Sofi's Distance Diary!
((put a picture of myself here!!)) ((insert intro video!)
March 20th, 2020
Free Media Slide:
Getting off campus was a whirlwind. Flights changed endlessly, cases rose dramatically, and as hard as I tried I couldn’t spend enough time saying goodbye to my friends. It was okay, I’d see them in a couple days when they come spend spring break with me in Miami, I thought. All their families were still okay with them coming, so it mustn't be that bad. It’s still early. Yes, my brothers are high risk but I’ll just stay in my room for two weeks. People do it, why can’t I?
I got home to sequester myself immediately to my closet-sized room (I had a cold, I had been on a plane, I was dangerous). No welcome hugs, and not much space to catch up, but I did get to sleep at least. The next few days were a barrage of cold medicine, too-long naps, and my endlessly shifting opinions on whether or not I should spend time with my people, who had arrived in my city that first weekend, and wasted no time going to malls, bars, and every beach on Miami’s coast. I knew the right decision, clearly, was to stay home. But it was much easier to think that than to truly commit to it, so I spent my days desperately researching articles, hoping I would find just one that told me what I wanted to hear: it’s not too serious, go out, be reckless, have fun.
Needless to say, that article doesn’t exist. At least not one that I trusted (I’ve found that to be such a pervasive issue, when the government says one thing and every other doctor another, it’s easier to shut out the information that’s uncomfortable.) So I made peace with it. I’ve stayed in since I got here, at first feeling alone, trying my best to live vicariously through my friends’ Snapchat stories and posts. Now, seeing everyone else realize the right thing to do, and realizing myself, I feel much more comfortable with my decision — anything else would have plagued me with guilt. I’ve read, I’ve done online yoga, I’ve done work for school and for myself. The cabin fever’s a lot sometimes, especially sharing a small apartment with my family, but it’s not too bad. It’s not too bad at all.
Remote Communication Tool Review: House Party
Houseparty on mobile devices slaps because the smaller groups makes the conversation more intimate and personable; people feel more comfortable speaking up. The games are also super fun and a great way to break the ice. The glitch is that only 8 people can be on at once, and for small group discussions for classes already happening on Zoom, a breakout room would be easier and serve the same purpose.
March 25th, 2020
March 27th, 2020
My First Week Back:
My first week back was quite hectic, with trying to keep up with class, homework, and extracurriculars while at the same time managing family responsibilities. It was, however, not too bad. I found what was most difficult was just sitting at my computer for the majority of the day. In terms of classes, I have two classes right now that are using pre-recorded lectures. One of them provides us with a full 1hr 15 block of video, while the other separates them into modules, and I find the latter to be much more engaging. Similarly, in my two seminar classes, which both meet live over Zoom, one of them has two ten-minute breaks over the 3hr period, which helps me concentrate much more than in the other class, which only gave us 2-minute breaks.
Free Media Slide:
I also started to work on 'unboxing,' or recreating, a Vox video of my choice. I chose to work with their video on 'fake writing'
March 30th, 2020
Created an Adobe Portfolio ((insert picture of portfolio!!))
Thoughts on Adobe Portfolio:
Adobe Portfolio creates stunning websites, and I spent a bit of time exploring all the options and themes available, as well as the other features it provides asides from just gallery views. In all honesty, however, I wasn’t completely sold. It has various pros, such as:
- You can connect directly to your Lightroom library and pull gallery images from there
- It comes with various pre-made themes that are gorgeous and range in moods and styles
- It publishes your website for you, and now comes included with an Adobe CC subscription
For its main purposes, however, I felt the interface wasn’t too user friendly, and was often times painfully slow to navigate (that, of course, could be the effect of my wifi, but I haven’t had as much of an issue with other website builders, such as Squarespace). It doesn’t allow you to crop your photos to fit the theme on the builder itself (it rotates and stretches them in an attempt to make do), so that has to be done prior. It also is not the most intuitive website builder on the market, and you can’t do too much to change the website from the provided themes. At the same time, even the website builder itself is beautifully designed and the portfolios you can make with it really are high-quality portfolios. I’ve had experience making similar portfolio-style websites on Squarespace, and I found that interface to be much more intuitive and easy to jump into for someone who has never made a website before, but of course, Squarespace requires an additional subscription, so if someone is already paying for Adobe, Portfolio is probably the way to go.
