Week 1: May 30 - Jun 4
Arriving at GSP airport in South Carolina, I was looking forward to my summer but had no idea what to expect. I kept thinking about what the lab environment would be like and what the people would be like. However they all exceeded my expectations. My "personal chauffeur" as he called himself, picked me up at the airport and came me a brief introduction to the town of Clemson and the settled my anxiety.
My first week at the lab, though a little relaxed was still quite informative and intellectually stimulating. The first two days were devoted to getting ourselves familiarized with the lab and the people and also to complete the CITI training. This training is required when performing research on human subjects and it educates you about research ethics. On Wednesday, we met Dr. Gilbert who is the head of the department and with whom we'll be working. We were given detailed information about each project and an opportunity to choose our preferences. My primary research project is called Voice-Text and it is a study into the effects of voice-texting on the driver's ability to drive effectively. There are also two other projects I'll be working on, namely, an analysis into the voting with Prime III which is an electronic voting system and Avatar Shopping.
The rest of the week was spent familiarizing myself with the past researches that pertain to the ones I'll be working on. I had never been involved in research or even read a research paper but I found reading these research papers and learning about the research process to be quite interesting. I'm now looking forward to a great summer with Dr. Gilbert and his team.