UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH BLOGS
The Office of Undergraduate Research sponsors a number of grant programs, including the Circumnavigator Club Foundation’s Around-the-World Study Grant and the Undergraduate Research Grant. Some of the students on these grants end up traveling and having a variety of amazing experiences. We wanted to give some of them the opportunity to share these experiences with the broader public. It is our hope that this opportunity to blog will deepen the experiences for these students by giving them a forum for reflection; we also hope these blogs can help open the eyes of others to those reflections/experiences as well. Through these blogs, perhaps we all can enjoy the ride as much as they will.
EXPLORE THE BLOGS
- Linguistic Sketchbook
- Birth Control Bans to Contraceptive Care
- A Global Song: Chris LaMountain’s Circumnavigator’s Blog
- Alex Robins’ 2006 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- American Sexual Assault in a Global Context
- Beyond Pro-GMO and Anti-GMO
- Chris Ahern’s 2007 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- Digital Citizen
- From Local Farms to Urban Tables
- Harris Sockel’s Circumnavigator’s Blog 2008
- Kimani Isaac: Adventures Abroad and At Home
- Sarah Rose Graber’s 2004 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- The El Sistema Expedition
- The World is a Book: A Page in Rwand
The Winners, the Losers, and the Meh
I’m getting down to the last few weeks of my research project. So far, I’ve been looking at countless measures of performance and service efficiency. However, looking at all these individual measures can be meaningless unless you have a way to compare across.
For example, Phoenix has the highest route miles per service area (which is to say Phoenix has the best coverage of any system). While Houston has the greatest trips per vehicle revenue mile, an indication that Houston is a very packed system. If I want to create broad categories of “winners”, “losers” and the in-between, then I need a way to compare all the possible metrics on the same scale.
Taking all the metrics I have assessed, I created a “scorecard” using scaled values. I scaled everything between 0 and 1. With 0 being the minimum value and 1 replacing the maximum. So for route miles per service area, Phoenix would get a score of 1, since it had the highest value. This scaling allows me to place multiple metrics on the same graph for a comparison.
Looking at this chart at first gave me a headache. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I had expected to see clumps of points. I thought that places that did well on one metric would do well on others, and vice versa. You see this clumping a little bit with Baltimore, St. Louis and San Jose. For every measure, their score was on the lower end. But for places like Houston, which got a 1 on three of the measures and a 0 on another, its values are all across the scale. I want to represent this data in a different way, to better see the clumping for each city.
I decided to go with a box and whisker plot. The advantage of using this type of graph is it shows the distribution of values. Below is the new chart.
From this graph, one can easily determine that Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and San Jose are among the lesser performing, while Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Seattle are doing much better. And of course we have a lot of locations that are in the middle.
A big part of this research was to determine which systems appear to be performing better than others. Now, I need to look into construction costs. I want to see if the investments in these systems have been worth it.
I’ve learned some things
Well, there are very few things that I predicted for this project. But one thing I was right about is my retroactive blogging. I’m a little past half way through this project and on my third bolg post. Whoops. I guess I just got too focused on production. Anyho, I just filmed the fouth video for this set and I thought I’d share a few things I learned.
1. My DSI stabalizer is great unless its raining and windy, in which case a rain-check probably should be in order. I filmed a duet today with two girls who were true troopers (dancing in the top of a parking garage in the rain while I struggled with my camera, stabilizer and an umbrella). Definitely the fastest shoot so far and also the least amount of coverage.
2. Even within people who categorize them self as a specific type of dancer, there is such a wide range and even if they pick up choreograohy quickly, some have an easier time connecting with a partner they don’t know than others.
3. The dances look SO DIFFERENT on each person, even when the music and choreography is identical.
4. Pirrouettes on concrete are very very difficult.
5. There are so many gardens and roofs that need to be danced on. Also, I really want to film inside some cute stores I’ve discovered in Evanston (rug gallerys, book stores, empty window shop spaces for sale…) maybe that will have to be my next dancing-camera-adventure.
There are plenty of other things I’ve learned, but that’s all I can think of in this moment.
XOXO,
Caroline
A little history
Designing a summer research project to do in my home community has been an amazing experience. Not only am I putting the resources that Northwestern offers its undergrads to work to produce better understanding of a problem, but I get to do it at home, addressing an issue that directly affects the people I care about. Additionally, it has been a nice way to save money, as I do not need to worry about paying rent or utilities.
