As much as I love Switzerland, I love visiting new places and experiencing life in foreign countries. Naturally, I long envisioned spending my final semester working on my master thesis project abroad. In the end, I was lucky to find a Professor in Boston willing to supervise me.
I think it is important to keep records of one’s thoughts when going through new experiences. It is easy to forget how much one has struggled, how we reacted in the moment. My decision to make these thoughts public is made in hopes that maybe somebody can benefit from them. As much as it makes me cringe that somebody would actually ready this haha
Now on to my first impressions. Starting a new project is, as always, very exciting for me. This is the time when everything is new and fresh and no bugs are haunting my dreams.
I started the week with a literature review and reading of documentation of what was done in the previous iteration. Complimenting all of this, I met the student who previously worked on the project to discuss its status and understand the previous set up. The codebase of the open source project is large and hard to understand, as documentation is often lacking. The only home-made code previously needed was to set up a Django server to collect all the data generated from the system. Not knowing where exactly we are going, I have focused more on reviewing the literature. It turns out, there is not that much directly related previous research. I won’t have to worry about inadvertently reproducing somebody else’s study.
And while I am excited at this stage of the project, my biggest worry is time management. Never in my life have I been so free to work when and where I want to. There is no physical lab, and my lab mates are often rushing from class to class, as they are still early into their PhDs. There is very little social pressure forcing me to spend long (likely unproductive) hours at the same spot. But this also means that my self-discipline and conscientiousness is all that is keeping me from falling into the “I’ll just do it later”-trap.
For now, I think I am mastering this challenge okay, but not well. Part of it could be blamed on the jet-lag, but as the days go by this will be less of an excuse. The mornings are fine, but the mid-day slump has been getting to me. Omnifocus and well defined daily goals are my current method. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to time and task management. Hopefully this project will be the opportunity to master this.
Written on February 24th, 2020 by Leonore Guillain