My Journey Thus Far

Hello there. My name is Mason and I am beginning the quest for the perfect thesis and like many of my fellow students, I am excited for this journey. I took quite a circuitous route to get here. I started my college career as a Packaging Science student. I realized after my first year that Packaging Science was not the path for me. I switched into our School of Individualized Study and started taking some museum studies courses to see if I really wanted to do Museum Studies. I had heard about museum studies a long time ago, when I was in High School. My school offered a tour to RIT and two of the options were Packaging Science and Museum Studies. Though I opted for Packaging Science I still had a lot of interest in the museum studies major. After a semester of taking some museum studies courses (big shout out to both Professor DeRoo and Professor Brown for piquing my interest) I decided to buy in and switched my major to Museum Studies.

My big interest in museums has always been in using technology to bridge the gap between the museum and its visitors. I think that museums can educate a wider audience and reach more people through the use of technology. Last year I was involved with a project that involved creating a website to host a bunch of scanned primary sources and it was a very rewarding experience. Bringing users knowledge through the use of technology is a major point of interest for me and I hope to continue work of this type.

My final step in making it to where I am today as a Museum Studies student was the internship I completed this summer working at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. It allowed me to get more exposure to what work in a museum could entail for me one day and I truly enjoyed the work I did cleaning, categorizing, and packing a variety of artifacts. I also got to get experience with the process of receiving a gift to the museum which you can see in the picture of me with the bear. The eagle was a part of a major project that I was involved with where the entire taxidermied bird collection of RMSC needed to be moved. All in all I truly enjoyed my experience as an intern and it reinforced my interest in a career in the museum field.