As of January 11th, 2024, students at HHS have finished and submitted their entries for this year’s NHD competition. NHD or National History Day is a project that spans over the course of several months in which students create research projects about American history. These projects can range from a research paper, exhibit, documentary, website, or performance according to the difficulty of the history class a student is in. Students are allowed to pick any part of American history to base their project on provided it is relevant to the year’s prompt. While some schools embark on this project during late middle school, in Hingham, students are expected to complete this project during their Junior Year.
However, for most high school students, Junior year is considered one of, if not the hardest year of high school. Students must become accustomed to new challenges including the SAT/ACT, expanding their extracurricular commitments, and taking more AP classes. On top of that, preparing a college resume starts to become a legitimate concern rather than a task to be put off for the distant future.
As a result, it comes to no surprise that the added load of NHD, a project which requires months of research and writing, provides even more stress on top of their current workload. Junior Brian Buonagurio concurred with this idea commenting, “It has been something extra to worry about on top of all my other homework since November, but I do feel like in the end sufficient time was given. It is just easy to put off something that is not due for a while when there’s other more pressing assignments and studying to be done.” There is some truth to this perspective. While yes, ample time is given for completion of certain deadlines, it is common for students to fall behind when more recent assignments are due beforehand.
On the other hand, some argue that the assignment, while lengthy, has provided enriching material that would have otherwise not been covered in a traditional history class. Evan Lynch for example remarked, “NHD opened my eye to a world of interesting history outside the bubble of my academic studies, I enjoyed it a lot.” Due to the sheer amount of material needed to cram into a curriculum, it can be hard for history teachers to cover niche topics that students may be interested in. Therefore, NHD can provide students with an opportunity to pursue knowledge on topics more engrossing than traditional American history.
No matter the opinion, students across the board can feel relieved now that their NHD projects are over in time for mid-year examinations. Juniors should be proud of the demanding work they have amassed over the last few months.