Behind "One Page at a Time"

Hello, reader! While you may not have known it, this blog post is not the first time you have read my writing; I have had the pleasure of being one half of the development team for this website, One Page at a Time. I wanted to pull back the curtains and share some of the insights and experiences I’ve had building this website along with my co-developer, Savannah Haverstick.

Towards the beginning of our time together as a class, we spent a session brainstorming how we could each use our unique skills to contribute to our mission. At first, I was drawing a bit of a blank, and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to bring enough to the team of students. After all, I was surrounded by peers with backgrounds in psychology, political science, and social work. Some had already worked with the unhoused population and came prepared with a wealth of pre-existing connections and domain knowledge. In contrast, I am a computer science major, and while I had more than enough good intentions to bring to the table, I recognize that these are not a stand-in for real experience. The world is already saturated with over-engineered attempts at technical solutions to social problems, and I didn’t want to become another hapless developer charging forward with their ideas without taking advice from my better-equipped peers.

As the discussion drifted towards how we could better market our book drive, my classmates had great ideas surrounding a social media and traditional advertising presence. This led me to an idea of my own, informed by my background in programming and web development: on top of maintaining social media pages, why not create our own website? While social media profiles are great for reaching large audiences quickly and key for the college demographic, I also was interested in building a more professional presence for our class project, especially with the goal of extending our work beyond this semester. Thus, One Page at a Time was born, and I excitedly started development work along with Savannah.

Over the course of development, I have been blown away by the positive response to our website. Dr. Jerinic was kind enough to share it with the speakers featured in our class, the Dean of the Honors College, and even the President of UNLV! I was so humbled to have our website put in front of all these important eyes. More importantly than any pride on my part, however, it is my hope that One Page at a Time reaches the right people with the right connections to help further our mission. It speaks to why I wanted to become a programmer in the first place: because practically every sector is in need of some kind of development work, learning to create with code has given me the leverage to make a difference across spaces that I am passionate about.

Overall, my takeaway from being a part of this website’s creation is a larger lesson on how those in the technology industry can responsibly have an impact on social causes. STEM fields and social sciences are placed often placed in opposition to, and even hierarchy between, one another. This is evident in how ethics advisors are usually seen as afterthoughts or mandatory concessions to regulators within tech companies. In reality, as the work of programmers touches more and more corners of public life, I would argue that development has, in a sense, become a social science. The technical work of developers on platforms with such expansive social ramifications as Facebook or Uber is inseparable from the impact on society their work will go on to have. Having a robust suite of tests that ensure a product is technically functional before deployment is industry-standard; why would we not do our due diligence in the same way to understand the software’s larger consequences before putting it out into the world?

While I am in no way claiming that One Page at a Time reaches the level of Facebook, I see the development of this website as a small glimpse of hope into how technology can help to solve societal problems instead of causing them. There are a few cornerstones to how this can happen. The first is for developers to be humble and accept feedback, particularly when it comes from domain experts. Just as we would not like it if someone unfamiliar with technology told us how to implement a solution, it does not make sense to convince ourselves that our ideas for a project that reaches beyond our domain are always the best just because we’re the ones writing the code.

Next, we should create technical solutions to meet a real societal need, instead of inventing overcomplicated solutions for the sake of “progress” when a traditional method could be more effective. One Page at a Time started with a real, important need: to spread the message about our class’s work and get more books in the hands of the populations we serve! My initial instinct to build it from scratch with a frontend framework like React or Angular would have been significantly more time-consuming and ultimately would have delayed getting the message out. Luckily, I had Savannah to ground me and suggest using Wix. Making something that can be labeled with more surface-level technical buzzwords would have detracted from the actual social goal of the website, and we developers should learn to resist over-engineering if it doesn’t serve the larger purpose.

Finally, we need to start seeing the relationship between STEM and the humanities as collaborative instead of combative. One Page at a Time, and this class’s achievements as a whole, show what can be achieved when students and educators from a diverse range of fields combine their unique skills to make an impact. Rather than sowing tension by arguing over which disciplines are more important to society, we should recognize that the network of roles that keeps the world moving forward is complex, and each piece of it depends on other pieces. The tech industry is no different. When we stop heralding programming as the only harbinger of societal progress, we can both identify all the other roles that have made past technical achievements possible and envision a world where collaboration between technical disciplines and social disciplines drives better-informed progress in both spheres.

