Students reflect on experiences at county History Day competition

After looking through hundreds of documents, researching archives, contacting experts and compiling their findings into one project, History Day participants came together at the Santa Clara County Office of Education on March 1 to present their topics and display their hard work.

Due to the low number of entries this year, the school did not hold the school-wide contest conducted in previous years. Instead, participants went directly to the county competition.

Although the number of entries decreased significantly — from 20 projects last year to only 14 this year — the topics that students chose were extremely diverse.

According to junior Riddhi Sangam, who researched and created an exhibit about the rights and responsibilities of the Second Amendment, diving into her research allowed her to gain a newfound appreciation for history.

“Before I researched my project, I really did not know a lot about the Second Amendment,” Sangam said. “But after, I found the topic really interesting. I expected that I would be interested in my topic, but not to this degree.”

While Sangam was proud of her work, which was a she did not advance to the state competition, which will take place in April in Riverside and will contain eight projects from SHS students; however, she is excited to be a part of the day next year.

“I enjoyed participating this year and would love another opportunity to do History Day again,” she said.

Sophomore Jennifer Chen, who will be advancing to states in April,  created a performance about the importance of the film “Snow White” as a turning point in history last year, a project closer her ancestral roots.

Chen chose to do her project on the Chinese workers of the Central Pacific Railroad because they are her “ancestors who came to America first.” However, she also added that she has found an abundance of new information while researching.

“It's interesting to learn about and compare the treatments towards Chinese in the past and the present,” Chen said. “Also, information on the railroad workers is actually very limited and rare even today, so I wanted to try something relatively difficult and new.”

On the other hand, junior Anshul Aggarwal chose to explore a topic that was foreign to him, and with his partner junior Nishant Agrawal, he researched and created an exhibit about the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Aggarwal and Agrawal will be advancing to states, along with juniors Mahir Jethanandani, Neel Kattumadam, Vivek Murthy, Alex Kim, Jasmine Deng, Vivian Roan, Nathan Fotedar, Steven Fan, Minda Lee,

Stephen Peng, Michelle Leung, Boyu Pang, Max Chang and  Ethan Ngai.

“I felt that we put a really good presentation together,” Aggarwal said. “We researched about how it [affected events] in the Middle East, and how it affects us.”

While Aggarwal originally thought he knew a lot about Middle Eastern conflicts, he was surprised to find that there were many aspects of Iranian culture and history that he had never been exposed to.

“I thought I knew some things about the conflicts, but researching more showed me that there was so much more to it,” Aggarwal said. “There were so many articles and new events that I had never even seen before.”

Students moving on to states:

Anshul Aggarwal, Nishant Agrawal: Exhibit-Proxy Revolution: A Question of Ethics

Jennifer Chen:Performance- “Ghosts” of the Central Pacific Railroad: Rights and Responsibilities of Chinese Laborers,

Mahir Jethanandani, Neel Kattumadam, Nathan Fotedar, Vivek Murthy, Linus Lu: Website – Dmitri Shostakovich: Composer under the Iron Fist,

Alex Kim, Steven Fan, Stephen Peng: Website- Tacet Symphony: A suppression of Musical Rights

Vivian Roan, Jasmine Deng, Michelle Leung, Ethan Ngai: Website- Exodus of the Boat People: Rights of refugees, responsibilities of America,

Boyu Pang: Website- The Black Panthers and the Black Power Movement

Max Chang: Website- Miranda v. Arizona: Preserving the People’s Unalienable Rights

Aditya Aggarwal: Website- The Pentagon Papers: National Security v. Accountability