It does, however, come with some complications, and when my dad was admitted into the hospital this month with pneumonia and heart failure, I put the research on hold in order to be there for him and my family. The nice thing is that I was here, and I would not change that for anything. But it does mean that I have been behind on the blog posting, so hopefully from now on this blog will be updated more regularly.
I took this photo from a train on the way to Chicago. When you’re from St. Louis, nothing warms your heart quite like seeing the Arch.
Here we are, halfway through the summer and halfway through the research project. The mound of documents I still need to go through feels as large as the concrete mound covering Weldon Spring (more on that later). But, I have learned enough to give a brief history of how the waste came to be in the Westlake Landfill in the first place. It is impossible to talk about this portion of the problem without talking about at least two or three other nuclear waste sites in and around St. Louis, so I will give you the main five:
There is the St. Louis Downtown Site, where it all began. The St. Louis Airport Site (SLAPS) and the Hazelwood Interim Storage Site (HISS) were where the waste that would eventually end up in Westlake was temporarily stored. There is Westlake, of course. And there is the aforementioned Weldon Spring site, where operations were relocated from the Downtown Site in order to scale up production.
In 1942, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in downtown St. Louis received a contract to purify uranium-235 for the Manhattan Project. Tons of uranium ore were shipped from the Belgian Congo to Mallinckrodt’s New Jersey property, from which it was shipped via rail to St. Louis. While the dangers of radiation were well known at this point due to earlier studies, uranium was not a well-known element. The entire Manhattan Project was conducted in extreme secrecy, and no one—not even the workers themselves—was told what the new product was for. As such, despite regulations and Mallinckrodt’s monitoring of its employees’ health, the workers were somewhat careless with the substance and with their own safety. Uranium particulates spewed out of smokestacks into the air St. Louisians were breathing; the factory floor was covered in radioactive dust; the byproducts of production (uranium-238, thorium, barium, and other elements) sat outside in large piles, exposed to the elements and free to migrate into the Mississippi River.
There was not enough room to store this waste onsite, so it was loaded into trucks and transported to an empty lot at the airport. Here, some of the waste was hand-packed into barrels, some of which were buried but most of which were not. The government wanted to find a more permanent location to store the wastes during the war, so when the airport site filled, HISS, located in northern St. Louis County, was purchased and large piles of waste were deposited there. This waste, exposed as it was to the elements, migrated to the nearby Coldwater Creek. Coldwater Creek is a five-mile urban stream that runs through north St. Louis County and joins the Mississippi River. Today, many attribute a cancer cluster in the area to the radiation in the stream, and the Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of remediating the creek bed and surrounding properties. The downtown site stopped purifying uranium in 1968.
The downtown site, however, was not the only nor the largest site that Mallinckrodt eventually operated in the area. In 1957, the military and Mallinckrodt opened a new yellow cake production plant opened in Weldon Spring, MO, 30 miles outside of St. Louis. Before being used for uranium production, the site had been owned by the Army and used for producing explosives for WWII. It might be worth noting that a local high school, which has never been closed since its 1945 founding, sits on the same property a half mile from the production plants. A nature reserve in which people can subsistence fish as well as hike and potentially drink from the streams is across the street. The Weldon Spring plant dwarfed the St. Louis plant in size, and it was supposed to be much safer for the workers and the environment, but the political pressure of the Cold War meant that it often operated at more than four times its capacity, straining the safety features. Operations stopped at Weldon Spring in 1967, when it was slated to be repurposed to produce Agent Orange for the Vietnam War. Fortunately for the residents of the area, this purpose was never achieved, and the site was never fully converted. It was, however, largely abandoned. When Department of Energy officials visited in 1985, they reported grass growing on the buildings, open lagoons of nuclear and chemical wastes, and air vents full of uranium dust.
These brochures are available in public places such as the county libraries. Nothing says “a good time” quite like “hike to the top of the Disposal Cell.”
What happened to the waste? The HISS and SLAPS material was sold to private companies. It was supposed to be transferred to Colorado for reclamation of valuable byproducts. Feeling that the waste was not so valuable after all, one of these companies had 43,000 tons of material mixed with “clean soil” (in parentheses because, despite claims, the soil was also contaminated as reported by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and dumped illegally in the West Lake Landfill, where this story begins, with the fear of fire reaching the waste since 2010.
