Several students advanced to the state History Day competition on March 24 at the county competition. The qualifying 23 students in 11 entries will travel to Riverside during the weekend of April 27 in hopes of advancing to the national competition.
This year’s theme is “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History,” and students can compete individually or in a group with an exhibit, documentary, historical paper, website or performance. This year, for the first time, the school hosted the county competition.
“The county competition was especially competitive this year, so this is quite an achievement,” said librarian Kevin Heyman, who serves as the school’s History Day coordinator. “Students created a number of high quality entries.”
The school swept the paper division and took two out of three in the group documentary and individual website divisions. In addition to the 11 entries that qualified, four entries finished as first runners-up.
Several students spent months researching and perfecting their entries. Despite the time commitment, however, many students enjoyed completing their projects.
“It took an extraordinary amount of time to research, compile that research, and code our website,” junior Johnny Chang said. Chang, along with juniors Kevin Chen and Justin Chiang, created a website on Epicurean philosophy that will allow the group to advance to state. “We did finish, though, and we’re proud of our work.”
History Day is a year-long commitment that started during first semester with a reflection on the year’s theme and the creation of an annotated bibliography. Though most students did not begin construction of their projects until second semester, many spent the first months of the school year researching their topics.
“The large time investment that we made, at least for me, was offset by the colossal amount of knowledge we gained in the process of completing such an enormous task,” Chang said.
History Day was an opportunity for students to explore a topic with greater depth than school history classes provide.
“We decided to do National History Day because we saw the opportunity to combine a common interest, philosophy, with the chance to learn about the historical impacts of an underground topic,” Chang said.
Juniors make up the majority of participating students and receive extra credit in their AP US History classes for participating.
“The grade boost was an added bonus,” said junior Nandita Sampath, who is part of a group documentary on the Tiananmen Square Massacre with juniors Christine Xue, Madison King and Emma Lee. “I probably would have still done [National History Day] even if there wasn’t any extra credit, though.”
Last year, several students achieved tremendous success with their entries. Sophomore Anushree Dugar’s paper on the Colorado River Compact, senior Ariella Yendler’s performance on the Scopes Monkey Trial and seniors Christine Tseng, Sanjana Chetia and Jennifer Yang’s documentary on World War II Japanese Internment all represented the school on the national level.
Qualifying entries from the state competition will then advance to the national competition, held at the University of Maryland in June.
