Coming into digital humanities, I knew close to nothing about the subject. The first few days, me, and the people around me scoured the internet to just even find the definition of digital humanities, and what is study. I could find the classical definition of digital humanities on google, but over the last few months, my definition of the subject has changed drastically. We learned how to take normal humanities, and run it through program after program to find hidden meaning that normal humanities could not produce. With the evolution of technology, we could analyze whole novels in a matter of just a few minutes, compared to a few days. We then took that data and made it into an easy to see visual representation, whether that be a graph, a picture, or a movie.

In our final project, we were able to incorporate all of this into one cohesive report. We used text analysis software to analyze twenty books, then using graphs and other visual representation, turn that into an analysis of science fiction books. This was something that I never saw myself doing, not because I didn’t have the chance, but because I didn’t think I had the resources to accomplish such a task. Though with much help from other students and the professor, it came together in one of the coolest reports that I have done in college.

I learned a lot from a class that at the beginning, I didn’t expect much out of. It was by far, the best humanities class I have taken, and one that has left me with skills that I will use in my future at IIT. I feel that I have completed much of the learning goals first outlined in the course, and learned to used many tools like GitHub and python that I never used before. The final project allowed me to flex my skills and cultural competencies that I learned over the semester. Though, the ones that I felt like I achieved the most from were networking, negotiation, and collective intelligence. Because of my little prior knowledge of coding when I came into the class, I had to use a lot of the resources around me to be successful. I needed to learn how to post a blog, how to analysis a book with software, represent data with a visual, and work together with others to make sure a project comes together into a successful report. The skills I learned here will have a definite impact on my collegiate future.

On a small side note, on the blog website I have all my blogs on the website, but for some reason when Julian posts me as an author, it doesn’t come up on the authors page under my name. I have all 11 blogs posted plus the group blogs. Just letting you know!! Thanks for everything professor. It was an awesome semester.