Many of the most promising areas of the Digital Humanities have ample room for such risky undertakings. The key is to create the contexts that allow failing to be seen as something other than defeat.
Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 22.
This particular passage really resonated with me as I believe a growth mindset is highly important, especially in areas such as academia. Many individuals hold a fixed mindset where they only see two outcomes: failure or success. This can cause people to grow frustrated, give up, or avoid taking risks altogether. A growth mindset, on the other hand, actively supports failure and risk as an opportunity for growth and learning, with each failure considered to be a step closer to your goal. I find it valuable that the digital humanities not only accepts failure as a step in the learning process but actively embraces it as part of the cycle of innovation.
As a computer science major, I often catch myself in a fixed mindset. When creating a program or algorithm, it is easy to think of your work as a success or a failure; either it works as intended or it doesn’t. In the past, this mindset was highly discouraging, causing me to compare myself to others and rethink my own abilities. I would only take on tasks I knew I would be able to accomplish, as I didn’t want to risk failing. However, after changing my perspective, I was able to recognize small successes even if I didn’t succeed in my ultimate goal. Maybe I tried utilizing a new debugging technique or learning a new programming language. Despite not reaching my goal at that moment, I was learning and expanding my knowledge to help me succeed in the future. If you close yourself off from taking risks, you’re also closing yourself off from valuable learning experiences.
As we begin to explore the world of Digital Arts and Humanities, I find myself most excited to explore various digital tools and techniques such as 3D modeling and data visualization and their applications within the humanities. Although I have utilized similar tools in previous classes, all these experiences have been in STEM-focused fields. I am curious to explore how these technologies can enhance and expand our understanding of shared human knowledge. Overall, I seek to further my understanding of the intersection between the humanities and the ever-growing digital world.
