November Blogs

Week of 11/02-11/06

Weekly updates:

• Monday: 

  • Reviewed my blog and submitted it

This Monday we began presenting our quick trip presentations in class. Every presentation given during this class period was very engaging and fun to listen to. I had already decided on my topic for my presentation and will begin working on creating the slides to go along with it. One thing that I did notice was that the people that received the most positive comments, had the most creative ideas with good closing conclusions.

• Tuesday: 

  • Received one reply from a professional through email; set up an interview for Thursday.

I got a reply from another graduate student, this time from one working in the astronomy department. I contacted her through a recommendation from another professional I had interviewed last week. I am looking forward to talking to her as she seems like a very outgoing person with a unique perspective on this field.

• Wednesday:

  • Conducted an interview with a graduate student at Texas A&M University at 4:30pm

  • Introduced to the second interview assignment in class

  • Began the interview assignment after school

This interview was a lot more casual than I expected it to be and I enjoyed it immensely. She was very thorough in answering my questions and we ended up discussing her research for more than half an hour. When talking about her experience in university, she not only told me of the topics they talked about, she mentioned the difficulty of women in the STEM field. One of the other questions we spent a lot of time talking about was the qualities that I should be looking for in my future mentor. 

• Thursday:

  • Practised for the Quick trip speech presentation on Friday

  • Emailed the thank you note to the professional after the interview

I was very nervous about the presentation that I had tomorrow and I practiced a lot in front of the mirror. Since one of the things I struggle with most during a presentation is volume and expression, I made sure to practice them as much as possible. I also wanted feedback on my current script before tomorrow so I could improve on it, so I contacted a couple of my friends and presented it in front of them. They told me that they liked my introduction but could still increase my volume and make it sound less scripted. I continued to work on this and tweaked my presentation according to the feedback.

• Friday:

  • Presented my Quick Trip presentation in class today

  • Finished the Interview Assignment for this week and submitted it

  • Began working on the weekly blog.

I was not able to present in class as well as I wanted to because of my nerves, but I did not mess up terribly. One of the main positive feedback was that I had a great introduction and that they enjoyed the full circle of the presentation. One of the main reasons I had taken ISM this year other than learning more about my career field was to get better at presentations and increase my confidence. Although I am still not at the level I wanted to be at yet, I have improved from the beginning of the year, and I am proud of this improvement.

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Reflection:

I thought that this week would be a lot more relaxed than it ended up being. Despite this I still enjoyed all of the tasks done during this week. I successfully completed an interview, presented in front of the class and finished my assignments due in the week. My main goals for next week is to schedule three or more interviews and begin learning the programming language Python.