My semester will finish tomorrow morning, and I can officially say that I did not expect this term to be so busy. I entered knowing that I would be taking fewer credit hours than normal with fewer physical class meetings to attend, and I incorrectly assumed that I would have more free time than ever before. It became clear very quickly that I will never fail to fill all of the time I can with my activities of interest. In the past couple of months, these activities have been more related to preparation for graduate school and my career. As my summer begins, I am excited to keep from calling it a break. I will be working with a smile on my face as I continue to develop the skills I have learned so much about this semester. Before we hit May, however, I'd like to mention some highlights from the end of my semester.
Many of you know that I take great pride in my involvement with the Psi Chi and NSLS chapters on my campus. Although my time in Washington required me to step away from the Psi Chi executive board this semester, I was happy to still attend meetings and make an appearance as a presenter at the induction ceremony a few short weeks ago. I've taken over the treasurer position for the upcoming year, so expect a bit more engagement on the Psi Chi front to be explained in future posts. With that extra bit of time, I was able to dedicate myself even more fully to the NSLS. We were able to have one of the most enjoyable social events that I've been a part of through the organization at a local bowling alley. This semester's volunteering opportunity with the blood drive on campus was a great success, and we hope to support the cause again in future semesters. With our fantastic co-Presidents and Vice President graduating, I was presented with the opportunity to take on a bit more responsibility in meetings and at events to prepare for future semesters. Out of these circumstances, I have been chosen to serve as the President of ETSU's chapter of the NSLS for my senior year. I hope to continue the success of the organization and show new members how helpful a commitment to the principles of the society can be in one's quest for professional development. My Collo project has led to some important developments in way of my plans for the next couple of months. I was able to dive deeper into learning R than I expected, and I will continue learning increasingly advanced processes under my lab director. To give a brief summary, I jumped almost immediately into coding an application with a dynamic interface, learned enough about one of the most popular graphing packages for R users to begin planning the design of a unique application, and started discussing potential projects in the I-O space involving some interesting analyses. I hope to see through the completion of these projects while learning more about machine learning models and applications of such in my field, R package development, and using the language to teach myself Python. I will not be taking the previously mentioned Statistical Methods course in the fall, as I will be learning the material along with information from our graduate Regression course in preparation for the Hierarchical Linear Modeling class. I am very excited to grow more comfortable with these topics and continue expanding a base of knowledge that will be so helpful in years to come. Only time will tell how this will factor into my direction for graduate school. I hope everyone has enjoyed the first few months of 2019! Feel free to share your summer adventures, and I wish you luck in all that you encounter. Stay happy, my friends. -JD
1 Comment
|