My name is Niles Schilder, I am 18 and have been involved with Young Archaeologists' Club for a very long time. It was in 2011 I first joined the Colchester Branch while I was at a Roman event at Colchester Castle, and I have never looked back since. I have always been interested in anything and everything that happened in the past. It probably started when I was a toddler and I got very interested in dinosaurs, however I think everyone went through that stage when that were that old. Although I still like palaeontology and do go fossil hunting at Walton-on-the-Naze, I am now more interested in in the events of the past 2,000 years rather than the events of the past 200 million years.
This year, I was scheduled to do my A-level exams however a little thing called Covid-19 got in the way. Although there were no proper exams, I did do about 30 smaller teacher assessments to judge my grades which were tiring to say the least. The whole situation was made more difficult by virtue of the fact that I am dyslexic and have a reader and a scribe, the scribe had to sit in a different room due to Covid and we were connected via video link. What with slow internet, lots of background noises and poor sound quality this made for an interesting six weeks indeed and a very steep learning curve. All that aside, the teachers at Hartismere have been fabulous and very supportive the whole way though, and I think (I very much hope) that I got the grades I need to go to university next year, I am planning on to going to the University of Kent to study Military History.
As far as YAC is concerned, the pandemic has been very disappointing. We have not been able to meet at Roman Circus House in Colchester like we would usually be doing, although we have had some video calls, it is not the same. But it is not all bad, YAC has given me the opportunity to do things that I would never usually be able to do. Shortly before the pandemic it was through YAC that I became involved with the English Heritage Shout Out Loud project who have given me the opportunity to do all manner of exciting work. In February 2020, I went on a residential to York with other people of a similar age also involved in the project, I then went on to help present a live steam for the Festival of Archaeology about the smoke drawings at Berwick Barracks. The next project I was able to get involved in was writing and performing audio scripts for a Cold War Bunker in York in which I did the voices for a member of the Royal Observer Cope, Minster of Defence Peter Thorneycroft and a role of Sellotape (it’s a long story!).
I have now been involved in YAC from when I was 8, 10 years ago and hope that in another 10 years I will still be with the organisation. Over the past 10 years I have done so much, and I hope that will continue to be the case. In 2011, I would never have dreamed that this is where I would be today and a lot of it down to YAC, I hope that there are 8-year-olds joining today who have the same experience that I have had.
