Students from Silver Consolidated Schools visiting the seat of the U.S. government. Here they sit on the steps of the Supreme Court. (Courtesy Photo)

[Editor's Note: This is the third of several in a series of articles about and by students who participated from Silver Consolidated Schools in the National History Day competitions, under the tutelage of teachers Claudie Thompson and Lee Wilson. This editor posed the questions, and the students replied.]

These students succeeded at the state level, allowing them to go to Nationals in Washington D.C. Two entries, a group project, and an individual project placed among the top 10 finalists at Nationals.

The two interviews below present more comments from two who made it to nationals and what they have discovered and learned from the program.

Colton Traeger, who participated as part of a group performance involving Traeger, Casey Rogers, Lane Porter - group performance - A Hollywood Frontier: Olivia de Havilland's Fight for Artistic Freedom

What made me join NHD initially was my friends. They told me it would be fun to do together. I stayed after hearing Mr. Thompson and Mr. Wilson talk about how intense and competitive NHD is. They were right.

I come up with topics by letting my mind wander about random events in history, starting with something large, such as WWII, and eventually becoming something specific, such as the Enigma machine.

I thought a performance sounded fun and different from the other categories. I did not want to do an individual performance, so I joined with some friends to create a group performance.

The NHD process has taught me patience, hard work, and perseverance can conquer all.

I cannot think of anything I would want to change. There were things which could be better, but in the beginning, there were almost no bad things.
When I won state I thought "Alright, time for Nationals."

At Nationals I was fine, except for one of my fingers was twitching.

Being able to spend countless hours on a single project was a skill I did not possess before NHD. I need to be able to do this in any career.

Being in NHD will give me an advantage, because whenever I encounter a difficult class, I will be able to say: "This isn't as hard as NHD was."

The time spent on the projects was worth it. There's nothing else to say.

NHD is a truly unique experience. Most of my life I've been able to barely work in school and get As. There were a few times where I had to learn quickly, but those never lasted a full year. When COVID began, I was bored and had no schoolwork. When I heard Thompson and Wilson mention a challenge, I was excited to finally be pushed. NHD is the only class in which I have been constantly challenged to grow, and I've taken Calculus III. Compared to NHD, everything else is easy.

Makayla Martinez, who worked in a group with Anson Beck, Ryan Chadwick - group website - The Haber Process: The Frontier that Fed the World

I decided to take part in National History Day because I love history and this program gave me an outlet to express that love for it. National History Day gave me the opportunity to become the teacher for once and teach a topic I was passionate about to others.

My group and I decided to do research on our own concerning topics and parts of history that interested us. After we narrowed down all of our top three topics, we shared them with each other and researched further on all the topics till we found one that we thought fit the theme and was interesting. My group and I chose the Haber process: the process that creates synthetic ammonia which is used to produce fertilizers which feed the world. This topic fit the theme frontiers and our whole group found it to be very influential and important to our lives today.

My group and I decided to make a group website, because one of our group members already had experience in website formatting, and I was experienced in organizing and writing information. We wanted to do a website because it was the format in which we could show off our interviews with our writing and formatting skills the best.

Last year I decided to work alone and write a paper, so this year I wanted to try to work in a group for once. My one partner was looking for a writer, so we immediately joined forces and began looking for one more person to be a tie breaker and keep balance in the group. My group and I are all good friends, and we decided that since we all worked hard and had a great desire to make it to Nationals we decided to form a group together.

The NHD process has taught me perseverance and the importance of little details. Once you choose your topic, you're stuck with that topic for a whole year and at times you hate it and feel like you're getting nowhere with it, but you have to persevere through those stages because in the end you create a professional project that you are proud of and love. And when it comes to little details, though they seem absurd, a singular word can change the whole meaning of a sentence, or a singular picture caption can be the deciding factor of first or second place. I have been applying this process to my own college assignments and basically anything that I chose to do, and it makes my projects stand out beyond others.

If I had a chance to go back and make a few changes, I would try to focus more on the fact that the scientist was Jewish and a German patriot and see if we could somehow see if he opened a frontier for Jewish scientists as well.

When we won at state my group and I were ecstatic. Last year, I did not make it past state and it felt like I finally got over a hill that I was stuck on for a while. My group and I immediately started looking for changes to make for nationals right after we got back.

Though I knew our topic was important, I was a nervous wreck at nationals, because I really wanted to make finals and win. I was mainly nervous because even though our topic and project were really good, our topic is only enjoyed by some.

This program has taught me how to work well with others and accept that I am not right all the time, which is important in the medical field. And this program has taught me patience and determination which will come in handy when I attend medical school.

NHD has already given me an advantage in college and my regular schooling. I graduated with an Associate's Degree in honors at the same time as graduating from high school, and I honestly could not have done it without my experience in NHD. Researching, writing essays, doing bibliographies, doing interviews and even just presenting my projects came with ease to me and it really just made everything easier.

Even though my group and I did not advance to finals, I would not trade my experience this year for the win. This was the best project I have ever done, and my group and I spent hours on it, and I feel we have nothing to hang our heads from. We succeeded at making a professional website that even amazed a worker at BASF who is familiar with our topic. During the course of this year, I grew to love my topic and my teammates so much and just creating this project with my group felt like winning nationals to me.

National History Day is a prestigious program that is super serious and takes countless hours of hard work. Though this may seem unfun or just pure work; it's not, you end up making it fun. You get to choose what you do and research something that you are genuinely interested in and show it off that you are the best at what you do. The class laughs a lot, and everyone grows this bond with each other, and you genuinely want the others to succeed and do a good job as well. You become this great big family that just keeps learning and pushing their limits to become the best they can be.