Other waste was indeed transferred, in trucks that spread contaminated soil across the Midwest. There are dozens of fields and buildings in St. Louis that have been exposed due to careless transportation. An unknown number has been exposed because of migration from known sites.
The Weldon Spring site has been dismantled and covered with a 75-foot large concrete mound. Pipes run along the perimeter and out to ensure that the groundwater and soil are not being contaminated. The mound was built to last at least 1,000 years. The disposal cell is a public park, and one can climb to the top on a nice day and enjoy a view of the whole county and the nature reserve across the street.
Mickey Mouse & Betty Boop
Not to over-post, but I came across something really fun in a moment that I wasn’t even intending to do research!
I visited a couple of different museums today, and one of them is called the Peranakan Museum. Peranakan means “mixed race,” in Malay, and basically refers to the descendants of traders in the ancient world who traveled to Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula and married local wives. There are Jawi Peranakans, descending from Indian Muslims, Chitty Melakans, descending from Hindu traders, the Baba community, descending from the Chinese, and more. This museum is mostly focused on the Baba community.
So, basically, there are a lot of beautiful artifacts and beadwork on display from the 19th and 20th centuries showcasing Peranakan culture. One such item was these beaded slippers from the 1930s:
Yes – a Peranakan woman actually wore these hand-beaded Betty Boop/Mickey Mouse slippers in the 1930s. Not quite the Hollywood stars I’m researching, but it fun to see that LA influence regardless! And Betty Boop was Paramount Pictures. Needless to say my tour group was perplexed by my fixated photography of this item…
Food Time
It´s my last day in Barcelona, and that can only mean one thing: Food Time! That special time when, before leaving a foreign country, you go to binge eat enough of your favorite region exclusive cuisine to hold yourself over until next time. My five must-eat specials from Barcelona are:
Patatas Bravas
Move over French fries! When it comes to fried potato snacks, Spain wins the game with these starchy gold nuggets of flavor. There are several variations of this iconic dish that are served throughout Spain, but the real deal comes from Bar Tomas in the Sarriá neighborhood. This lively, old fashioned tavern fries slices of earthy, hearty potatoes and balances their taste with sea salt. The hot, soft spud chunks are then drenched in a generous amount of garlicky mayonnaise sauce whose strong essence adds some well placed pungency to the loaded dish. Patatas Bravas are a necessity for any first time travelers to Spain.
Jamón Ibérico & Jamón Serrano
The ham in Spain is simply amazing, and has been for centuries. Free-range, grass-fed pigs from southern Spain are raised naturally to have incredibly high quality. The meat is dried for months and then cured with the finest spices of the Iberian Peninsula. The techniques used date back to the Roman Empire and have perfected over several generations. While I wouldn’t say that any food from Barcelona is especially spicy or zesty, I do think that this pig meat packs a real punch.
Xocolata
“But I thought every country had chocolate?” Well, go home and do your research. There´s plain old chocolate and then there´s the amazingly rich Xocolata that only Cataluña produces. The cows here are free range and grass fed, giving full flavored, locally produced milk that makes the chocolate in Barcelona unmatched in quality. The chocolate can be eaten plain, used as a dip for churros, or, at the Museu de la Xocolate, made into an elaborate statue.
You already know that I have enough in my suitcase to last until my next trip.
Fideuà
This seafood dish really shows why the small, family owned fishing neighborhoods of Barcelona have been able to hold their own in the struggle for land against large hotel and tourism companies. The delicious regional take on paella (that substitutes the rice for small bits of noodles) features freshly caught prawn, calamari, and mussels whose pleasantly firm texture and sweetly salty taste easily make the hardworking fisherman just as invaluable to the city as its booming hospitality industry. If you eat seafood in an authentic restaurant in Costal Barcelona, you´ll know that the fish were caught earlier that day and handled with the utmost respect in preparation. In Fideuá, these fish pair wonderfully with the robust and filling noodle base.
Cereal
Throwback to my earlier blog entry! Go read it!
Orxata
The horchata of Cataluña is commonly made from ground tiger nuts and has a flavor whose strength lives up to that wildcat name. This chalky, smooth drink has a fiercely sweet flavor reminiscent of a cross between coconuts and adzuki beans. Even if you´re no stranger to the rice-water variant, this one is worth its own try.
