The National History Day regionals have taken place, and those who have won the regional competition will be heading to the state competition where they will compete with those from other states who have competed in and won their regionals. However, there is one unifying force to combine all these projects together; each entry will have to have a topic which follows the theme of “Triumph and Tragedy through history”.

“I think that this year’s theme is awesome,” said sophomore Anna Pepper, whose exhibit was one of the few that won the school competition. “It allows for great diversity among topics, which creates an interesting array of projects.”

This year’s theme helped out with finding a topic as well.

“I don’t think it was hard to find a topic for this year’s theme because there was a wide variety of topics that one could have used to exhibit the theme.” said Pepper. “I came up with the topic of how Bayer, a major chemical and pharmaceutical company, benefitted from the tragedy of WWII and how they achieved the triumph of helping millions worldwide today.”

There are several options students could’ve done when creating an entry. They could’ve made a website, exhibit, research paper, live performance, or even a documentary.

“Doing an exhibit is more in my range of experience, as I really like to do art in my free time,” said sophomore Mia Bridges, who is also heading to the regional competition. “It’s also way more fun. Who would want to do a paper if they had the option of doing something else?”

The competition is extremely daunting, however. The other entries that they’re competing against are from people who also went through the grueling task of creating their own entries. After all, all you have to do is go onto the official NHD website and check their winning entry examples to see just how impressive they are.

“I would say that while my project does stand out visually, I am pretty nervous about the other competition,” said Bridges. “I know there are a lot of people who worked really hard on theirs.”

While this project is very hard to do, as it requires considerable thought and effort put into every single part of it, there’s something special about finishing it and looking back at the project and how it impacted you.

“I definitely feel like this project exemplifies my creativity! It was so much fun to choose a design for my project, and I even learned some new painting techniques during the course of creating it!” said Bridges.