Happy Monday!
We’ve made it to another week! I may have delayed making an update for a day or two, but it’s the thought that matters. ;)
Continuing from last week’s progress report — I have recovered my campus email address as I said I would, allowing me to contact my professors and other coordinators. This has led to one bad news and one good news.
The thing is, I would usually take 5 courses a semester, but I thought of taking 4 courses this time since I would be focussing on my post-surgical recovery. The bad news is that I’ve applied to my courses late, which is causing me a little difficulty in registering for that 4th course. The worst case scenario would be that I would have only 3 courses this semester, but hopefully, that should not cause any academic disadvantage for me in the future, other than slightly increasing my workload in a different semester.
The good news is that the medical leave I had requested after my surgery has resulted in my professors giving me permission to study and participate in their classes from the comfort of my home. Considering how much time I usually waste in commuting, this would hopefully allow me to better focus on my studies. Aside from this, the following are the previous week’s highlights.
Weekly report:
The decision regarding my request for the 4th course has been pending for the whole week.
I’ve been permitted to study and work on my labs from home.
I have made a small project that scrapes information from a CSV file and projects the information on a graph. Working on this project helped me revise some data analysis skills for the first time in almost 2 years.
It’s nothing worth showing off, although I hope this has helped me build some foundation for machine learning skills if I ever decide to go down that path.
I have started an online course to help me learn full-stack development. I’ve always thought of society’s obsession with ML/AI as a type of “shiny object syndrome”, with the majority of its fans being non-technical influencers and their followers.
Although it has its use and its progress should be monitored closely, I feel traditional roles such as web development are still just as important, and shouldn’t be ignored.
Not to mention what one learns in University is so out-of-touch with someone’s roles in a proper work environment, I decided to turn to online courses while I still have time before my first internship.
Plans for next week:
- Speaking of shiny object syndrome, I seem to be suffering from such a case as well. My decision to learn full-stack development was followed by quite a bit of hesitation, as I was unsure as to what project I wanted to spend the next 4 months on. Since this is the one idea that seems the most possible to act on, I plan to stick to the webdev course I mentioned and hope to make some progress in it.
- I want to try setting up the software needed for the lab work in my uni courses. I’ve been having some trouble figuring out the process but hopefully, a TA should help me out.