Week 3: Post 3

What stated internship goals do you still hope to meet? Are there any new goals in mind? 

    Vicky finally sent me some papers to read and also the paper of her last REU student who worked on a similar topic that I am working on. The topic was forest bathing, and essentially it was just comparing a desert environment and a forest environment and seeing if people had a restorative affect to both environments. Unfortunately this paper could not be published by ACM or IEEE, which are the main computer science organizations to get your papers published. I believe that Vicky said that there wasn't sufficient data to have it fully published. 

With that being said, I would like to set up some new goals for myself. I want to be able to create a sufficient study that will have some sort of outcome. I know that not all studies will conjure sufficient data so I can't say that I will have the answer that I was hoping for; but hopefully I will discover something new with biophilic restoration in virtual reality environments. Another goal of mine is that I would like to have the study published. I know that it takes a while for papers to be written so this may be a goal that may have to be continued throughout the semester. This would be a great stepping stone into getting into grad school if I choose to go. I still hope to meet my previous goals of better written communication and experience with working with actual people.  Overall, I just want to produce something that is complete. I don't want to feel like I wasted my time the past two months for there not to be an answer to my question 

I am going to have to start looking more intently as to how I am going to pace myself with the rest of my research and figure out the next steps that I need to take.