Every spring the Museum hosts some of the projects created for the Tri-Valley History Fair. For their fair, students from Tri-Valley middle school research a topic that interests them, and then they create a presentation of their research. A portion of those projects are brought to the Museum for display during the month of April, and Museum personnel in turn judges the projects and makes its own awards. A few weeks ago I was asked to help judge the students’ projects that were on display at the Museum, and I’m glad I decided to lend a hand. It is comforting to see the amount of effort the students put into their work. As a student of history I enjoy seeing such enthusiasm at an early age. The projects are displayed on each floor of the museum, and staff members and volunteers are assigned to a specific floor to determine which projects will move on to the final round of judging. The judging process itself was more difficult than I anticipated. I wanted to put as much thought into determining the winners as the students put into creating their projects. With that in mind it was hard to choose a winner out of so many deserving projects. Thankfully there are four categories, meaning four students, or groups, will be rewarded for their hard work. After carefully choosing four projects I am now waiting to meet with the other judges to discuss our candidates. That meeting will determine which projects will go on to the final round of judging, where the winners of each floor will be compared to each other to select the final winners. I look forward to seeing the end results, and I want to use this post to congratulate all the students on their contributions to the fair.