Pintxos & Tapas
Tapas are a satisfying experience for anyone visiting Barcelona. They cover a variety of food choices including ham croquettes, mini sandwiches, calamari, and olives, and they´re usually served as sides to drinks at bars. Those who are looking for more substantial meal should go to a Basque style restaurant where larger helpings of tapas, called pinchos, are served like Hors d’oeuvres or sushi platters. My favorite has been the tortilla española, an omelet made with potatoes whose light, spongy texture and hearty flavor complement the flavors of the other tapas well. Also, it´s great to have an egg dish every once in a while considering that Spaniards don´t eat eggs for breakfast often (Seriously, go read the cereal post if you haven´t already).
Fast Food
While going out and trying new foods is great, it´s nice to give your pallet a break every now and again with the familiar flavors of home. I’ve seen Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger Kings, Dunkin Donuts, and Kentucky Fried Chicken all within walking distance of the Plaza de Cataluña, and they all seem to have one thing in common: The European branches are better than the American ones. I´ll miss being able to walk into an upscale McDonalds and being able to order a burger on freshly baked artisan break with fries that aren’t overly greasy.
This is the part where I´ve made myself really hungry and will proceed to go buy all of these foods one last time… for now.
Interlude: A Photo Essay of Summer 2016
So far I’ve posted mostly about what happened in my research work. But this doesn’t mean that I have not had fun!
In fact, this summer was full of fun times and adventures, ranging from multiple dinner night-out with friends to my first Fourth of July celebration in the US (!!!) to an excursion all the way to Chicago Chinatown.
I believe the best way to present how much fun I had is with VISUALS. (Note: Sadly, I chose to not include any picture of my friends in this post just so that the protection of their privacy is guaranteed. So, no pictures from more than five dinner night-outs with various friends in town. Sorry!)
So.. without further ado:
My first eye-witnessing of Fourth of July celebration, done right.
A sublime sunset, right after a dinner night out (near Noyes St) with a friend of mine.
A Saturday adventure at Chinatown!
This is me! With a DELICIOUS smoothie.
At a public park near the Chinatown.
Couldn’t really tell if they’re ducks or geese.. Oops. Also…muddy.
Me again! This time in the Metra train on my way back to Evanston from Chicago downtown.
Wicker Park Fest…with an imminent rain? Nah, maybe Shake Shack at Old Orchard instead.
Finally, an Instagram photo in summary of this whole summer 🙂 Title: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
On Solitude
This week, I got dinner with a friend of the professor advising my project, and I felt a solidarity in my research experience. She too had spent hours in the NUS library, the National Library and the National Archives conducting research on a BA thesis related to the “social problem,” meaning prostitution, in 1920s Singapore. So, she understood my frustrations working with the materials I’m working with, and trying to account for the experience of a historically “voiceless” population that doesn’t really leave archival materials behind (and if they do, it’s in a language I don’t read).
Out of curiosity, I looked up her thesis in the NUS archives and decided to read it after we’d gone out, trying to see just how she got at those “voices” to construct a cultural history of colonial intervention in a local enterprise. My favorite part about reading the BA theses I’ve read from this library is their acknowledgements; it gives me an idea of the intellectual journey that a thesis is, and makes me ponder whether the research is something I could actually consider as a career. This author described her experience as solitary and pensive, with “just a dash of despair.” She related that if her experience writing a thesis were translated into photographs, a photo of her in the Central Library’s dark and sad (my words) microform-viewing room would be on the cover.
I can really, really relate to that right now. And that’s not to say I’m not still finding the experience informative, and even fun, sometimes, when I come across the “grains of gold among the sand” (okay, maybe not EXACTLY what Tolstoy meant) in the archives. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a solitary experience, and spending as many hours of my trip as I am in the microform-viewing room can be draining. If I’m being honest, I’m also experiencing a lot of worry: worry about how I’ll be able to find direction in this project, where a 40-60 page thesis will coalesce from these primary sources, worry that I’m simply repeating a dissertation that has already been done. That worry culminated when I arrived at the National Library this week to find out that the film magazines I had reserved, “Singapore Cinema Review” and “Malayan Film Weekly” had been “damaged or destroyed.” Yes, the librarian actually used the word “destroyed,” which stung. These would have likely been quite rich sources for my project, and another researcher has used them within the past few years.
