I have always been fascinated by history – especially the American Revolution. When I was given the opportunity to visit Boston, Massachusetts, I realized that I could use this trip for my project and tie my two favorite subjects together – history and psychology. I began researching the Freedom Trail and noticed that there were several people who made the sights significant. These people were recurring in the history of more than one sight, so I began to investigate these people and what made them such good and famous leaders.

     Researching the leaders was particularly challenging. There is a lot of information about what they did and how they did it, but there was little information about their qualities or their personal lives. There were few first-person accounts that described the men’s interactions with other people and how they acted as leaders. To combat this, I found first-person accounts of events that they played a key role in. In these accounts, there was some information about actions of these men. I read these accounts and decided what quality I thought they were emulating.

      I believe that this project is beneficial to others because the website that I created is a collection of information about sites, people, and psychology that anyone is free to use if they need to. I got my information from accredited sites, peer-reviewed papers, and first-person accounts, so the information is accurate. This is different from other sites because the information on my site is specific to the Freedom Trail. The people I researched are pertinent to events and sites on the Freedom trail and the sites are located on the trail. All this information is combined into one site – whereas, the Freedom Trail website only includes information about the sites – because my website includes information on both the sites and the key figures.

     This project was beneficial to me because I improved my leadership skills. After completing my research, I was able to recognize where my skills were lacking and what skills I could begin to develop. After recognizing these skills, I worked to develop them. I have become a better manager at my job since completing this project and I am less anxious when put in situations that requires me to be a leader. Overall, this project has not only made me a better leader, but it has made me want to be in leadership positions or have more leadership responsibility whenever I can.