internship (we realised the tasks were just far bigger than had been anticipated) Fran was lovely in checking in and making sure I wasn’t overworking, and gave really helpful and kind feedback on each piece of work as I handed it in. Daily Life As a remote intern I was working from home, so I was using a very similar set-up to my own DPhil research during the lockdown. I was expected to do eight hours of work a day, but as I was at home, I was allowed to choose the timings of this. As a humanities researcher who also works weekends, I don’t normally have a very conventional timetable, so it made a welcome change during this internship to work Monday to Friday and feel able to set it aside at the end of the day feeling I had done a good day’s work. This was definitely helped by the work package structure Chatsworth provided me with; even though I only had two check-ins a week (perhaps fewer than with a more conventional in-person internship), the check-ins and work packages combined helped me to monitor that I was nevertheless staying on track. Fran was also able to send me everything I needed as PDF files, which was a great help, and all the research I was carrying out could be done through online databases. Working at home and without the normal dynamics of an office or other worksite meant I did have to be more conscious of keeping track of time and make sure I took regular breaks. As the research I was doing could be fairly labour-intensive, I found it was really helpful to get out of the house for walks or runs to give my mind a rest, either during my lunch break or after work, and have other activities planned in too. As the internship went on my working hours did get quite a bit longer and I had to put other things on hold, as the workload was bigger than had originally been anticipated. However, this was my choice and I felt no pressure from Chatsworth to do this; the research was closely related to my own DPhil work and I knew the bigger purpose behind it, so I simply felt this was what was needed to get the work finished to the standard I thought it deserved. Lasting Impressions The internship has only further confirmed for me that I want to follow my current career path, to continue researching country houses (the subject of my DPhil) and ultimately pursue curatorial and archival work. I gained so many valuable insights into the inner workings of an archive including cataloguing, acquisitions, funding and the archives role in relation to the wider plan for Chatsworth.
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