Today we pitch our project proposals.
Time limit: 3 minutes.
Writing poems, my quiet place.
I signed up for a poetry class during summer break while an undergrad at The University of the Arts (UARTs) pursuing my BFA in Photography. I had no idea what I was getting into but I went with it. The experience turned out to be one of the unexpected “bests” of my life. That summer was also the year I learned, in great detail what happened to my grandfather , a man I never knew because someone decided to take his life long before I was ever imagined.
Writing poems gave my anger and loss (can you mourn someone you never knew?) a place to rest. It was also the first time I recited a poem in public. Granted, it was a room of my classmates but for someone who honestly prefers to sit in the audience, this was big. Huge.
Transformations was my introduction to Anne Sexton.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read her poems and this idea of a project has been a wonderful way to reacquaint myself with her and her work. It’s been, well, decades. Does her work resonate with me now as it did then? I believe this project will be an emotional journey as much as it is a learning experience. What will I discover?
I’m proposing a visualization that slightly petrifies me.
I tweeted last night that I’m already in the “dark swamp of despair”.
So, what does it mean when it is Sept 16th and I’m already knee deep in the “dark swamp of despair”? 😱 #AlbertoCairoDataVizClass https://t.co/HcIfKeJe01
— Deb P Davis / 방 연 호 (@yuncod) September 17, 2019
Self-learning: Python, D3, scraping data, build a corpus… oh my.
Blogs, tweets, StackOverflow, GitHub, Codecademy, Lynda … you name it, I’m searching for “How to …” often.
- Learning python: New jargon. Decisions about IDEs. Pandas… they aren’t cute black and white furry animals?
- Learning how to properly analyze and clean text data: Pre-processing? Does my data need to be organized in a csv file or like a massive dump in a txt file? Looking for tutorials on how to prep text with Jupyter notebook) Soooo many questions.
- Learning D3 is not going to be easy though I am hopeful Amelia Wattenberger’s book, Full Stack D3 and Data Visualization will be a huge help. (She is based in Rochester, NY – cool.)
Some classmates have suggested that I use R instead of Python. I’ve gone back and forth on this. Maybe I’m crazy but I prefer to learn Python because it seems a language that crosses many disciplines for many applications. Then, there’s the fact that python was named in honor of Monty Python’s Flying Circus!
Part of this is also recognizing that I know what is good but my abilities to execute are far below what it probably takes to meet my own expectations. Ira Glass has something to say about this and I’m trying to find some comfort. One would think familiarity of this mind space would make it easier each time. But no…
Still, I have some bright sides.
Mindy McAdams, a data journalism professor at the University of Florida was helpful in getting me setup with Python. I didn’t know it at the time but miniconda was the right way to go and given the number of IDE options, I’m so glad I went with Jupyter Notebook. (Seriously Mindy I cannot thank you enough.)
The bright side wouldn’t be complete without mad props to Lenny Martinez, one of UM Interactive Media’s data journalism professors. His positivity is all goodness when I feel like I’m drowning.
And, to end on a positive note, I do know how to install packages and I know kernals and cells, virtual environments and I’m not afraid of Terminal so much anymore. Not bad. Perhaps I need to just get over the fear that I’ll break something if I type incorrect syntax and also not worry so much about creating a properly formatted text file.
