Week 7 (July 7th-12th)

Challenges

My main challenge this week was that I, like everyone, was sick this week, and it really did not allow me to do my best work. I had a lot of trouble focusing at night because I was tired, and during the day because I couldn’t breathe properly.

Another one of my challenges for the week was that I have been suffering from a severe loss of motivation. Although we are quickly approaching the end, I am still a student, and it is still July, I have been making very slow progress on my work. I have faith that I can push through until the presentation to ensure my best work.

The most obvious challenge I had was that I flopped on my presentation on Friday. I knew this was likely going to be the case, but I am hoping that it will improve a lot before the final presentation on Thursday.

Learned

This week, I learned a lot from the feedback that we received on our presentation on Friday. Having feedback from both peers and a history professor was helpful in contextualizing information both inside and outside of historical research.

We also learned a lot about publications and conferences for research about the intersection between geography and history. This was particularly interesting to me because my field spans both fields. It also gave me confidence in my ability to get published.

The final thing I learned this week was the conclusions I drew from my results and discussion, which allowed me to gain new insight into my topic. Prior to looking at my result, I assumed that there would be an oversupply of exemption requests, but that proved not to be the case.

Accomplishments

A major accomplishment for this week was that I finally completed my chatbot. While working on it for the past few weeks, I struggled to understand the instructions and to see the importance of the chatbot as a whole. However, now that I have finished it, I am proud of my work and that I was able to create something like this.

In addition, I finished a very, very rough draft of my paper and research. I have finally completed my discussion and results, which provided me with an interesting way to break down the research. I was able to draw a solid number of conclusions from the statistical analysis of my letters.

Finally, I gave my first practice presentation in the auditorium that we are going to be in for the real thing. Although I know that was not my best work, I am happy that I was able to at least get on the stage and try my best with my no-presentation.

Next Step: My next and final step is to perfect my presentation and finish writing my paper!