Tips for Adobe Portfolio:
- Make sure to have the images you wish to include already formatted exactly how you’d want them to show up on the site, because it doesn’t give you much opportunity to edit them from within the builder (unless it’s a thumbnail to go to a different page on the site). I used Lightroom to edit mine and it was perfect because I could upload them to the site directly from the library!
- The themes appear as though the home page is all galleries, it’s not. Each of the images on the homescreen lead to different sections of the website, so it’d be good to have some work in mind so that you can populate the site! (It’s good because you can separate by theme without it being too busy)
- Have good wifi/memory! If your computer is filled to the brim or you have a lot of applications open, Portfolio’s going to give you problems. Mine was painfully slow to load and respond, even though I quit all other apps.
- Explore! I came in with a set idea in mind of what I wanted it to look like, but it was a much better experience once I let go of that and just got to poking around the various design tools they had to offer (less frustrating too).
April 2nd, 2020
Completed a Help Request
- Website Builders Spark Page ((insert picture of spark page!!))
April 3rd, 2020
I joined a weekly Distance Lab Zoom meeting and worked on an animation tutorial with the group! I also continued working on my Vox video, completing the first few steps.
April 7th, 2020
Completed a Help Request
April 9th, 10th, and 13th, 2020
During these days, I continued to work on and eventually finiished my Vox-style animation, as well as a step-by-step guide to recreating it!
- Vox Unboxed ((insert picture of website!!))
April 16th, 2020
One Month In, Relfection: This month, I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that if you are trying to simply superimpose your Harvard schedule to wherever you are now, it will not work out. I started off trying to work at the same times, eat at the same times, and take the same breaks, but I didn’t take into account the fact that my routine and responsibilities at home are simply not the same. On top of that, I was able to stay much more productive at Harvard than here in general, which I think has something to do with the fact that I had different spaces at school that inspired me to be productive, whereas here there’s nowhere to go really, which can definitely burn you out sometimes. I think that has been my biggest challenge, but I’m now giving myself much more time to do the work I need to do, and also allowing myself to be a little bit more relaxed with my classes as well when it gets to be too much. (I reached out and got an extension for a paper this week and it was the best decision ever.) Also, prescribed free time is great! Still, the classes I enjoyed on campus are still my favorites now. Namely, my creative writing class taught by Professor Susan Faludi. Even though we’re not physically in person, the class still feels very much like a small little family of sorts. Susan always asks us about our weeks, woes, and wins. Writing for that class has also been really comforting. We’re writing long form journalism about women in Boston, and I really love my topic (a local, all-female punk band). When all my other classes are assigning rigid, academic papers, it’s really refreshing to get to write more personally and creatively. Moving forward, I think “excellence” definitely looks like self-care. It’s taking a step back to re-evaluate the work we’re doing and the pressure we may or may not be putting on ourselves amid the pandemic. It’s focusing our time and energy on those things that are most fulfilling for us, while also normalizing the fact that sometimes we will not be able to be as productive as usual, and that’s not the worst thing.
I had my first brush with GitHub and Markdown, too.
I participated in a Distance Lab tutorial and added to the GitHub Animals ((fix this link!!))
GitHub Reflection:* After an an initial (albeit limited) experience with GitHub, I cannot say I love it necessarily, but I’m also very excited to learn! The fact that it’s code (or code-adjacent) definitely makes it intimidating, at least at first. I also do feel at least a little bit partial to Spark at this point, but hopefully GitHub will be relatively easy to pick up (?) once we start using it more. Though the idea of using it for help requests is definitely a good one even if only due to the fact that we can collaborate easily in a way that Spark does not allow, I worry it will be more difficult to integrate different media into the help requests, though I assume it all comes with practice. I also really appreciated Sophie B’s suggestion to get the desktop app for the coding-averse, so if it gets too confusing, I will definitely do that. I’m also wondering how it could be more efficient at collaboration than things like Google Suite, which is something James hinted at. I think they both definitely serve different purposes, but parts of GitHub do seem as though they’re overly complicated for no reason. As James put it, ‘it looks like a lot of work with little pay off.’ Still, I’m definitely excited to see more of what we can do with it!
