Sahilia Ramirez ’18
Sahilia Ramirez ’18
Internship: Research assistant, Wheaton History Department
Award: Trustee Scholar
Major: Women’s and gender studies
Taking account of the past: “I was asked by Kathryn Tomasek, a professor in the history department, to join her and a group of three students to transcribe a 19th century account book, which belonged to Laban Morey Wheaton. This internship took place over the summer at Wheaton, and I traveled to Krakow, Poland, at the end of the internship to attend the 2016 Digital Humanities conference.”
Learning a new skill: “I came in with zero knowledge and absolutely no type of background with computing technology. This internship gave me the opportunity to learn and use XML, an extensible markup language, which is the alphabet that you use to communicate with a computer. This is extremely useful because XML plays a major role in IT systems. Computing technology fields are growing and expanding, it’s good to know and have experience with this language. I was fortunate enough to be part of a great team who were willing to extend a hand and teach me the basics.”
Finding her calling: “I chose to major in women’s and gender studies during my freshman year after I had taken a course under Associate Professor Kim Miller. She changed my entire world. I gained a greater prospective on what it truly means to be a Afro-Latina woman living in America. Kim was incredibly passionate and enthusiastic in her teachings. It was contagious.”
Looking to the future: “This internship not only gave me experience with programming languages XML and TEI, but also an idea of what real life work with a group or team would look like. This is crucial because no matter what type of job you decide to pursue in the future, you will ultimately at have to work with a group of people and that in itself is a skill required to be successful.”
