November Professional Development

This month, I focused on researching Blender. I wasn’t able to start hands-on work because I lost my mouse, but I spent time learning how Blender actually works and what I’ll need to be comfortable with before diving in.

Through my research, I learned about Blender’s core workflow: model -> material -> light -> render. Understanding this pipeline helped me see how projects move from a simple mesh to a polished final image. I also explored the basics of viewport navigation, common shortcuts, and the importance of using modifiers like Mirror, Subdivision, and Solidify to speed up modeling.

I looked into Blender’s two render engines (Cycles for realistic lighting and Eevee for fast previews) and how each is used in different types of work. I also learned that lighting (especially using HDRIs) can really improve a scene even when the model is simple. Finally, I got a better sense of what beginners typically tackle first, e.g., modeling basic objects, setting up simple materials with the Principled BSDF shader, and creating clean, well-lit renders.

Even without hands-on practice yet, this research gave me a solid foundation. Next month, once I have my setup ready, I’m hoping to apply what I’ve learned and start building my first small scene in Blender!

October Professional Development: Updating Audacity Training Resources

For this month’s deliverable, I chose to peer review and build out additional sections for the Audacity training. After going through the training again and thinking about what would actually help future Fellows, I added three new sections — keyboard shortcuts, troubleshooting, and file format guidance.

The keyboard shortcuts section is basically a cheat sheet organized by task type so you can quickly find what you need. The troubleshooting section covers all those annoying beginner problems like your mic not being detected or audio sounding muffled. And the file formats section explains when to use MP3 versus WAV and what all those bitrate settings actually mean.

Writing these taught me that creating training materials is way different from just knowing how to use a tool. You have to think about where people will get stuck and explain solutions in a way that’s actually helpful. I tried to keep everything straightforward without being too technical, which was harder than I expected. It took me much longer than I expected.

I’m still not totally sure if the sections I wrote are too long, but my supervisor liked them, so hopefully they’ll be helpful for future Fellows working on podcasts or oral history projects!