This summer was a valuable chance to learn more about what it means to participate in research as an undergraduate. Going in, I didn\u2019t really know all that much about the unbelievable range of forms research can take. When I thought of academic research, it was more of an abstract idea than a category of work I could visualize. I knew research was about finding answers and furthering our collective understanding of the world around us, but I was still pretty fuzzy on the specifics, and when I realized I\u2019d mostly be reading an old document and transferring info to a spreadsheet, there was certainly a bit of cognitive dissonance between my (admittedly vague) understanding of what research entailed and the reality of what I\u2019d be doing. And even though it didn\u2019t exactly fit my expectations, there were plenty of things I learned that I think will help me going forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main hurdle I encountered was creating and maintaining a routine that helped me work efficiently. My work was remote and asynchronous, and I found myself finishing the day with a fraction of the hours I\u2019d originally planned for myself. I think ultimately it came down to a lack of structure. I told myself I\u2019d get X hours done in a given day, but since there was really no specific timeline or schedule, I would fail to hold myself accountable to the initial intention I\u2019d set. There weren’t really external consequences to this, I had relative freedom to decide how much I would get done on a given day, but I hadn\u2019t accomplished what I\u2019d told myself I would, and that bothered me.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realized I needed to pay more attention to what actually worked for me. It was tempting to take short breaks frequently, breaking up my work time into smaller chunks, but when I actually made myself finish longer chunks at once, I knew it was working better. I also decided it was ok to go to a coffee shop most days as it helped me get a lot more done than I did at home. I learned to use all the tools I had to help myself think better and work better, and I think that will serve me well in any job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This summer was a valuable chance to learn more about what it means to participate in research as an undergraduate. Going in, I didn\u2019t really know all that much about the unbelievable range of forms research can take. When I thought of academic research, it was more of an abstract idea than a category of… Continue reading Reflections + Moving Forward – Noelani Conahan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3884,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3884"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3364,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions\/3364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}