Military history, American history, European history, reading and writing (both at a college level).
American military history, literature (literary fiction of the 20th Century, science fiction, horror, some fantasy), music (specifically folk, "indie," alternative, pop-punk, emo, some grunge), film (specifically movies with a strong, engaging plot and realistic characters, but he doesnt mind the occasional summer blockbuster), philosophy (I'm a big fan of nihilism and 20th Century existentialists like Sartre and Camus), video games (again, pretty much the same as with movies, but he doesnt mind playing a mindless game once in a while). Also interested in American politics and geopolitics, as well as extreme political movements and what causes them to rise in power and popularity.
Adam studied at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) for about a year and half, completing the majority of his general education classes and beginning work on his English minor with early American literature classes and a Shakespeare class.
Adam is currently a student at Grand Valley State University working on his bachelor's degree. He is majoring in journalism (with an emphasis on print) and has completed his English minor at Grand Valley. For his English minor, he has studied a variety of fields including American literature (up to the mid-20th Century), the literature of war, literature of death & dying, and various writing classes that have worked with shorter pieces of fiction and poetry. He is in his fifth year at Grand Valley with graduation planned for April 2017.
Adam has worked on at least 200 outlines, summaries and narratives for the GVSU Veterans' History Project interviews as part of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center. This meant attention to detail, fact-checking and making information accessible for an outside audience. He worked with Dr. James Smither at Grand Valley State University and is currently working on a book of about 90, 1000 - 1500 word narratives about the experiences of World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans to be released on Veterans' Day 2017.
Since February 2014, Adam has been working on interview outlines to accompany video interviews with veterans as part of the Grand Valley State University Veterans' History Project. Each outline is organized by way of time stamps, making it easier for an audience to jump to a specific area of interest in the interview. Fact checking is also a key part of the outline process, due to the older age of some of the veterans. However, this does not mean altering the substance of memories, just superficial details that are inconsistent with the historical record (for example, a veteran might say an historical event happened in June, when in fact it happened in July). Another major part of the outlining process is making information accessible for an uninformed audience (for example, a veteran might use jargon or acronyms that a civilian may not be familiar with. In the outlines, Adam has worked to help make sense of those terms).
Each Veterans' History Project interview also gets a summary, a way for a researcher or interested citizen to know when and where the veteran was born, where they served, when they served, and the unit they served with. Again, Adam has been creating interview summaries since February 2014. Each summary is meant to be a brief introduction to the subject matter, and is usually 100 to 225 words in length.