Week 12- Conclusion
Edward Z -
Hello everyone! This is my last blog post. I hope to share some lessons as well as give you some of my updates for this week!
This week, I began working on the presentation and paper, which, after again – many 2 AM nights, I finished. The paper is over 15 pages, and the slides are quite dense as well. Let’s hope I can finish the presentation within the 20-minute allotted time!
Nevertheless, I’m here to conclude my blog posts as well as my journey, so here we go. I guess the biggest lesson I learned was to not set too high of expectations for a 12-week project. This is especially important because I felt destroyed by the scope creep I caused myself – trying to build a 3D engine, and real-time simulation, among other features that simply weren’t necessary. In the future, I hope to aim to set the scope to a reasonable size and adjust larger if needed.
Additionally, another big thing I took home was to manage time effectively. During my internship at ASU SCENE, I also had to manage another research project simultaneously, which proved to be challenging. At times, I felt myself scrambling to meet both the Senior Project and the Research Project deadline, which was incredibly stressful. I digress, however, because I was the sole cause of these predicaments. By procrastinating, I didn’t do work on either, and as a result, I felt more trapped which relates to the first point I made. However, in the future, I think I will learn to use a context-dependent strategy, where I will take breaks in between projects to switch contexts quickly.
Finally, I learned more about problems like school pickup. School pickup, among other “small issues” (I mean, it only takes up 5-10 minutes of your time) can add up incrementally to affect human life. And it’s incredibly important to pay attention to these small details, even if they may seem insignificant. Throughout this project, I learned that these issues need attention-solving – so the next time you or anybody you know comes across an inconvenience – solve it! While small on the individual level, it could stack up to be something significant.
Alright. Well, I think that’s it. Thank you so much for reading my 12-week journey, and I hope you have a great rest of your week! Make sure to stay curious and seek opportunities. Cya!