Putting events on the table this week - I am figuring out how to navigate (as someone I talked to recently put it) "the transition from being an undergraduate to being a graduate student & researcher." 

Experiencing midterm weeks on a quarter system is very different as a graduate student than as a undergraduate. This week I reflect on how I feel my brain is growing and how thankful I am to join this incredibly intelligent, creative, and passionate community of HCI & design & engineering & technology & human researchers. 

This week I made the title of my reflection "Design IRL" because although I continue to learn about how important being a peer reviewer is, what it takes to get a publication, and aiming for rejections to get published more, this week felt more grounded about how I can translate a paper and research into "the real world."

There are many things on my mind but for this post I want to talk about the feeling of isolation in relation to my work as a scholar and what my future in academia can look like. This week felt like the busiest yet with readings, research, homeworks, writings, IRB, and the NSF GRFP grant coming up very soon. I've really been enjoying my classes and I am proud of the work I am producing. I think my professors and my classmates value my input in the classroom and in our lab meetings but I've been bringing up a lot of questions I have. 

This weekend I was a part of two particularly engaging conversations and activities that I wanted to reflect on and note 1- what happened & 2- what I learned. One took place at an exhibit in downtown Seattle called Forced from Home and another was at an education bbq event that my roommate invited me to with two masters in education students.