Category: Vivero Blog Writing

5/11/2026

My time this semester with Vivero has been an excellent wrap-up of the last year and a half of work. I’ve had a wonderful and informative time working in the position and am proud with the projects that I’ve completed or progressed in my time here. This semester, I would say the most important thing I’ve learned, or more so sealed the deal on, was time management and learning how to utilize skills I learn with Vivero for other tasks. I’ve been balancing a lot as a second semester senior, and practicing breaking down my larger tasks into manageable and consistent work has allowed me to balance my time more evenly and utilize my Vivero skills in more creative ways. My advice towards younger vivellos coming in is to take your work easy and slow. Consistency is key towards building up your project, relationship with your project lead, and ultimately making a schedule that works for you.

My biggest accomplishment this last year and semester has definitely been completely reworking the Vivero WordPress site, and I’m very proud of all the work I’ve done on it. In addition to that, I also created a new documentation style guide for the updates, and sorted over 300 films in the Omeka Database out of the back log. Balancing my Vivero work with everything else I had to do was definitely the hardest part of the semester, but I was able to resolve it by adjusting my hours as needed, and being realistic with what I could create and how long it would take. As for Documentation, there is the new style guide that I just mentioned, but there is also a newly updated Spring 2026 project recap which writes out the most recent progress on the project, tasks involved with working on it, and how to access the various of the project. The Next Steps for the Digital Titular Head project are also laid out and include: updating the Database with more films, keeping the wordpress site updated, and coming up with ways for Alumni Outreach. The next fellow to work on the Virtual Tithead Project is ideally somewhat that wants to do more work with cataloging and metadata to continue updating the actual archive as well.

Going forward after graduation, I’m excited to continue exploring the connections between digital scholarship and the arts, and will hopefully be able to take my skills and utilize them as I move into professional technical theater. In August 2026, I will be beginning a theater carpentry apprenticeship and look forward to discovering where digital scholarship can overlap with physical arts construction.

Written 3/31/2026, Published 4/5/2026

Whoof. Busy month! A little under two weeks ago now, I had the wonderful opportunity to present a student lightning talk at the Iowa State University Digital Symposium, alongside a group of other grinnellian students and faculty. As I spoke about in my last blog post, most of my February and beginning of March were a lead up to this event and consisted of a lot of writing for my script, prepping slides, deciding how I wanted to say what I wanted to say, and so forth. The talk was incredibly fun, went well, and I was also very excited to listen to the other presenters, both students and faculty alike. Learning what digital humanities professionals in Iowa are doing in the field was incredibly informative and helpful towards understanding what digital humanities work looks like outside of college.

After finishing the talk, I spent the rest of March working on developing Vivero into my resume as part of my professional development. This training consisted of; first, identifying and clarifying the specific jobs I’ve done in my time with Vivero; second, identifying the specific skills that these jobs have required and cultivated; and lastly, sketching up both a couple of bullet points and a skills map to demonstrate where I’ve developed. It was an incredibly helpful activity in terms of decided what to focus in on when I’m including Vivero in my resume, and how to be more precise in describing the actual work I’ve done in the position. I especially found mapping out the skills to be engaging, as I was able to think about where my skills overlap and have bolstered each other’s growth. I’m thinking now that I ought to do this kind of activity with all my previous/current jobs!

3/1/2026

For the month of February, I’ve been working on prepping for a talk! That’s crazy! Early in the semester, I was suggested by my supervisor to look into, and maybe apply to speak at, an event coming up geared around Digital Media. I was sort of hesitant at first, as I’d recently just finished attending another conference that left me stranded in DC due to a snow storm. I wasn’t anxious to leave campus again this semester. But, since it is only a day, and only a five minute talk on my part, I eventually thought, why not.

I’ve spent the last month, applying, getting accepted (HOOORAY!), registering, and working on my materials for the talk. For materials, I’ve been primarily working on my script, but over the next couple weeks, I will also be making an accompanying slideshow to just show off the behind the scenes of working on the Virtual Titular Head Project. While my script does run for the correct amount of time, I’ve found myself somewhat dissatisfied with the work I’ve done it. I’ve always been more of an unscripted speaker, especially at these sort of events, but I’m just a little worried about going overtime or being under-prepared so that’s why I decided to write one up. I think it probably still needs a little more work until it feels genuine and real to my experience working on the project. I think I’d like to speak a little more about the experience of actually working on it, rather than just what the Virtual TitHead project is.

