up for the project if I’m honest. I had never heard of Ford and definitely had no experience in transcription work, which was what was required of me. Nonetheless, the project seemed like a fun experience (not to mention the money I’d received, which definitely didn’t hurt). Luckily, I was right! Almost as soon as I was contacted by Professor Max Saunders about the project, I realized that I was in for a wonderful time. Any worries that I had about an expectation of perfection were put to rest, and I could tell that the team I would be working with was friendly and pleasant.
Effectively I was tasked with 2 with two types of jobs. The first (and in my opinion more interesting) was actual transcription work. I was sent a couple of folders every week containing photographs or scans of things that I would need to transcribe. Usually, these were handwritten and required me to learn to understand inconsistent and messy handwriting (which Ford’s certainly could be). This part of the project was always a delight. Ford was an extremely charming man, and his personality shone through every single one of his letters and essays. By reading his writing I felt like I was growing to understand him as a person, and by doing so I gained a more serious appreciation for The Good Soldier, a book of his which I had read early on in the internship. The essays also taught me quite a bit about literature, pointing toward various authors I had never heard of and giving me a better understanding of the impressionist literary tradition.
The second form that the internship took was in sorting various files containing scans and transcriptions and comparing them with an online database to ensure that they were labeled correctly. While it is true that this part of the project was less to my liking, it would be remiss of me if I did not mention the benefits that it did come with. Thanks to this administrative work I was given a behind-the-scenes look at what academic projects often looked like. As someone who hopes to enter the academic world at some point, this was certainly valuable.
Overall, the research internship was a fantastic experience, one which I hope to take part in again next summer. I suppose that it would give me more competition in being accepted, but I do genuinely recommend it to any student who’s interested.
Itai Riftin, BA Philosophy