It has been a pleasure to develop One Page at a Time. I’m so proud of what our class has achieved so far- thinking about the Shade Tree Book Fair will always warm my heart! I’m excited to continue development of the website even beyond graduation, as I care about this project far too much to toss it off with my cap. As you see the updates to this website, I encourage you to have some optimism for what the future of the tech industry could look like. And, of course, if you have any of the feedback I talked so much about in this post, feel free to reach out with it!

Keep learning!

Turning the Page

The opportunity to be a part of HON 496 this Spring 2023 semester has provided a deeper understanding of the intrinsic motivations that have shaped many of my major life decisions.

The very few experiences I had volunteering in my early life always left me wanting more, but between growing responsibilities and declining energy levels, the older I got, the less involved I became. However, the need to serve others remained.

A major in hospitality management spoke out to me when nothing else did; building a career on the foundation of service seemed right up my alley. It wasn’t until I took a second-year seminar, “World Thought and Experience,” that I revisited my lost passion for reading and more importantly, explored fresh perspectives on the vitality of human connection and our responsibility for our community’s quality of life.

A few months into the seminar, Dr. Jerinic introduced me to the notion of serving others on a broader scale, through public policy, an idea I had never contemplated. The more I thought about it, the more the Brookings Public Policy minor felt like something I had to do. The hours upon hours of research for my introductory policy course never felt like a drag because I enjoyed reading and expanding my knowledge on recidivism. The more I learned about the tendency of an individual who has been released from prison to re-offend and return to a correctional institution, the more policy initiatives I thought of to serve those in our community stuck in the vicious cycle of incarceration.

Through HON 496, I was able to combine my passion for helping others with a revitalized love for reading. For 2023, I adopted a New Year’s Resolution consisting of daily reading, starting with 10 pages a day and gradually increasing as it became an unmissable aspect of my day. During the difficult weeks, my reading time became so much more than an excuse to procrastinate; it became a respite from the stressors of life as I envisioned the ideas or stories in the text play out.

The ability to provide people, who have stressors far beyond what I could ever imagine, with that same, albeit brief respite, is one I hold dear because of my experiences in this course. Seeing the reactions of the women and children as we explained that books were free for the taking during our Book Fair at Shade Tree was both endearing and saddening. The generosity of our community’s donations seemed, at least for a moment, to relieve them of the hardships that had led to the shelter.

Becoming a catalyst for these types of experiences is what I’ve always wanted to do.

The Power of Reading: How HON 496 Reignited My Love for Books

For a long time, I associated reading with stress. This was because I only read for school and exams. Consequently, I couldn’t remember the last time I read purely for pleasure. However, in HON 496, everything changed. In this class, I learned about the many benefits of reading for well-being. I was then encouraged to begin reading for pleasure again.

The first book I read for pleasure this semester was Twilight because I loved the movies. My mom was a huge bookworm back then, so I could easily pick out Twilight from her collection. While reading Twilight, I realized why so many people prefer books over movies. Twilight had so many details that were left out of the movie. Twilight allowed me to escape from my reality of stress and into a rainy, supernatural world.

Another book that had a positive impact on me during the semester was Bretman Rock’s newly released memoir. Bretman Rock is a Filipino beauty/social media influencer that I grew up watching throughout my childhood. Reading his memoir helped me feel a sense of connection since we share the same cultural background and upbringing. Additionally, as someone who tends to keep their struggles private, Bretman Rock reassured me that I was not alone since we shared similar experiences. I saw part of myself represented in his memoir, which other readers may relate to with fictional characters or other authors. Therefore, reading for pleasure can also help individuals combat feelings of loneliness.

Overall, I am grateful that HON 496 reignited my love for reading. I usually read in the early mornings before work or at night after completing homework. These scheduled times for reading helped me minimize other distractions. As a result, I felt more relaxed and have integrated reading for pleasure as part of my self-care routine. I now understand the power of reading and hope that through our book drive efforts in HON 496, we can spread the joy of books to those who need it most.