It's Saturday and it's only now I'm writing in my blog for this week. Apparently, I have already broken my 2-3x per week blogging rule. I have to force myself to write, otherwise all these memories will just be forgotten. I was cognizant enough to write down in Supernote the things I'd like to post in my blog this week.
Going into class prepared made me comprehend the topic more. I know this is the natural order of things and it's common sense that if you study before coming to class, you'll likely to end up learning more.
I came to class well-read and did the assignment in advance. When the instructor was explaining about longitudinal data, I can easily grasp the concepts he was explaining. I felt like my neurons were synapsing quickly and making all these connections between what he was discussing and what I read and understood in the book. Also, examples came easily into my mind. All that felt great. Now, I'm trying my best to read beforehand. I know I should've done this since I stepped into the PhD program but, well, excuses.
However, I wasn't prepared for the R practice we did in class. I noticed that if I'm not understanding what's being discussed, I quickly lose interest and my mind wanders off. This causes me to become detached and not learn anything. So what I need to do to compensate for this is to immediately redo the practice assignments for R, which I did. I'm done with the Chapter 2 R exercises but yet to finish Chapter 3.
Coding in R is easy once you get familiar with the functions. But you need to practice it and you need to create your own examples. R is understood through learning-by-doing. Another note: I'm having difficulty with R Studio and enjoy working with base R more. This shouldn't be the case though, but I just find R Studio to be too crowded for my liking and there's too much happening on the screen. I know R Studio should be better when it come to the UX/UI, but I guess it's not for me... Yet.
As for my discovery-based paper class, I'm actually scared for this one. My adviser resigned and he's not really a technical landslide person per se, and there's NO ONE ELSE in the department who can understand what I'm doing with my paper. I'm sort of flying alone on this one. My game plan for this is to contact a collaborator who would want to join me launch this paper. And that/those person/s may be authors of the papers I've read. But before I proceed on doing this, I should tell my ex-adviser first. Sigh. This is going to be hard but I know I'll pull through. By the grace of God, I would.
Update on my applications: none. No updates whatsoever. Though I've started thinking of ideas for my NZ application. It's just a matter of writing it down and making it more concrete.
I still have tomorrow to hit the 2x per week blog. The topic I'll write about will be the Part 3 thing. Let's see if I can do that.
p.s. I've broken my 3-4x per week exercise routine. So far I've managed to do only one this week. Well, my excuses include I had my birthday yesterday, Friday, and Thursday was the second day of my period; I felt lethargic. Haha! Oh well excuses. But I'm glad Duolingo is on track. I'm on my seventh day streak now!
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