That being said, working on the process of prepping for this conference has been nice. I feel like I’ve been able to take a step back from the project itself and appreciate the amount of work I’ve done on it, as well as how much work previous fellows have done on it, and how much interdisciplinary work goes into the project. I never put into picture just how much of the work of this one relies on info from alumni and the archives. I’d almost wager to say that maybe 40% of my work is just chatting to people and sorting information (sometimes films)! Regardless of my sort-of-still-in-progress script, I am proud of what I’ve done so far, and I’m excited to keep working and get everything ready for the conference coming up soon. Next time you hear from me, I’ll have something new to share. See you then!

Published 2/8/2026, Written 2/4/2026

Back again! This intro post is coming to you just a little bit late, as I was busy the first couple weeks of school with a conference in DC that went a little long (after I was stuck there during a winter storm), before I could return to Grinnell. Luckily, now I am back, and able to start work as normal for my final semester as a Grinnell student before I graduate. Very exciting! This semester I am continuing work on the Virtual Titular Head Project with Adam Kelley-Chown, and it will be a very jam-packed semester at that. The on-campus Titular Head event is scheduled for this Spring and our annual virtual event will follow it shortly, meaning that it’s just about time to start event planning and getting all the websites polished up. In addition to other tasks this semester, I will be cleaning up some more of the pre-existing pages on the WordPress Site (perhaps including the History page), creating a couple new ones (I’m thinking one that maybe talks about the Vivero project, and who has worked on it in the past couple years), and archiving more films onto the Omeka Archive. Additionally, I’ll be working on a transitional document for whoever picks up this project next!

In terms of what digital tools and/or methods I’m hoping to explore this semester, I hope to especially look into webpage accessibility and perhaps what is needed for a site to blend accessibility with artistic presentation. I worked a lot last semester on making the WordPress site look more visually colorful and aesthetically aligned with the on-campus event, but now it’s very important that I make that design easy to navigate and understand for those with accessibility needs. Particularly I expect I’ll probably have to do some work with the colors I chose! To work on this within the project, I’ll probably have to go back to the Accessibility training I did last year, and utilize some of the resources there to update the site. Anyways, that’s all for now, and I’ll check in towards the end of February with what I’ve got next!

12/17/2025

What a semester! I’ve been busy since the moment I started and all the way to the end (we’re done in two days!!). Looking back at this semester, I’ve had a really wonderful Vivero season, and made large strides in my work that I am very happy with. I think the most important thing that I’ve learned this semester was to stick with my work and really commit to what I was doing, as well as to block out more time during my week to actually work on my projects. In comparison to last semester, I worked much more during the week and logged about 9-10 hours per week instead of 6-7. In terms of advice I’d give to my past self about becoming a Vivero Fellow and learning how to keep this up, I’d say just to be consistent and block out small chunks of time to work. In addition to the 4 hours of drop in work, finding an hour or two each other day to put some little work really pulled together the whole project.

This semester I actually really enjoyed the work I did both in terms of the training model and the Virtual Tithead Project. In the past, I really struggled to keep up with the weekly training model and learning every software we had to know in time. Now that I’ve completed that training, the model I am working with now—documentation training and professional development—allows me much more freedom and self-guidance during the process that I was hoping to find in a self-driven position like this. It was really nice to be able to work on learning and teaching programs that I, myself, was passionate about doing. Getting through the hard weekly training last semester was definitely worth it to get to this point!

The next steps for the Virtual Titular Head Project next semester are going to be returning to the omeka site, logging more Titheads on it, and prepping for both the on-campus TitHead event as well as the Virtual Alumni Tithead Reunion, which will both be towards the end of next semester. I also have a personal component to this project which is that I’d like to create a thorough transition document for the new Fellow working on this project, as I will be graduating in the spring. For the work I’ve done this semester, I was able to fully revamp the wordpress site and create a style guide for it going forward. Next semester, I am also hoping to explore accessibility as a digital humanities concept which I can implement into the project to ensure the new sites are available for all.

