I haven’t kept up with regular posts here, mostly because many (all?) of the conversations I have online regarding my work are happening on Twitter these days. This naturally gives way to the occasionally Twitter thread—basically a blog post divided into several tweets.
I wrote a thread recently, inspired by a set of tweets from Miriam Posner about teaching Github (and the ensuing conversation), which felt like it belonged here as well. Let’s hope the tweet embedding holds up:
I love this great @miriamkp thread from last week, which includes many smart people I admire talking about their struggles with version control. Struggling with technical concepts in DH has made me a better scholar in my DH and non-DH work alike. [A thread follows...] https://t.co/0avP2imT4D
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Version control is one of many bottlenecks in DH study. I have encountered so many of these. I have spent hours and hours and hours staring blankly at a text editor or a command line trying to figure out some technical error, then frantically Googling.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
It didn't occur to me at first that I could simply ask for help. Though I've been fortunate to be a part of several supportive DH communities, I often struggled quietly before seeking clarity from the knowledgeable folks around me.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Why did I do this? I was afraid of appearing like I didn't know what I was doing. Part of this was from my own anxiety, and part of it, I think, was from being in a discipline where many people were expected to "already know" the basics.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Of course, this presupposed knowledge doesn't exist in "traditional" humanities disciplines any more than in DH. But I had a better running start with literary studies research methods and techniques, and a strong (and false) sense that I should never ask for help with the basics
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Working in DH cured me of that. I didn't know even the most basic things. No amount of Google searches or StackOverflow posts would get me past the roadblocks. I *had* to ask for help, and only after learning to do that could I move forward.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Learning to be vulnerable in this way and ask for help at every turn profoundly changed the way I approach all of my work. It was my wake-up call, as a grad student, that I was part of a community, that I could seek help when I needed it without being viewed as a failure.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
It turned me into a better student in my main course of study (English lit) and all my subdisciplines—my work improved because I had learned to work with others. It also made me a much better teacher.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
I avoided, as the linked thread rightly insists, the assumption that anything was "easy" or already known by my students. I learned to start from the beginning because I had started from 0 so many times and received help from generous teachers.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Maybe (hopefully) I would have learned to ask for help without DH forcing me to, but picking up technical skills accelerated the process. I'm very grateful to that and committed to paying it forward.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
This is why it's so insidious that sexist trolls seized on @miriamkp's tweets to be pedantic about the difference between git and Github. They are reinstituting the roadblocks and potentially making future scholars afraid to ask for help.
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018
Gatekeeping attitudes like this take away one of the chief advantages of DH (and of interdisciplinarity in general)—the ability to ask for help and to receive it from a community of generous, like-minded scholars. Thanks for reading. pic.twitter.com/Bef0vujz2I
— JR Ladd (@johnrladd) April 16, 2018