I have learned that it is in the sixth semester that the looming end of undergrad begins to strike fear in the hearts of lowly research assistants. Words like thesis and conference send most running, and few push onward with their sights set on further education. I am proud to be part of the few, and, in the past months, I've found myself discussing graduate schools and research opportunities with my peers and professors. My decision to pursue an interesting topic (to be discussed later) as the direction for my undergraduate thesis is setting the stage for a summer of learning and strategic positioning for the years ahead.
With a schedule more packed than ever before, I've been able to enjoy interesting activities both on and off campus. The NSLS continues to be a favorite organization, and our series of Speaker Broadcast events starts up this week now that orientation and leadership training meetings have been completed. Our executive team is looking forward to having our members, as well as others from the community, join us in hearing successful leaders provide useful advice. We also have a few fundraising, volunteering, and social events lined up, so expect more on my NSLS activities in the coming months. Since returning from Washington, I have been happy to see a strong sense of professionalism displayed by our executive members. In a later post, I will detail some changes in my involvement with the organization that are currently in the works. Taking that DC professionalism to heart has helped me properly represent the ETSU Honors College once again as an HC Student Ambassador at our last open house. The events for this term provide the chance to assist HC faculty in the more formal information sessions in addition to the typical table conversations as in the past, which I've already participated in and plan to do again later this month. The extracurriculars I discuss here have usually involved student organizations or my own running. This semester, inspiration was provided through a class I'm currently taking that is based on the literary examination of American communitarian experiments in the 19th century. Two classmates and I visited an intentional community called Earthaven established high in mountains outside of Asheville, NC. This was an experience like no other, and the information we shared with the class was compelling enough to convince our professor and the department to organize and fund a class field trip to tour the community. Sharing about the community also served as excellent lecturing experience, because the majority of the class period was unintentionally hijacked in speaking about the community's structure, mission, etc. My Collo project is going incredibly well. I have been able to attend a weekly programming seminar guided by the member of our department that teaches other faculty to use R. Going beyond simple data analysis, I have already dabbled in application development through a well-known R -> HTML translation package, and I hope to start using R to write my research papers (If this is interesting to you, ask me about it. I don't want to bore any readers that are only interested in the cult field trip). Because of my interest, I have been offered the opportunity to take one of our graduate-level Psychological Statistics courses that uses R for teaching and analyses. If the scheduling works out in the upcoming fall term, I may be able to pair this with a special topics Multilevel Modeling course. This experience will hopefully make me a strong candidate for a graduate assistant position in a lab focusing on complex, quantitative I/O research. I think I've talked enough for today. It's rather rainy, and I need to leave this coffee shop. Stay happy, my friends. -JD
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