Written 12/16/2025, Published 12/17/2025

Coming to the end of the semester, I was tasked with reviewing some of the digital documentation I’ve done for work on the Virtual Titular Head project with Alumni Relations. One of the largest things I’ve worked on for the project this semester, almost the only thing I’ve done except it was a monumental task, was reworking the existing WordPress site into something a little bit more colorful, bubbly, and art-focused. Since the beginning of the semester, I’ve worked both on the back and front end of the site to stylistically edit the pages, change around some of the formatting, and generally update the site to something a bit more modern. While doing this, I compiled the style changes I completed into a new Style Guide which could be referenced as a new basis for the general vibes of the site! While going back and reviewing the documentation, I’ve thought about how the new Style Guide looks and feels, as well as if it is understandable and thorough enough as documentation.

Looking at the guide as though it was my first time interacting with it, I think the information it collects is very useful to understanding the basic changes to the site and the new assets that are being used–it collects the new color palette, fonts with accrediting, new logos, and where in the wordpress editor the changes have been made. I think in that way, it is quite helpful, but it doesn’t necessarily provide a write up on how to make edits yourself, how to download new fonts or plug in new colors, so using it as a tutorial to make site edits would not be intuitive. It exists more as a reference for someone who already knows how to use wordpress, rather than someone just getting started. In terms of my general approach to documentation, I tend to note the things that I have changed, but could start to write more about how, where, or why I’ve changed them. I’m very detailed with what I provide, but still missing a lot. To me, documentation is a part of my workflow that doesn’t mesh wonderfully, but is still something I think about and work towards–I tend to note down fairly good general information in the day to day, but specific notes are usually collected in style guides, zipped files, and other random spots that I ultimately put together in one document towards the end of the semester. I could probably stand to work on the specifics a little bit day by day too, so that it is easier for people to understand the whole picture of my work, and how I’ve done it, rather than just what I did each day.

Written 12/15/2025, Published 12/17/2025

For November, I worked on continuing my personal project of exploring what the best free video editing software available to Grinnell Students were. I remarked on this in my last reflection, for my October guide on how to pick which software is best for specific types of projects, but I’ve found that Grinnell digital humanities doesn’t have the best support for video editing and video software. That kind of stuff seems to frequently fall to the Film and Media Studies department, or other arts departments. That being said, it seems like a lot of students outside those departments would like to use video in their projects and may have less experience using it. So dually, there exists a problem that students in film may not be able to seek help at Vivero on their projects due to using more complex software, and students in the humanities might want to use something that gives them more options then just WeVideo. The guide I worked on this month continues after my last one, and shows students how to download and quick start all of the programs I recommended priorly. Also like last time, I hope that the guide can be used as a tool for Vivero Fellows to give more personalized recommendations for when students come in looking to do video editing.

Creating this guide was fairly easy, but quite time intensive. Ultimately, what I did to make it was download each software, screen clip various steps throughout the process, and create a step-by-step guide towards getting them set up. I ran into a couple bumps throughout the process–one time, my file didn’t save after working on it for two hours, and I had to go back to redo the work–but ultimately everything came out fine. I believe that it could be a tad more detailed, but for those who are seeking the next steps after the first guide I made, this should be able to help them a bit.

11/6/25

Over the month of October, I worked on a self-guided project developing a new guide to various free video editing programs available to Grinnell Students. Last semester, when I was doing my WeVideo training, I noticed the software was somewhat difficult to use smoothly, and may not suit the needs of everyone on campus trying to do video editing. Particularly, I thought of art students who may have just started exploring digital mediums, students with projects that involve animation or audio mixing, or students who already have an understanding of video editing and were looking for a program that might suit their skill level a bit better. I hope that my guide can be used internally as a tool at Vivero, so that Vivero Fellows can give more personalized recommendations for programs when students come in looking for help with video related projects. While WeVideo is incredibly helpful, and a easy tool to learn, it just might not suit someone working in Film, per say, and I ultimately my hope with this guide is to inform people what programs may fit them better.

