This is the first question students examined in SCHC 326. As historian David Ritchie explains, oral history is founded upon memory; it "collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews" (Ritchie, 2015, p. 1). Volunteering at a museum has taught me that people often look to "historical significance" in antiquated artifacts or centuries old narratives by identifying it as something removed from their own lives—historical events occurred in the past, and we often see our present as a legacy. We identify ourselves as descendants of these historically significant events. The coronavirus pandemic has served as a reminder that our era, too, is dynamic and historically significant. By conducting an oral history interview and learning from other students in this course, I learned that oral history is comprised of common routines, attitudes, stories, and emotions. It tells of a history whose legacy is not yet defined or clearly understood. Oral history, then, evaluates continuity and change in real time. How have routines changed? How is work different? What is new in education? Human experiences and perspectives, as captured by oral history interviews, provide crucial evidence of narrators' opinions. Within the context of background questions—"where did you grow up? What was your family like? Can you describe your school?"—historians learn how certain experiences or characteristics shaped narrators' points of view towards certain events. Similarly, when oral histories are contextualized, they offer a narrative of regions, events, and time periods. They allow us to understand how individuals both anticipated historical legacies and actively worked to shape them. 

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In my oral history interview with Cheryl McCann, Cheryl drew upon her experience as an accountant, researcher, and mother to examine the coronavirus and business operations, partisanship, mental health, education, human-environment interactions, and historical research. As an avid local history scholar and family history researcher, Cheryl examined parallels between the virus and past historical crises, before synthesizing her knowledge of the past and understanding of current events to anticipate the pandemic's future impacts on businesses, social interactions, education, art, and historical documentation. The interview itself brought new meaning to our first question—"what is oral history?" It is a piece of collective narratives in real-time, caught in between events' causation and legacy. This window provides valuable insight into history on a micro-level, which, with contextualization, can reveal overarching attitudes and themes.