#papercircuit

The boy who lived, come to die. (I mixed up the colors oops) 

I consider this class to be the hallmark of my summer (most of my time was dedicated to this work, but it didn’t feel like work!) and I know that I am fortunate to have been in it. Beyond the array of technical skills I’ve learned, I am now more comfortable with campus resources that I was curious about before but was always too hesitant to try on my own.

I like that this class blended creative and technical writing in a way (i.e. Instructables, infographic) as well as challenging our expectations of what constitutes as formal and informal writing. I think I speak for many English majors here when I say there’s pressure to “properly” interpret and appreciate texts, even if it is terribly written or hard to decipher. In contrast, here, evaluating the author’s execution of his/her ideas was always a relevant discussion topic as was the implications of these choices. From satanic interactive children’s literature to fairytales for grown-ups, I welcome this break from classic novels, as I tend to gravitate towards the modern media/colloquial side of English anyhow.

Upon looking through the Tumblr archive, I fully understand now why STEM got changed to STEAM. Art really did play into everything we did on computers. In having access to public posts, I constantly witnessed the evolution of a project far before it ever became finalized, which is just so cool to me. Even in online tutorials, every step is edited to look clean and effortless (even the bloopers, Jesus) which, to me, makes the craft look intimidating and sets unrealistic expectations for beginners. With that being said, this class served as an outlet for me to do what I wanted without the constraints of perfectionism. Of course, failing to produce my vision the way I’d intended was discouraging at times, but it did get me out of the mindset that drafting and revising is analogous to trial and error. We aren’t algorithms. Even while inputting computer codes, creativity is needed to produce different effects that necessitate the functionality of our program. Mistakes are inevitably bound to occur, and I admire how we were finally encouraged to work with them rather than against them.

Above all, I found that even the most grandiose concepts reviewed in our scholarship could be easily-replicated, albeit on a smaller scale. using whatever cheap materials we had. Openly professing my lack of competency to someone in hopes of getting help is something I’d normally only do as a last resort. However, in class, sharing tips [and horror stories] really facilitated the learning for me. Even in moments in which I doubted my abilities to complete projects (see gifs/ gif captions above), I could regain inspiration from others undergoing the same processes I am. As cheesy as it sounds, the level of heart that went into everyone’s creations could never be endeared the same way just by reading traditional academic publications.

In hindsight, I would definitely recommend this course to anybody. Scratching the surface of so many different platforms was already fun on its own, but going more in depth (perhaps over a longer semester) with them would be amazing. 

Don’t be strangers,

It’s supposed to be a star