This was an amazing experience for me. It is true that working in the museum field is still very much fresh to me. I’m not even a year in; but I have such a strange wonderful feeling inside of me. A Feeling that I myself don’t very much understand yet. I had such a feeling of pride in my own work when I slowly watched everything I had done in the last month finally come together. It was such an amazing feeling of accomplishment.
Rewind just a few weeks earlier and if you would have asked me then if I had felt that same feeling, I probably would have burst out into laughter. Let me set the stage for you. I am sitting in the temporary exhibit space and our curator keeps bringing down to me numerous amounts of wood working tools to be prepped for the exhibit we are preparing. A story of wood working in the county. This sounds like a simple and fun idea. It shouldn’t be too difficult to pull together. At least that was the first thought I had. That was before I found out that it was going to be my job to prep everything that would go into the exhibit. Not a small task to undertake.
For the next two weeks I would find myself on my hands knees, brush in hand, with a bottle of vinegar, trying to slowly remove as much dust, dirt, and surface rest from as many objects as I possibly could. By the end of each day I found myself covered in grime with pain throughout my entire body. I kept asking myself if I had made the right decision on every car ride back to my modest home. And to be honest there were days when I wasn’t quite sure if I had.
And low and behold, I was done. I had cleaned and restored everything that was to go into the cases. This was my very first full length exhibit. I saw this one from the conception to the actualization. This felt like my exhibit. I had such a great feeling of accomplishment and It was the first moment that I felt like I was a Museum professional. That all of my experiences had finally led right to that point. To that moment. Right were I needed to be.
