TLDR:
I started working with Dr. Eliane Wiese on designing and now jumping into a research project for the semester on how to improve educational technologies’ design. Rogelio helped me craft an awesome HPC-enabled long-term research project and apply for the DOE CSGF. I applied for an EPIC internship, I would like to apply for more local opportunities. I also moved my semester plan to Asana: making my weekly tasks and semester-length goals all visible in one place.
For the Interested Reader:
Accomplishments
Winter break was really fun, despite being ill for the entire month of December. I am feeling well again. Probably it was a side effect of being burnt out at the end of the last semester.
Eliane has been great to work with. She has taken into account the work I started with Rogelio last semester (the lit review) and has encouraged me to continue onward with that. We both discussed research goals for the semester and were able to create a research plan that satisfies both of our research goals and interests.
I was helping my little brother apply for full-time jobs and came across an internship opportunity for myself and so applied. I would like to get a local summer internship if possible or get research funding for the summer.
I applied for the DOE CSGF! It was a race to the finish line and there is no way I could have done it with my advisor’s, Rogelio’s, help, who is a CSGF alumni. I haven’t met anyone else, maybe Julian Togelius?, who has the combined expertise of game design, AI, and HPC knowledge to have helped me craft the research project that is HPC-enabled for the CSGF fellowship. Since I majored in math Rogelio let me choose my math courses for the plan of study. I wasn’t sure what would be best (having already studied probability and numerical analysis) so I gave my brother Elijah a call who got his Ph.D. from the University of Utah. Turns out… Elijah is also a CSGF alumni! WHAT?! My mind is freaking blown!!
My semester plan is now digital. Last semester I had tasks and goals in at least three places digital and handwritten. It got hard, and a bit tedious to keep track of some things. I just did it last week. So far so good
I am really glad I decided to only take two classes this semester. Between being in two labs, course work, and important personal goals, I don’t have a lot of spare time. I had to tone down and reprioritize my goals for this semester, and with a maintenance goal of taking time each day to enjoy life (playing games, doing self-care), I am enjoying this semester much more than last. I have found that since I am so burnt out from last semester that taking time to play games has been very important. So I typically play games right when I wake up and have found I am waking up earlier because when I wake up I get to start my day with fun, and then I have time to do important tasks for the rest of the day. When I wake up and don’t let myself play I end up sleeping in instead, being unproductive, or worse, being grumpy. I also take a break when I get home, relax as much as possible between projects, and watch shows or read before falling asleep. It’s been working fairly well.
What’s next
- I have five readings from Eliane (one of them is from my lit review) that I need to glean design “theory” from (mostly hypothesis at the moment) this week
- Course work
- Celebrating my husband’s birthday
- Update my website domain
- Update my website portfolio
- Apply more summer internships (looking local only for now)
- Do some c++ prep since I haven’t been programming in c++ for a while
- Maintenance goal: self-care and fun
Roadblocks
Still recouping from burn out from last semester. Not sure how long that’ll take to recover from.
Not sure where to find local internships of interest for the summer.
Nancy Games 