Week 9 Reflection

Flannery and her brother. Flannery is smiling and giving a thumbs up even though she has several triangular bandages tied around her body.

At the end of this week, I feel a lot like I look in this photo from when I helped my brother make a first aid video for Boy Scouts. I’m tired and maybe not the most put together I’ve ever been, but I’m happy with what I’ve been able to do.

Our updated poster draft can be found here. We responded to the feedback we got last week to adjust the layout in order to have more space, cut down on wordiness, and add more images. We still need to fill in the middle section with visuals of our results — we’re planning to have some charts showing our main themes and our design sketches.

We weren’t able to record the audio for our video because we won’t have access to a microphone until Monday, but our Prezi slides and script are ready. The slides can be found here.

We’ve talked to Patrick and Aehong about continuing to work remotely on the project after the program ends. Aehong will be visiting family just after the program ends, so we will take time off from working on the project then. During the upcoming semester, I plan to set aside about 10 hours a week to work on this project as needed. Aehong hopes to interview a couple more professional caregivers, so Gustavo and I could transcribe those interviews and independently code those transcripts on Dedoose. We can also continue drafting our paper to prepare for the CHI student design competition and create the digital version of our prototype.

5 Things I Wish I Knew Going Into the ProHealth REU Experience

  1. I know this is hard to pull off, but I would have loved to have a general sense of what the projects would be focusing on and what skills they would be drawing on.
  2. I wish I knew who the other REUs were before the program started so I could reach out and see who I might be working with.
  3. I wish I knew more about the Broader Impacts projects, because those ended up being really fun and meaningful, but felt rushed and kind of thrown in there.
  4. I wish I’d had a better idea of what to expect during Ramp Up Week and how intensive it would be.
  5. I wish I’d known more about Dedoose and how to use it going in because that would have been really helpful for this project.

5 Things Future ProHealth Students Should Consider Doing to be Successful

  1. Read academic papers — this is a big part of research, and if you hate it, you should know that going in so you can come up with a plan for approaching the background research you need to do for the first few weeks.
  2. Creating and regularly updating a schedule and task list is incredibly important to make sure you’re on track and doing what you need to be doing.
  3. If you can, reach out to the mentors whose projects you’re interested in early on and ask them what their hopes and expectations for an REU student would be.
  4. Ask questions! Ask so many questions. If you can figure things out on your own, that’s great, but when you have multiple mentors available who have a solid understanding of the project, programs you’re using, background information, and grad school experience, they can be an invaluable resource.
  5. Document your personal growth and what you’ve learned (about the subject matter, general research skills, specific programs or languages, etc.).