I think that the biggest “concrete” skill that I’ve gained so far is a meager level of comfort in playing with code. Before this class, I only really messed with “code” in the sense of modding games and sometimes messing with “inspect element” in Chrome just for fun, but that was never really something that I did intentionally. There are a lot of rules and specific ways to write things that was really intimidating to me. I am much more comfortable with this now, especially from having to do the daily journals, even though I frequent the course page to circle back and double check myself.
One of the most important things to me that I’ve garnered from this course ties into what I said above: I feel like I’m much less “scared” of my computer now. I feel a little bit less like I’m blindly trudging through stuff when I try to move files around or download something. I also feel a little bit silly with how much is automated for me when I try to do something as easy as open a Google doc or something- it was so much more complicated and involved on older computers to do literally anything. It gives me some perspective and even makes me feel a little bit bad when I’m impatient with my parents for trying to figure out technology that is second nature to me.
Not that I didn’t really see it before, but I also have a newfound appreciation for people who transcribe and digitize archives. Those people do not get paid ANYWHERE near enough money for what they do. I rely heavily on Gutenberg and JSTOR for both research and fun reading, and without those transcriptions of text I wouldn’t be able to access so many things that I both need and enjoy. I’ve been using Gutenberg since I had a nook tablet back in 2013 and I have remained a loyal user now through my Kindle, and I recommend it to EVERYONE. This class has made me pay closer attention to translation/transcription differences (as well as how each re-reading feels to me) I’ve seen between different versions and modalities of texts I’ve read- for example, I read the Prime Digital Classics version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise” in the airport over the holidays, and then read it on Gutenberg and in a pdf scan of the original book for a class. I honestly preferred the Kindle version, but for the sake of page numbers I used the scanned one and for the sake of copying and pasting for quotes I used the Gutenberg version. Each modality of the text has its strengths and weaknesses.