Just kidding.

Week 3 is completed and now next week we will be moving on to week 4 (how???). Time is going by very fast here and I still have so much to do!

Mentor meeting updates:
1. Continue reading
2. Keep pushing through the Android tutorials
– Rashmi (mentor) gave us a quiz so he can gauge how much Java we know.
3. IRB got approved for our Co-design workshop that we will be having in two weeks, so I went around Kirkwood to post flyers! (Hopefully we get a good response, fingers crossed).
4. Plan co-design workshop with Haley

Challenges Faced

1. Week 2, I set up a super ambitious goal for myself to accomplish during the weekend before week 3 began. My goal was to finish the weather app from Udacity. Udacity gives an app. 60 hour estimate to complete this rigorous course (.. 60 hours if you understand everything that is going on, that is). I clearly did not get it done this past weekend, which caused it to carry over to my week 3. I am still pushing through it, and instead, I did one lesson/day until Thursday. It was a lot of information in a very short period of time. I got frustrated Thursday because I honestly felt like I was wasting my time to just complete the lessons at this point and the concepts were not sticking very well. I stopped the tutorials on Thursday. I believe the udacity weather app was a little counterproductive. The course is great if you want to see how it’s done. A challenge I struggled with greatly throughout this course was not knowing WHEN to use these concepts. This is what the tutorials were lacking.

2. During our weekly Tuesday meetings, Katie had asked about a reading she had recommended. When I initially read it, I did not think it was be applicable to the final paper Eugene and I are writing. However, Katie mentioned to take note of the way the author handled their research. This paper talks about co-designing workshops through expressive art with older adults who suffer with dementia. I am going to re-read this paper with a different perspective.

Lazar, A., Feuston, J. L., Edasis, C., & Piper, A. M. (2018). Making as Expression. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’18, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173925

3. TIME MANAGEMENT!
It feels like I am thinking about all of the things I have to get done more than actually doing them. This week I tried my best to just do everything one thing at a time. We have been told several times to switch on to another task when we get tired of the one we are currently working on. That is definitely helping me get everything done slowly but surely. A little part of me is happy my GRE course was cancelled on Tuesday. This gave me more hours in the day that I did not expect to have to continue working. Thursday, however; was the first day of GRE prep. Since Tuesday’s class got cancelled I got to plan ahead to make my Thursday a little better. On top of the work I am doing for this research, I am also in the process of creating & researching web design materials for my personal website. I hope to be done with this by the end of 10 weeks to also showcase it. I do not plan on creating my website from scratch, I plan on using a template to help me get a jumpstart. On top of the GRE course, work, and website planning, I am also aiming to learn 20 new vocabulary words a day with review of all of the words I have learned so far on the weekends. I would like to improve my vocabulary and reading research articles is also helping me with my vocabulary as well!

On top of finishing off all of my deliverables for each week here are the additional things that I have to do. Last week I made a tentative timeline, mapping out the rest of my time at ProHealth.

Wk 1: Ramp up week
Wk 2:
– read/summarize articles related to our study
– begin android tutorials and finish by the weekend (approx. 60 hours) [Udacity weather app]– Final paper deliverables* (view attached image/ deliverables are due on Fridays by 5pm.)
Wk 3
– Start recruitment for Older adults and post flyers throughout Kirkwood
– Continue android tutorials & finish on the weekend!
– Read ~ 2-3 papers
– Research helpful material for android development (will carry on to the weekend!)

Wk 4
– Final Paper deliverables
– Begin GoogleCode lab tutorial
– Begin Model View View Model tutorial
– Read ~ 2-3 papers
Wk 5
– Co-Design workshops
– Read ~ 2-3 papers
– Final Paper deliverables
Wk 6
– Prototype data visualizations
– Read ~ 2-3 papers
– Final Paper deliverables
Wk 7
– BUILDING TIME! (let’s see if all of these android tutorials have paid off!)
– Read ~ 2-3 papers
– Final Paper deliverables
Wk 8
– continue building
– Read ~ 2-3 papers
– Final Paper deliverables
Wk 9
– continue building/hopefully close to being done!
– Final Paper deliverables
Wk 10
– Finish final paper and celebrate making it through the Pro-Health REU!

*Side note: Even though my To do list just keeps on getting longer and longer by the day, I actually love it. I am a workaholic so naturally I love being busy!