Week 7 Update

July 21, 2023

Three accomplishments:

1. I finished writing the Introduction and Methodology sections of my paper and am set to finish my Literature Review over the weekend. 

2. I created my final presentation slides and spoke on three slides in three minutes, which was my timed goal.

3. I have my outfit for the symposium next Wednesday finally put together. Pants were the last piece of the puzzle!

Three obstacles to completion of my best work:

1. I am still dehydrated most days because the water here is pretty nasty. The headaches I get from this make focusing on writing particularly difficult. 

2. I focused too much on creating a polished paper when I could have been crafting a more polished presentation. I like to complete tasks and then move onto the next one at a time, and by hyper-focusing on the paper, I lost sight of the centrality and importance of a solid presentation. Going forward, I'll try to make sure the most important historical takeaways are highlighted in the presentation and I'll worry less about filling in the context the paper would provide.

3. The room we completed guided work in this week, our typical library room, isn't the room I work best in due to temperature, lighting, and organization. If we had been allowed to do more work in the collaboration space, I would have been able to focus on work better, as the afternoons were typically more productive work sessions for me. 

Three things I've learned:

1. When I present, I forget to breathe, slow down, and work off of the guidance I put on the slides. 

2. Ten minute presentations on research you've spent lots of time on feel shorter than you think (three minutes felt like nothing). 

3. The "feel" of a space impacts me more than I previously thought.