I will be honest and say that I clicked through the prompt spinner a couple times before selecting the prompt I wanted to write about today which might have defeated the purpose. Today I write from my lab desk in 424 where outside it is a chilly 50ish degrees and this morning I considered wearing my parka (but knew that would be too extreme).
This back over the work we have done this quarter in HCDE 543 (which is admittedly only really 1 week)... ...Think about what was fun
Thinking back over the work we have done so far in HCDE 543 makes me want to make a list:
- Categorizing the different purposes, methodologies, and "type" of papers we picked
- Creating a collective investigative journal on citations
- Reading, analyzing, and discussing the Throwaway Citations paper from alt-chi
- Reading activity in 15 mins in class
- Citations investigation pass 1
- Citations investigation pass 2
- Collectively writing an abstract
- Writing an abstract together
Thinking about what was fun makes me reflect on the conversations we had as a cohort as a collective and not necessarily pointed at a specific activity. Slowly I am learning more about the lives of my peers as we navigate this journey together through classroom time and even an email chain Ridley started that made me happy to be doing this thing together. After we both attended the dub seminar series on Wednesday, Ridley and I walked into class at the same time and discussed how cool that talk was. She brings up different ways of thinking than mine and she noticed things I did not during the talk so together we recapped but also connected the ideas we heard from professor Anat Caspi about equitable access to urban environments using a pedestrian-centered approach. This was fun because this is what I imagined grad school being. A place where I will take classes, learn skills, submit papers and grants but specifically meet incredibly intelligent and passionate people that I can discuss design, engineering, and how humans use technology.
Another thing that was fun from the past week in 543 was the activity where two of us shared our handouts about the second pass we made on our citation analysis of the papers , we took 15 mins to synthesize, and then two of us shared and then we synthesized and then we came together and synthesized what all four of us said by collaboratively writing an abstract in 5 mins. Stylistically, I think this activity was fun because I enjoyed having something tangible to take away from our conversations this past week. I have already begun to notice that I am thinking about thinking about thinking and have lots of thoughts on a metalevel so having this concrete abstract and collective journal about our conversations and discussions really grounds things for me in a concise way. I also enjoyed listening to how each of us took the assignment to create a handout differently but were able to come away with a couple of concise sentence on how we read the Throwaway Paper, what we think about citations, and how we will engage more critically with them.
What do you think that means?
What do I think the fun activities means or what do I think about my reflection of the fun activities? I think the paragraphs above mean that even though I felt last week that I was a little bit behind on CHI/CSCW literature and knowledge as a whole, I now feel confident that I can have a conversation about it. My introduction to HCI has been facilitated by great professors but also by my peers in the cohort when they explain to me the purpose of the different conversations and when they help shape my analysis on how to approach reading citations. I think it means that now as a take-away after engaging in all those activities the fun part for me now is that I've spent a week thinking about how your citations affect your paper, how do readers read your citations, how can I engage with the citations as a reader, how do I recognize when the sentence is the appropriate one to critique or when to be less critical based on other facts. The fun for me means that now I have this new piece of advice in my head.
A good sentence educates.
How can you connect your thoughts so far to your goal of getting a solid start as a PhD student
I can connect my thoughts so far to my goal of getting a solid start as a PhD student because I feel good about being here. The activities we have done so far have made me think about things I had never thought about before like what is the best way to stylistical convey to my reader that one citation is only for context and not as important while others are important to read into to really get my point across. Getting a solid start to me makes me think about running a race. When you leave the gate you want to be as prepared, trained, and ready as you can be but you do not know what the course will bring. Getting a solid start means you take off feeling good about the work you did prior to starting and confident in your abilities to continue moving forward. Even though one of my challenges this week was balancing work time, reading time, writing time, transportation time, thinking time, NSF time, research time, running time, eat time, fun time, and sleep time - my thoughts so far have helped me think about all that I accomplished just this week as I took off and how I still had fun.
Think about other classes (or formal learning experences) you are currently in... What is something you might want to do in your spare time...
My other classes: 541, dub, and 521 have also kept me busy, engaged, and having fun. Something I might want to do on my spare time is try to slow down my brain. Mon-Thurs I am go, go,go which I like and want to keep that rhythm but I am thinking to a quote I read in "How to Write a Lot" which is "giving yourself time to think." How can I put it in my schedule to "just think." I don't want to let my brain think about the NSF grant or writing or reading or the amazing talks I've listened to but I just want to let my brain be pensive and slow down a little to not think about anything specific and just be.