I started out my work on this guide by identifying the various programs I wanted to include in the guide. This was actually much harder than I thought it would be, and took a fair bit of time to go through. I was looking exclusively for programs that would be free to Grinnell students, meaning that I had to sift through a lot of programs with limited capacities, not great interfaces, little to no tech support, or permanent watermarks upon export. Ultimately, I think I came up with an okay list, but there is no program that’s going to be perfect across the board. I also included Adobe Premiere Pro, which although is free to students through Grinnell’s subscription and a very good software, can sometimes be difficult to actually access digitally (that subscription is sometimes finicky).

Once I’d determined my list, putting everything together was fairly easy. I wrote out little descriptions of each software, what it’s pros and cons were, and make some tables of fast info for easier reading. While not super detailed, as to go in to every software and put every bit of information needed to utilize them would take more than a month to compile, I do think that the guide I made covers the basics enough that someone could determine what software would work best for them. Hopefully it does! In the future I think that I’d like to find ways to add more detail within the limited amount of time I have to work on my professional development projects. Maybe that just means picking less items, and going deeper into a single one, or something else like that. Maybe I’ll crack the code in November! I haven’t completely decided my next project, but it make be a “next-steps” sort of document that explains how to download and open each of the programs I described.

9/28/2025

As an avid user of Audacity, I decided to return to the training to once again go over the official Vivero training and refresh myself on anything I may have forgotten since then. Going through the Level Up trainings and learning how to add effects, censor words, and compress my recordings was incredibly helpful–while I already knew how to compress my recordings, the other effects were greatly useful in furthering my skills. I would definitely say that these Level Up trainings are worthwhile additional skills for anyone regularly using the software. I do however, have an additional little step that I think may benefit users, though perhaps not experienced users. While most people will probably want to go through the noise reduction tutorial provided by Audacity and linked on the training page, there is also a fairly easier step to cut out large chunks of sound, clip audio together, and make a little more space in your recordings. It could potentially be helpful for anyone who wants to remove large sections, or is less worried about consistent background noise. This process is called Generating Silence, and here is how it is done!

1. Use the Selection Tool within Audacity to highlight a section of audio or a specific spot
2. Click Generate which should be available above the toolbar
3. Click Silence in the drop down menu
4. Enter your duration of silence
5. Confirm your selection!

The highlighted part of your audio you selected will now be filled with silence, or if you just selected a specific moment, the duration you chose will be the amount of silence added. Again, this can be helpful when trying to add a little buffer time to the start or end of a recording, when clipping audio files together, or just taking out large chunks.

9/22/2025

Written 9/18/2025

As I look forward in my second year with Vivero, accessing my current goals and where I have room to improve in my work is a very important task towards making sure I make the most out of my time with my coworkers and project. Accessing what I have learned, what I still need to, etc. will help me understand better where I can go from here! I think that certainly my biggest area of growth has been becoming more determined and invested in the work I am doing, and particularly in trying to make that work enjoyable and producing of good outcomes, rather than a simple task to get done. I do feel that I could improve on my general tolerance of setbacks when troubleshooting or attempting to do something in a specific way—often times when I am working through a project task or on my own portfolio, if there is a minor setback it will unproportionally upset me compared to something big that is easy to identify. I guess you could say the detail work sometimes gets me. Despite that, I’ve grown and learned a lot technically as a Vivero Fellow and working out all those tiny, frustrating kinks has allowed me to up my comfort levels with website-related projects and general software issues. I always considered myself more of a hardware person when it came to computer work, but I definitely feel more confident about assisting and making my own digital content than I did when I started.

With all of that in mind, for the rest of the semester I think I’d like to focus on further advancing my knowledge of creating sites that are both artistic and accessible. It is relevant both to myself as an artistic professional in the future, and to my project work now on the Virtual Tithead Project. Specifically in this, I’d like to further develop my understanding of WordPress and maybe Elementor, such that I can continue to make sites! I’m also interested in learning a bit more basic HTML, which may just happen behind the scenes as I work throughout the semester. I think to start, I’m going to keep playing around with WordPress and continue developing the Virtual Tithead WordPress website, as well as assisting others in figuring out their own personal portfolios. By working with others on their projects, I can continue to develop my own skills and go from there!