Final Reflection

This summer I got a taste of what graduate school is like. I definitely had, many ups and downs with this experience, some for the better and some for the worse. 

I had multiple issues during the internship, which included not having communication with my advisor, not knowing what my actual research was (which was a result of no communication), and general issues with the software that I was working with. The main issue that I faced was no communication, which really bothered me. I didn't expect us to have our hands held the entire time, but I expected some sort of guidance, especially in the early weeks of the experience. Because of this, I had to learn many things on my own. I had to read other research papers to know the general idea of how research actually worked in the field of computer science. I had to figure out how they formed their own theories, how they developed their studies, and what questionnaires they used in them. Along with this, I had to teach myself the program, Unreal Engine. I had never worked with this software before, so I had to watch so many tutorials on Youtube on how to make my own environments and work with the program overall. And I also didn't expect to be submerged in Youtube for half of the summer, which also annoyed me. I later realized that this is how actual research goes. All of the Ph.D. students that I talked to said that they also rarely had guidance from their advisors. They told me that they read other papers to get to have relevant work to go off of. And from there they just created their own studies. But I feel as if these issues really stunted the growth of my research. 

I also had some general hardware and software issues, which were resolved by the Ph.D. student in our lab, Ville. Ville helped my lab partner and I with so many issues that we faced during our research. He really helped us understand how the research needed to be laid out and how to make it cohesive. I would even make the bold claim that he helped us more than our actual advisor. Without him, I really don't believe Mac (my lab partner) and I would have any idea what we needed to do this summer so I'm very glad that he was there to help us. 

I did have accomplishments throughout the issues that I faced. My main accomplishment is that I did an entire research process. I am so proud of myself that I went through this process on my own. Although I didn't develop my own research question/topic, Vicki provided me with it eventually and I got to choose between this topic and another one. I went through every other process; I developed my virtual reality environments, created my own questionnaires, tested out my program on a VR headset, coded my project, and fixed, any issues along the way. With this entire process, I learned that there are going to be so many things that will go wrong in research. But for every wrong, there is a right that will be produced from it. I made myself a timeline at the beginning of my project to pace myself with everything that needed to be done. Some of the things that I thought would take a day or two ended up taking a week, and things I thought would take a week could be completed in a day. I definitely underestimated how much time is really devoted to research and how many hours you have to pour into it. I think that this accomplishment really outweighed all of the negative aspects of the internship. I just felt a wave of relief when I actually did something right. And I was actually really excited and happy when I finally got my things all wrapped up for the project. 

As for myself, I feel as if I have grown as a student and have officially achieved the role of taking my own initiative on projects. I feel like this is an important skill that I had slowly developed over the summer, and I can apply it not only to real-world issues but in the classroom as well.

 Overall, I had a good experience with undergraduate research. I definitely know now what a graduate student's life feels like and it has me decided that I am going to be applying to graduate school this year. Along with this, Vicki asked me multiple times before I left if I was going to be going to grad school. She wants me to apply to the University of Minnesota and be my advisor. I definitely will not turn this opportunity down but I'm not sure if I will go there or another university.