April 17th, 2020
I joined a Distance Lab meeting and started work on a new help request!
One Month In — Updated: This month, the most important thing I’ve learned is that if you are trying to simply superimpose your Harvard schedule to wherever you are now, it will not work out. I started off trying to work at the same times, eat at the same times, and take the same breaks, but I didn’t take into account the fact that my routine and responsibilities at home are simply not the same. On top of that, I was able to stay much more productive at Harvard than here in general, which I think has something to do with the fact that I had different spaces at school that inspired me to be productive, whereas at home there’s nowhere to go really — especially in a small apartment like mine — which can definitely burn you out sometimes.
I think over-working and putting an excess of pressure on myself has been my biggest challenge. After a month of experience, I’m now giving myself much more time to do the work I need to do, and also allowing myself to be a little bit more relaxed with my classes as well when it gets to be too much. (I reached out and got an extension for a paper this week and it was the best decision ever.) Also, prescribed free time is great! When I'm reading a book or spending time with my family, that is all I try to worry about doing. Otherwise, I find I'm constantly stressing about not doing enough school work in all the "free time" we are told we have now.
Still, the classes I enjoyed most on campus remain engaging and some make up the better parts of my week. Namely, my creative writing class taught by Professor Susan Faludi. Even though we’re not physically in person, the class still feels very much like a small little family of sorts. Susan always asks us about our weeks, woes, and wins. We also maintain a weekly blog where everyone in the class is open to write about absolutely anything that's on their mind, which has definitely helped us all stay connected to each other in this new age of remote learning. The actual act of writing necessary for that class has also been really comforting. We’re writing long form journalism about women in Boston, and I really love my topic (a local, all-female punk band). Writing about something I experienced back in Cambridge also just connects me to Harvard and my friends in a way. When my other classes are assigning rigid, academic papers, it’s really refreshing to get to write more personally and creatively.
Moving forward, I think “excellence” definitely looks like self-care. It’s taking a step back to re-evaluate the work we’re doing and the pressure we may or may not be putting on ourselves amid the pandemic. It’s focusing our time and energy on those things that are most fulfilling for us, while also normalizing the fact that sometimes we will not be able to be as productive as usual, and that’s not the worst thing. Furthermore, it's crucial for members of institutions such as Harvard, both students and faculty, to keep in mind that even productivity itself may come in different forms. It may be helping out around the house, working on side projects or hobbies, or perhaps even volunteering for pandemic relief efforts. Productivity could also mean allowing yourself to take a step back from all the natural stresses of being a student, taking the time to take care of yourself and unwind, even if just so that when it is time to sit down and do school work, you're in a much better mindset to do so.
April 20th, 2020
Completed a Help Request
Things I Learning When Moving Markdown from Dillinger.io to GitHub
- In Dillinger, when writing a paragraph, the editor moves the text onto different lines for you. When moving it to GitHub by just copy-pasting, it tries to fit all that text onto one line, which makes it very difficult to read. To circumvent this, I simply hit enter at the end of every line in Dillinger, manually moving the text to the next line so when I pasted it into GitHub, the formatting stays the same.
- Though you can write markdown straight into GitHub (as we did with animals.md), it is much nicer to write into an editor first, mainly because you get the preview in real time. Your work flow can be slowed down in GitHub when you keep having to switch between the preview section and the edit section.
- What I’m having trouble with:
- Adding a picture of my own on markdown
- I tried by using a file I uploaded on Slack, but it’s not working for me
- I kept it in the markdown, but will need to fix it next time
I also added my [bio.md] to the Learning Lab's GitHub repo! ((insert link to this!!))
April 23rd, 2020
I joined a Distance Lab meeting and started working on a tutorial on Vector Graphics in Adobe Illustrator!
April 24th, 2020
Created a Pie Chart of My Daily Schedule
