Chelsy Bautista

Chelsy Bautista, an undergraduate at UC Merced, has worked on the California Agricultural Resources Archive project (cara.ucmerced.edu) as a student assistant at the UC Merced Library since earlier this year. This month, as she prepares to graduate, she shares her reflection on what the project has meant to her.

My name is Chelsy Bautista. I am currently a fifth-year student at the University of California Merced. I will be graduating this December with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. I was born and raised in the great city of Los Angeles, California. Although I lived there my whole life, I would also visit my parent's hometown in Oaxaca, Mexico every year for months on end, so sometimes I say that I was also raised there! When choosing my undergrad path, I decided to attend UC Merced because I felt that this school would be able to provide me with a lot more opportunities compared to a bigger campus. And just as predicted, it did exactly that. Being a part of a smaller community, I was given many amazing opportunities that helped me develop my leadership and work skills. One of these was being a part of the CARA project team.

Working on the CARA project for the UC Merced Library has opened my eyes to a new world that I didn’t know about. I love that I can look back and preserve records that may mean a lot to someone and can potentially help with someone's research. History museums have always been my thing—looking back on history with visual material is fascinating. So, the fact that I can do it as a job is my favorite thing. I have learned a lot about keeping records preserved, transcribing them, data entry, and spreadsheet skills. These are important skills that I will take into the future. While working on this project, I have come across a lot of different materials, but my favorite is a scrapbook that the 4-H students made. This scrapbook was a DIY yearbook, full of lots of different pictures and even a very old Disneyland ticket.

With my time at UC Merced coming to an end, I am grateful that I was able to be a part of the CARA project team. I have decided to further my education and would love to attend graduate school. I’m in the process of applying to an Industrial Organizational Psychology program for the fall semester while also searching for a job in human resources.