|
Week 1: May 27th- May 31st
The start to my summer research at UNM has proven to be a rocky one. Initially I was supposed to participate and live with another research student for the summer, but at the last minute she was unable to come. That wasn't much of a problem all in all. The real problem came when searching for a summer sublet apartment. I was originally supposed to come to Albuquerque the week before my start date to look for a place to live. That plan was put on hold when my grandma suffered a major stroke. Long story short, I wasn't able to get to Albuquerque until the day before the research was suppose to start. Thankfully I have a wonderful mentor, Lydia, who saved the day and suggested I rent her in-law's house for the 10 weeks. The house is across town so I have to drive approximately 20 minutes from the UNM campus, but it is better than being homeless! I am very happy that was resolved!
Monday was supposed to be the start day of my program. Lydia and I had set this start date months ago not knowing that it was Memorial Day. Instead of beggining this day I worked on moving in and unpacking. I was really nervous about this internship because I only started my computer science studies last year. The only language I knew was Java and even then I am not the most confident programmer. But I am a hard worker and fast learner so I was prepared to be doing a lot of just that.
Tueday was a blur of running around UNM trying to get keys and access to buildings and computers. However, once that was done I settled in to read the research papers over the projects that Lydia's students are working on and that I would be helping out with.
Wednesday I spent mostly sitting in on meetings. I was able to get a better feel for the projects being worked on in the department. Lydia also suggested that I start working on my website. Here was my first big challenge. Everyone kept saying "Oh, just do it in Unix and write some HTML. It shouldn't be too hard" What! I don't know Unix or HTML.... (Don't judge, I am a CS late bloomer) I was embarrassed but I admitted to Lydia that I really had no idea what anyone was talking about and that today was my first day working in the terminal ever. I think she was surprised but she jumped right into helping me. She showed me some helper files and walked me through a few commands. She also challenged me to use vi Editor.
I spent all of Thrusday working on my webpage. I was initially really proud of myself for putting so much together for my first time ever working with Vi, HTML, and Unix, but then I looked at the websites of past DREU students and realized mine looked like it had been created by a 5 yr old. It's frustrating because I want mine to look more professional but I don't know how to accomplish that. I think I need to use PHP but that is a whole other challenge. I looked at some PHP code and I don't really get it. I guess we will see what my webpage looks like by the end of summer.
Friday morning was spent working on my webpage again. The afternoon consisted of me learning Matlab. I have never worked with this either so it was a lot of looking up tutorials online. I am suppose to start working with Sandra next week on the Adaptive Quadrotor project so I will need Matlab to be able to look at data. So much new learning!
Leisure Time I spent a lot of my time getting lost this week. Whenever I went out looking for a grocery store or a place to eat I would get really turned around and end up going in the wrong direction. The good thing about Albuquerque is that even if you get lost it is easy to get back to a place you recognize and reorient yourself. I have been trying to work out everyday after I leave the office. Thus far this has included a short run and doing a work out from bodyrock.tv. Hopefully by the end of this ten weeks I will know a lot more about CS and be in shape!
|
