Tools of the Trade
More, please.
Posted by erin | 0 comments
Jan
24
Feb
22
you got your digital in my traditional!
I don’t think I’ve mentioned explicitly that this blog, in its current form, is the substance of my senior thesis project.
Yes, I’m blogging the cumulative work of my undergraduate career.
If that seems a little weird to you, too, then you may be a traditional scholar, like I’ve been.
When I thought “senior thesis” in the past, I thought: 30-40 page paper. I thought: research, write, edit, write, edit, (etc), submit. I thought of one form of writing and one form of publishing only. Traditional or bust, amirite?
Except, no. My project is on Digital Humanities, and if I’m going to be investigating a highly digital, highly experimental, emergent field of study, well then I better be digital and experimental and emergent myself. My background, however, is not in this area. My degree, when I graduate this spring (gulp!), will be in English Language, Literature, and Writing from what is arguably a pretty traditional English program. Branching out from what I’m used to has been exciting, and complicated, and one hell of a learning experience.
I didn’t know it would happen in exactly this way, but I am, as we speak, restructuring my own ideas about what it means to do academic work.
I’ll tell you a little secret: I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re not supposed to admit this in Academia, I don’t think. At least, not all out in the open where anyone can hear you. But I’m pretty sure it’s true more often, and for more of us, than we would have each other believe. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact, not knowing what I’m doing is a big part of the reason I chose to do this project in this particular way from the very beginning. I like things that are new, that are experimental. I like to look underneath rocks and see what I can do with whatever I happen to find. I like to explore.
However. Liking =/= easy.
It’s tricky, this opening up of my assumptions and expectations of scholarship. There are lots of questions that I don’t have answers for. Not fully formed answers, at least.
To wit: how do I measure what I am doing? This is not a traditional paper or project, so what is it supposed to look like? Is there a certain post count that is equivalent to 40 pages of linear argument? Do I count words? Paragraphs? Do I set a goal for a certain number of posts, and when I’ve reached that, I’m done? Do I copy and paste my posts into Word to keep track of length? When do I stop? How do I turn it in? Etc.?
To all of these: yes, no, and maybe, we’ll see. Yes, there are parameters. I couldn’t write three posts and call it a day. There are equivalency expectations put forth by the Honors College, and for good reason. A cumulative project has to have some degree of substance to be worth a damn, after all.
But, no, the measurements are not the same. First of all, plugging everything into word and calling it good when I reach 35 pages just wouldn’t fit in with the point of this project. It also wouldn’t take into account the different aspects of digital writing that traditional papers don’t incorporate. For instance: If I link to, say, 25 outside sources (or 60, or 200), and my readers follow those links, what then? Does that hold the same value as a reader looking up a cited reference in a bibliography? I don’t think so. For one thing, the ease of access to outside sources is sure to change the reading experience. A person could read half of my blog post, follow a link, be gone for half an hour, and come back to read the rest. Authorship and citation are interwoven with one another here on the Interwebs. What does that mean for the substance of my writing?
Then, too, is the publishing method. These posts are not edited by anyone but me. They don’t get reviewed by one or two or five people before I put them out into the blogoverse. With a traditional thesis, there are layers of writing and editing that happen by not only the author, but their advisor(s). Of course, I generally don’t hit “publish” as soon as I’m done writing; I let posts sit for hours or days, and re-read/edit them before I make them public. But no one else is responsible for the quality of my work except for myself, which means that my thesis will never be “polished” in the same way that a traditional paper would be, for the simple fact that there is only one of me.
The most fascinating question that I have yet to answer is that of the end point. This is a blog. More importantly, it’s a blog that I created for purposes other than my thesis. Which is to say, this project is not self-contained. When the time comes that I am “done” with my thesis work, I will still be writing here. There’s a good chance that I will still be writing here about the same subjects that I am writing about currently. I have no intention of abandoning the field of Digital Humanities and the question of traditional-meets-digital once I’m finished with my undergraduate degree. How do I incorporate the ongoing and never-quite-finished aspect of my work into something that I must turn in at the end of the semester?
The more I think and read and write, the more questions arise. None of this is simple, or easy. It’s kind of messy, it’s a little strange, and it’s certainly not going to be resolved in this one post. But these are questions that are important, not only to me, but to the myriad of students and scholars out there who will turn to digital creation more and more as time goes on. It may not be traditional, but it sure is fascinating.
