Becoming a Maker: A Brief Reflection on “Why I’m Not a Maker”

Margie
Tue, 20 Sep 2022 03:02:06 +0000
Week 1, Digital Humanities, Making, reflection

“In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving… are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost.”
Debbie Chachra. “Why I Am Not a Maker,” from The Atlantic (Jan 23, 2015).

Initially to start this school year I had set my mind to taking Data Structures, which is the second class that you take in the Computer Science department. I had chosen it initially to improve my computer literacy and possibly be able to MAKE things for my major. But in the first few days I was quickly overwhelmed by the pressure to understand the code and make working programs. I could see the potential for the code I was learning. Maybe someday I could do something with it that interested me. But at the moment it seemed to be all about making something for the sake of making it.

So in my panic I decided to switch into this class: Hacking the Humanities. What excited me about this class was the ability to make things. To see and show tangible results for what I was learning in classes. The most exciting prospect was applying a “valuable” skill to the valuable (to me) humanities concepts I’ve learned in other classes.

To connect to this quote: I’ve always wondered why we value the STEM fields over humanistic studies. Is seeking to understand and improve the human experience not important? How can we make our humanistic study “valuable”? This raises a dilemma for me. Do we need to become makers for our field to become valuable? I think my first thought is to reframe what “making” looks like.

With all that being said, this article did make me excited to create. But instead of doing it for the sake of creating, I am excited to see how I can model experiences and examine humanistic data. I am most excited to explore sharing knowledge, especially in an accessible way. The fields I would like to explore more are mapping software, text analysis, and visual storytelling. I am already formulating ideas for how I can create a digital project for another class of mine.