One of the most valuable lessons I have been learning during my time with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has not been about archival research or digital tools. It has been about letting go of the idea that my work needs to be perfect before anyone else sees it.

Over the past several weeks, I have been building a virtual walking tour of the 1976 Festival of American Folklife using the Smithsonian Learning Lab. The exhibit explores the Festival through three interpretive lenses: the African Diaspora, Old Ways in the New World, and Regional America. Through these lenses, I want visitors to consider how cultural traditions travel, adapt, and endure, and how the Festival created space for cultural expression at such a pivotal national moment. This is a project I care about very deeply, which is exactly why it was so difficult to share while it was still taking shape.

I am a perfectionist by nature. I like to have things figured out before I put them in front of someone else. In academic work, that instinct has mostly served me well. I take the time to think carefully, to revise, to make sure my arguments hold up. But I am learning that digital public humanities does not work that way. Building an exhibit is inherently collaborative. There are so many decisions about content, structure, tone, and audience that benefit from other people’s eyes early in the process, not just at the end. Waiting until everything feels “ready” means missing out on feedback that could shape the project in directions I would not have found on my own.

This is something my supervisor, Sojin, has been encouraging me to embrace, and I am starting to truly understand why. In public humanities work, sharing drafts is not a sign of weakness. It is part of the methodology. Curators share scripts and creative briefs long before anything is in final form, and their feedback during those early stages strengthens the final product. That is a very different rhythm than what I am used to in academic writing, where you often work in isolation until you have a polished draft ready to present.

The research itself has also pushed my thinking in new and exciting directions. Digging into the archives and working with primary source materials from the 1976 Festival has raised questions I did not anticipate. I find myself thinking about how a national event like the Bicentennial becomes a stage for competing ideas about American identity, and what it means to present living cultural traditions in a museum-adjacent space. These are questions I want the exhibit to sit with rather than resolve.

I am still learning how to work in this mode, which is more open, more iterative, and more comfortable with showing things before they feel finished. It is uncomfortable, but I truly believe the project will be better for it. And honestly, I think I will be too. I am so very thankful to be working with the Smithsonian and to continue learning and growing in my digital scholarship and as a historian.