I never thought that just transcribing a document would make you understand the story of the person that wrote the it. While writing, the only thing you focus on is what each individual words is, and nothing about the author. For five pages, I struggled to read cursive because I have not seen the style in years. I had to look over the cheat sheets for cursive letters once we started because I just could not remember what some of the letters looked like. In the moment, you don’t really care what the person is saying, you are just trying to figure out what each word is. After finishing my five pages, with lots of question marks, I then had to go back and get help from others. Sometimes, it is just about asking the right person. Some people might know a lot more cursive than others. For example, in our group Meg Koczur remembered her cursive very well so I would ask her for help a lot. Then once you are finally done nitpicking words, you can reread your work to double check everything. Once you get to this point is when you really begin to feel a connection with the author. It is so interesting that none of these documents have never been written so we are the first ones to actually read it. They are just simple documents in which people talk about experiences they had. In Elizabeth Grundy’s work, some of the times she was just talking about some of her dreams. It just made me overjoyed to be able to read about somebody else’s life. Coming into this class, I did not really know what to expect from digital humanities, but this really changed my mind for the better.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-N7N0rR6puaTNT2_QHv_918cxgYppQjCQikAxSNqQ/edit?usp=sharing
Mitch Gavars is a student at Bucknell University where he is a part of the swim team. Mitch is from Barrington, IL and has one sister. His favorite movie is Aladdin.
