I am tired of being the tech-illiterate one

[abilouise]

And I am always embarrassed by how technically illiterate I actually AM, and I do my stupid girlie try-to-look-smart thing and don't ask questions about what I don't understand and get a general gist, so that I can not say stupid things at parties, but it gets in my way and takes too much energy. Tonight as huz-bin and I were heading home from swimming, he informed me that he was planning on working through the evening after dinner, and I decided that I should do some work too, and decided to actually suck up my pride and go to a bookstore and feel really ignorant and buy an HTML book and learn how to play with my website so I can feel like an adult, or at least a child who can successfully operate her own toys without someone else winding them up. I think my massage website is very pretty, but mostly useless, and among other things, I want to knock my prices back $5. Little things, and wanting to try out improvements and see how they work. So I got Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML and XHTML in 21 Days, because it was the only book that A) I had heard good things about that B) didn't make me feel stupid and that C) is wordy and conversational and explaining of new concepts-y in a way that means that I can read it AND comprehend it. I read through the first chapter, in which I learned what URL stands for, but pretty much knew everything else, which made me feel not-stupid.

PS- The thing that makes me feel most stupid is people telling me that I'm intelligent and should be able to pick up HTML easy, that I should find stuff online and not bother buying a book, and that it should take me a weekend or less to do so.

Comments

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I grok that PS, it's why I couldn't learn stick from my college ex. "You can already drive, it'll take 15 minutes to learn stick." But then, he was extra talented at making me feel stupid to boost his own ego.

[mjw.livejournal.com]

I went to a Home Depot class on how to put in wood flooring on a concrete slab. I still haven't worked up the requisite testicular mass. Luckily, no one around me has assured me I'll be good at it, so I feel no pressure. (And I, too, grok the PS, albeit in my own silly little domain. "You'll get in everywhere you apply!" Thanks, no; haven't, won't. If I *do* succeed, *then* you can tell me that you knew it all along...)


mjw

[athereal.livejournal.com]

The boy does that "it's easy!" thing _all_ the time to me. Because he can just sit down and look at a book and learn a programming language. So he assumes anybody can. And it really makes me feel so stupid and upset. Gah!

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

Wowee! Three posts in a row about how people can relate to being made to feel stupid by their highly technically-apt friends/SOs! Makes me feel good. The thing in the PS that makes me feel worst I think is the way that I can *hear* their internal logic going "Well I would never be friends with someone who is stupid, so obviously this will be easy for her!" Jake has gotten good better about not assuming that I know what calculus symbols mean, which I appreciate. It always used to make me want to, during sex, scream out "Oh baby! Stroke my !"

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

As an example of me not knowing html, there is a phrase missing from the end of that sentence that makes it funny. The funniest part is that livejournal interpretted what I wrote as html because I put it in brackets. The words were "insert specific anatomical term that is none of your business here"

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

I think that what the people who make you feel stupid forget is that there are two skills involved here. Skill 1 is "how to learn computer stuff from a spec, manual, or other extremely terse reference". Skill 2 is "how to use HTML". As computer languages go, HTML is a simple one, so Skill 2 is quick and easy to acquire if you already have skill 1. But you don't have skill 1 (which I can tell from the fact that you like computer books that are wordy and conversational), so learning skill 2 is much harder for you.

I'm not sure how to teach skill 1; unlike learning a new computer language, I only had to learn it once, and did so a long time ago. Maybe if we sat down together with your website, the book you just got, and an online HTML manual, we could try to make the changes to your website, while using the manual and trying to show you how that works; I never knew much HTML, and have forgotten most of what I knew.

But it sounds like the inner voice telling you "you can't do this, so you're stupid" is a big part of the obstacle, and it might be that the sense of accomplishment you'll get by doing some stuff by yourself first will help shut up that inner voice.

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

The bit about needing to learn this by myself for once I think is a big part of it. I'm pretty sure I couldn't learn this from someone else right now, because I'd have to admit out loud what I don't understand. I think that part of Skill 1 (I will refer to it as Skill 1a) is some very *conceptual* understanding of what I'm actually trying to do and how the computers involved need me to do it, so that I can put the pieces of information that I learn in a useful web in the right part of my brain. Many people recommended some O'Reilly book to me for this project and I have decided that is a Bad Choice for non-techies because they're not writing for me. I like their Computer User's Survival Manual, though, but it's out of print.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how often people get "general intelligence" and "relevant contextual knowledge" confused.

I've had blistering arguments over the O'Reilly perl book with people who recommended it to me and were confused that I did not adore it (quite the opposite), not understanding that I just wasn't in its target audience...