From Typesetting to Maps: My Year at the Digital Media Bar 

This past year working as a Student Technology Assistant at the Digital Media Bar has been an amazing learning experience. I really wanted to push myself to master new tools and share them with other students. 

In the fall, I dove straight into LaTeX. It is an incredibly powerful tool for document formatting, but it can be a bit intimidating at first. Most of my LaTeX learning was done through YouTube – especially watching Federico Tartarini’s videos. After getting comfortable with how it works, I wrote and published a quick tip for the Tech website and digital signage to help other students get over the initial learning curve.

For the spring semester, I completely switched gears and focused on geographic information systems. I spent the semester learning ArcGIS, which tied in perfectly with my interest in environmental and spatial data. I made good use of official ESRI tutorials, as well as my Intro to ArcGIS class with Dr. Stephanie Sparks. By the end of the semester, I had come out with a lot of experience doing multiple ArcGIS projects. To wrap up the year, I organized and hosted a hands-on ArcGIS workshop. It was incredibly rewarding to take a complex program and break it down for beginners. Seeing everyone successfully render their own maps at the end of the session was definitely a highlight of my semester.  

I am really looking forward to bringing these new skills and teaching experiences into my senior year!