(word count: 1,005 – 3 pages, double spaced)
Posted by erin | 0 commentsMay
20
do or do not, or: just do it!
There’s a time of the year for us students (and I imagine some professors, too) that I like to call the Anti-Motivation. It starts immediately after your last final, and generally stays a few weeks. It is exactly what it sounds like – a period of time with an almost negative capacity for usefulness.
I don’t know about you, but when it comes to school, I’m all-in. For eight months out of the year my brain is in hyper-drive, and I’m doing whatever it takes to get my work done. It feels great to be productive, but the flip side is that when the A-M comes, it hits hard. All of a sudden, I find myself with an abundance of time and no deadlines in sight. It’s amazing how quickly I can go from spending an entire day writing a paper to spending an entire day watching reruns of Real Housewives of Wherever. It feels good to relax, to unwind, to decompress from the stress of constant pressure. But there’s some danger in it, too.
If you let it, the A-M can last indefinitely. It will suck you in just as quickly as you can say “CSI marathon,” and it will refuse to let go. For some, I’m sure a summer-long period of Nothing is exactly what you need. For me, it sounds like torture. I’m at my best when I’ve got a lot going on. I’m a productivity junky, y’all. And so although I do need a good few weeks of A-M to shift my mindset out of academia, anything longer than that feels, well, yucky. The funny part is, as yucky as I know it feels, the allure to stay there is often strong. I really, really like HGTV. And since it’s a whole damn channel, it’s on all the time. But, unfortunately, watching other people remodel their bathrooms does not actually translate to a remodeled bathroom of my own.
All this is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox* that I’m climbing my way out of this year’s A-M as we speak. Summer productivity has meant something different every year. Last year, I spent four months researching, buying, moving into, and setting up my first home. The year before that was filled with bike rides and camping trips and good books. This year, blogging. And bike riding, camping, reading, and home improving, too. Oh, and Daria. Because watching a whole series of cartoons in one sitting totally counts as productive when it’s Daria. That wasn’t sarcasm, y’all, it’s just plain fact.
Awesome 90′s television aside, I have found that the best way to combat the Anti-Motivation is to just do. It’s a common misconception, with myself at least, that motivation is a feeling. “I don’t feel motivated,” she said. Hogwash! The root of the word motivation is motive, which is the thing behind the action. It’s the reason we do what we do. Sometimes, I do what I do because I feel like doing it. But often, it’s something else. My house, for instance, does not clean itself. And although that’s a cliché most often identified with parents yelling at their kids, it’s also sadly true. I am motivated to clean my house not because I always want to spend time cleaning, but because I really like having a clean home.
And so I must remind myself, when I’m fighting to get out from underneath another year’s wicked A-M, that feelings just aren’t facts. That as much as I like couching, I like writing more. That the pay-off from blogging (or biking, or cleaning), is about a billion times more satisfying than whatever drama the ladies of Orange County or New York have going on this week. That doing feels better than not doing.
That Yoda and Nike were totally on to something.
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* Fifty Internet Points for catching the reference!
Posted by erin | 1 commentsApr
27
blogs change lives (a true story)
I love blogs.
Like, I really, really love blogs.
Blogs are my primary source for pretty much everything (okay, maybe not everything in the world, but you know). I read upwards of forty on a daily basis, from LOLcats to serious news sites. In fact, I get almost all of my news from blogs. I don’t read the newspaper, or traditional news sites, or watch local at 10. I listen to a little radio in the car – mostly NPR – but half of the time my radio isn’t even on. I tend to be quite skeptical of and/or critical of and/or bored by traditional media sources.
But I will read the hell out of some blogs.
If you twisted my arm and made me pinpoint the one thing I value most about blogs, I would tell you that it’s impossible, because there are just so many things. But if you twisted a little harder, I’d yell “Uncle!” and say that, for better or worse, it’s that blogs give a voice to people that may not otherwise have one. Anyone can start a blog. And anyone can start a blog about anything they want and say whatever they want in that space. Sure, there are downsides to this – tons of crap to filter through, plenty of hate speech, lots of things that maybe shouldn’t be made public. But they also provide a platform for otherwise marginalized people. Things that are not often broadcast in traditional media - feminist discourse, anti-racist pop-culture critique, fat fashion – get a chance to thrive in smart, hilarious, and even heartbreaking ways. And people listen. They listen, and they join in, and sometimes, their lives change because of it.
