Kathryn Doroschak

DREU Participant

Tufts University

B.S. Computer Science Student

University of Minnesota

Adventures of Week 9

Monday, July 29, 2013

Today I got right down to business with working on the posterand multitasking with Thomas on majority vote iterative when needed.

There are a LOT of tools out there that can be used for designing posters, so I think I'm going to just pick one and run with it. For now, though, here's my plan for working on it so I can get it 95% complete before the end of this program. (The other 5% will be changes made closer to the conference in July.) This is also the first poster I've made, so I want to leave lots and lots (and lots and lots and...) of time for editing.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Spent all day writing copy for the poster. I should have taken a picture of my desk... it looks like the home of a crazed sticky note enthusiast. At this point, I've probably rewritten/deleted about 10x more words than are currently present in my text editor. Sometimes being picky is frustrating.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Today Lenore and Ben took all of the undergrads out for lunchat Not Your Average Joe's this afternoon! (I don't think I've mentioned Ben before. He is another professor in the department, who Tony and Inbar primarily work with.) It was quite sweet of them, and I think it's safe to say we all had a great time. I absolutely love talking with professors outside of the class/research/work environment.

Afterwards, I kept writing and cleaning up the copy for the poster. It is SO hard to keep the word count down. I'm so worried I'm being too terse or simplistic, but I would much rather have that than a huge wall of text, especially if I/we am/are there to explain.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Today I started creating the poster design! Decided to use Scribus after poking around the internet for recommendations. It looks like there will be a bit of a learning curve for using it, but is apparently pretty easy when you get the hang of it. Here we go! Figures are going to wait until I figure out what size they need to be.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Again, working on the poster. The preliminary design is done, and text has been added. It's finally coming together! I'm using Inkscape for diagrams, Microsoft Excel for simple bar graphs, and LaTex for tables. Why so many different things? I want to learn how to work with them all, that's why!

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Spent the morning being lazy, and then wandered around Harvard Square in the afternoon. I love being so close to everything!

Sunday, August 4, 2013

I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum today. It's in a part of Boston I hadn't been to yet, which is always exciting. The museum itself was pretty, but I found it a little too haphazard, or maybe I wasn't in quite the right mood. The mansion had a garden in the middle though, and it was gorgeous! It would be amazing to essentially have a yard inside your house, producing all kinds of fresh air and beauty.