Team Member Alice H. Bio

My name is Alice Hu and I am a freshman at University Laboratory High School. While I still love to bemoan the fact that ever since I moved to Illinois six years ago, cornfields have been a daily sight, I’m glad to be able to call Champaign-Urbana my home. Outside of school, I enjoy a variety of activities and interests that keep me happily and busily occupied. I play piano, chess, and soccer. I can be considered a bibliophage, and I love to devour books, and really the printed word in general. I also am fond of writing – it is my goal to one day be recognizable in my writing voice and style, and right now, I run a personal blog. At my church I help teach Sunday School classes for first- and second-graders. Something that not many people know about me is that I have a wacky interest in the environment and ecology.

I first got involved with the WILL oral history project last year as an eighth grader, when I participated in conducting interviews to use for the Counterculture project. This year, I help break down the material my classmates and I collected last year through listening to the collected interviews and editing them. To me, history is fundamentally a study of people. This project really exemplifies that belief – in listening to voices of individuals of the Counterculture movement, the time period, and the culture and emotions of that time, comes to life, vivid and crystalline.

This year, I can’t wait to learn more about oral history and the Counterculture through my ever-increasing interactions with the wonderful and priceless stories of the movement.