Hello! I am Natasha McNeil-Beckett, a first year undergraduate student studying History at the University of Guelph. As a young woman, I plan on broadening my knowledge of historical events as well as time periods throughout my degree. My dream after school is to teach History to high school students to inspire them to pursue it in post-secondary as my teacher did. I especially find Scottish history intriguing, as my family is linked to Scotland through my father’s lineage. 

My love for Scotland is what sparked an interest in this particular seminar course. I am pleasantly surprised with what I have taken from the class. I have cultivated skills in research, communication and learned the significance of ephemera, through the analysis of postcards and their relation to us today. Ephemera is described as items which originally served some specific purpose and were not expected to be retained or preserved, but became cherished and valuable. By this definition, it was interesting to study postcards. (The Ephemera Society of America, n.d).

I chose the card Station Hotel, Ayr, because I found the message on both the front and back of the card fascinating. I loved the artistic element of the drawn and coloured images. I was also really drawn to it because I noticed it was being sent to Boston, MA, which is somewhere I plan to travel in the upcoming year. 

If you’re interested in seeing what else I discovered through this analytic process, check out the next section.