Three(ish) years ago, I stumbled across a blog called Shapley Prose. Founded by Kate Harding and written by her and a few other brilliant women, Shapley Prose is, in very simple terms, a body acceptance blog. Three(ish) years ago, I was decidedly not accepting of my body. My relationship with my body was more like a constant state of denial and anger and desperate desire for change. I had, over the years, cultivated such an intense dissatisfaction with my own physical being that I was pretty sure I would never be happy with myself. I needed a change, for sure, but not the physical kind.
Three years later (and twenty pounds heavier), I can say that my entire way of thinking about myself and about bodies in general has been turned completely upside down. I’m happy with myself, y’all. And more to the point of this post, that happiness is a direct result of blogs. Shapley Prose and a plethora of other body acceptance sites have given me a freedom I’m not sure I could have achieved otherwise. Because in the “real world”, in traditional media, in my day-to-day life, body acceptance is not the norm. But here in the pixelated realm of online writing, where anyone can say anything, there is a vast array of life-altering information and communities of people talking about things that will totally and completely blow your mind.
You may not need body acceptance, or anti-racist pop-culture critique, or even LOLcats (although, seriously, who doesn’t need LOLcats?), but I’d say there’s a good chance that there’s something in the blog-o-sphere for you. It’s just that immense. And if there isn’t, you can start your own blog, find your own voice, speak your own mind. Because anyone can say anything here. And I can’t think of any other place in the world where that is so true.
Posted by erin | 6 commentsApr
21
on quieting my inner critic
My first thought upon posting here for the first time was: “Yay!”
My second thought was: “OMG I AM PUBLIC ON THE INTERNET I MIGHT DIE.”
See, this is how my inner critic works. I stumbled across the idea of an inner critic for the first time when reading Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way many years ago. It was a concept that I identified with immediately – my critic’s voice has been present as far back as I can remember.
Generally, it works like this:
Me: “Hey! I should do this thing!” Critic: “What a stupid idea.”
Or,
Me: “Hey! I did something neat!” Critic: “The thing you did is completely insignificant.”
And on, and on, etcetera.
It’s an awfully tiring process, constantly being at odds with oneself. The biggest area of my life that this self-war has affected is my dream of being a writer. I’ve wanted to be a writer since, well, forever. And the thing about lifelong dreams is, they’re kinda scary. Being so completely invested in something means having a lot to lose if it doesn’t pan out.
So what was my solution? Not writing, of course. I just went ahead and listened to my inner critic. Because if you don’t try for something, you can’t fail at it.
Except, the thing about me is, I don’t give up very easily. It can be character flaw in some situations, but it’s proven quite useful in this one. Despite all of the other plans I created for myself, I never gave up on writing. It was always there, underneath the big bad voice of my critic, waiting for me to get the courage to take a chance on myself.
And the thing I’ve learned is that my inner critic is just a big ol’ bully. And more importantly, it’s usually wrong. And even more importantly, the more I ignore it, the quieter it becomes.
So writing publicly on the internet? Yeah, kinda scary. But also freeing. And quieting. And pretty damn neat.
Posted by erin | 3 commentsApr
20
thanks, mario.
It’s almost hard to believe that there was a time when computers didn’t dominate my world. I spend most of my work day sitting in front of one, and often find myself right back to it when I get home. My iPhone is practically attached to my palm.
Yet, my childhood was a different story. I didn’t even get a cell phone until I was eighteen, which I’m sure will become my version of “walking uphill both ways (in the snow (with no shoes))” when I someday have children of my own. I can’t remember when it was exactly that my family got a computer. What I do remember is that it was big, slow, and decidedly lacking in the bells and whistles that I have come to rely on today. I will always have a fondness for that tin can voice that told me I had mail, even if I’m in no rush to hear it again.
One of my favorite memories from my introduction into the world of computers is a little game called Mario Teaches Typing. I was a Nintendo obsessed child, so Mario was a great way to trick me into practicing typing, without feeling like I was doing any real work. I was probably ten or eleven at the time, and I can remember spending hours in front of the monitor, intent on making Mario jump at all the right moments.
And it worked, too. Or, at least, something worked, and Mario is the something I remember best. Today, I love typing. I love the click of the keys, the ease of editing, and the little blinky bar at the end of the sentence. Typing, as rudimentary as it may seem, is probably the most clear-cut intersection of writing and technology that I can think of. Click-click-click on a keyboard, and words pop out. It’s brilliant, really.
So thanks, Mario. I wouldn’t be the geek I am today without you.
Posted by erin | 1 comments
