Meet a VC Intern: Serena Rodholm

Learn more about one of our 2020-2021 VC Interns, Serena Rodholm, the UCLA Archives Intern.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am a second-year graduate student at UCLA striving for my Master’s degrees in Library and Information Science (MLIS). I’ve been interested in archival work since about 9 years old doing genealogical research. I love US history and majored in it as an undergraduate student at UC Riverside. I currently also work for the UCLA Library’s Center for Oral History Research and perform oral histories on the side. My favorite was when I interviewed my great-grandmother in Texas who, though now deceased, was 99 at the time.

How did you hear about VC and what drew you to apply?

I was able to get a paid internship position through my professor mentor’s Mellon Foundation Grant at UCLA focused on working with community archives. Having gotten the grant previously and worked with Visual Communications in the past, I was able to receive my position by applying to be one of the grant candidates. Thankfully, I was chosen!

What are your intern duties at VC? Which part do you find interesting?

Last quarter, I mainly focused on learning the about the collections in the VC Archives and meeting former Visual Communications supporters via “tagging parties.” These meetings held over Zoom are where my supervisor, Abraham Ferrer, and I go through images and try to get individuals to recall context or metadata that corresponds to each digitized negative or slide. This quarter we are continuing our tagging parties as well as organizing a lot of the back-end metadata. Next quarter we will continue our tagging parties and I will gather up images from the Visual Communications collections to create a digital photo exhibit. I already have some interesting ideas up my sleeve!

What is your favorite thing about working here? Any memorable moments?

I am a history enthusiast, so seeing the way that Visual Communications and Los Angeles has changed over the years is a very unique and interesting perspective. Also, a lot of the individuals in the digitized negatives and slides are coming to our tagging parties, so it is wonderful to get to meet the people in the photographs I am working with. Hearing their takes on what the events and people were like are wonderful moments because a lot of times they either get embarrassed or excited, sparking memories of the time. This photo below was notable to me because it just showed some of the joy and fun that VC Co-Founder Eddie Wong and the first members of Visual Communications had at the time. So often people in photographs today pose for the camera. This photo you could tell was really in the moment and authentic and I appreciated that.

Visual Communications co-founder EDDIE WONG, From the Visual Communications ARchives

Where would you like to travel to after the pandemic?

I would love to travel to Japan after the pandemic. My partner is part African American and part Japanese and would love to meet his relatives there. Also, he and I are obsessed with ramen and would love to try all of the delicious food! For historical reasons, I would love to visit as well.

Being a Student and Intern in a Pandemic

My current work station at home

Being a student and intern is a challenge, but I have been doing both (work and school) since I was an undergraduate student. I like the fact that I do not have to commute to work and school as I am not located in the LA area anymore, but staring at the screen all day is a little draining. I definitely have Zoom fatigue! I stay sane by hanging out with my partner, going for runs and exercising every morning before work and class, and stopping all work and homework at 6:30 pm. I do not do either on the weekends and use that time to relax and re-charge.

One of the ways I relax with my partner is to play Destiny 2, a first-person shooter video game created by Bungie where you can choose to be a Warlock, Hunter, or Titan. Each has different abilities but all three can use fire, ice, "darkness", and void abilities which you can switch between. You can customize your outfits and acquire new weapons for doing a variety of activities. These include raids, crucible (team fighting) matches, strikes, public events, etc. My partner and I have two X-Boxes so we are able to play simultaneously using different accounts. Usually I am in one room and my boyfriend is in the other and we communicate over headphones. There is a storyline that comes out periodically and updates are made regularly. It is a really fun interactive game. I like that you shoot monsters, making the experience more fantasy-like and less realistic. Destiny 2 is definitely something we have played for years now. We haven't been playing as much since we got our house but it is a great way to unwind during COVID and is safer than doing an activity outside.

My partner and I recently moved from Santa Monica to Riverside County (where we are both from) and we were lucky enough to afford a house out this way. Buying a house during the pandemic was stressful, especially because I was working. The market is crazy too with people overbidding and houses selling within a day. The market is hyper-competitive because of low-interest rates, but I am very thankful and lucky with the house we got. We had a handyman do most of our repairs so it was not so much time as costly. We did our own painting though, so that took up almost every weekend from October to December 2020. We only have our master closet to go, thankfully.

Over the holidays, my boyfriend and his dad put up Christmas lights on our new house. His parents let us borrow some Christmas decorations they had. It was a great bonding time between the two of them. I also love the picture above because it’s been my dream since I was little to own a home with a Christmas tree in the front window. It was a special moment for me to see that come true. I also envisioned snow everywhere but that won't ever happen with us in the desert, but I will take what I can!

admiring the christmas lights on our new house

my partner and i wearing our destiny 2 t-shirts with our gamer tags on the sleeves