I am still finding useful material in the Malaya Tribune, though, especially among boys, girls and young women who wrote into the Tribune for their respective columns. In the early 1930s, there was a “Boys Corner” “Girls Corner” and “Women’s Corner” in the Tribune, where these groups could write letters to the editor about topics important to them, and this ranged quite a bit, from “ghosts,” to the “modern woman,” to “choosing a hobby,” to, yes, “cinema-going.” Today, I came across an argument over the course of a few weeks in 1931 between a number of boys in the “Boys Corner,” about whether “talkies” (sound films, notably originating in Hollywood) were sinful. One argued that “cinema going is just as bad as smoking,” because boys go there to “show off,” whereas K.K. Yam argued that cinema-going is a frivolous means of spending money. Meanwhile, one writer into the “Girl’s Corner,” Wee Alk Hock, thought that through watching talkies “one might obtain the best knowledge concerning the present occurrences of the world.” This editorial feud that spanned a few weeks demonstrates that opinions amongst anglophone Asians about cinema-going certainly weren’t uniform, and weren’t always concerned with modernity or America, as other authors have argued. I hope that as I continue my research, and later establish primary sources in the U.S. to supplement what I have done so far, I can explore further the impression that Hollywood films left on Singaporeans in this period, and what that might have meant for the potential status of America as an “empire of the mind” in Southeast Asia. On a lighter note, here’s my new view from the downtown library:
Not all of my time has been spent alone – another mutual friend took me to the Singapore Garden Festival where I saw some truly other-worldly garden art….I don’t have any other way of describing it, so hopefully these images will suffice….
The bottom- right image is of the “flower dome,” I haven’t been inside the “cloud forest” yet. See, I told you its other-worldly.
And today, I moved housing from the NUS campus to the YMCA on Orchard road. Orchard Road is sort of Michigan Avenue on steroids – huge span of malls and very high-end stores. Two Louis Vuitton’s within one block of each other, and that’s not counting the one in Singapore that exists on it’s own island – yes, that’s a thing.
I’m feeling a little bit like I’ve been seeing the sights of Singapore in reverse order — in the past couple of weeks, I’ve visited a lot of smaller neighborhoods, nature reservoirs and areas on campus, and now I’m venturing into the big-city, where a lot more of the tourist attractions, museums and shopping malls are. I also can’t complain, because as solitary an enterprise as research can be, I’m really enjoying the alone time and the ability to move through the sources and sights at my own pace. Stay tuned for the metropolitan life:
One More for the Books
I really need to stop being surprised at this point. I keep thinking that my weird and wild stories have come to an end. That I can’t possibly have another interesting tidbit for this blog. Every trip has a finite amount of excitement and I have severely overdrawn this excursion’s account. But, time and time again, Seattle manages to crank out another one.
My Airbnb host was kind enough to allow me to interview her for this project. She grew up in the 60s and was a part of the hippie counter culture. I thought that it would be a nice addition to my small archive, a sweet old lady that has seen cannabis culture grow and change over the years.
I was not expecting anything too out of the ordinary. So, imagine my surprise when I learned that, back in the 80s, this cozy little bungalow used to be a grow house. And a damned good one too. These intrepid growers shipped product all over the pacific northwest and even down to California.
Of course, it was. What else could this place have been? An antique store would have simply been too mundane. Even my accommodations apparently required a backstory with a little gravitas.
Oh, but the ride wasn’t over yet.
“Did you happen to notice those holes in the walls of your room?”
“Yeah”
“Well, those were made for the ventilation system.”
A loud thud reverberated throughout the house as my jaw hit the floor. The place where I had been living for the last two and a half weeks, my humble little writer’s abode, my attic sanctuary, used to be a happy little cannabis nursery. Call it fate, call it serendipitous, call it whatever you will.
I’m done. You win Seattle.
Your bemused playwright,
Noah
An Afternoon at Monsanto (dun dun dun)
For most of this trip I have opted to visit small public research institutions because their work can reveal how local perceptions, challenges, and priorities differ around the world. However, to circumnavigate the world researching GMOs without talking about the dominant global force in transgenic seed production would be to leave out a huge part of the story. So today I’m going to talk about Monsanto.
Last week I visited with researchers and executives at Monsanto’s offices in Johannesburg, South Africa. Today I’ll discuss their for-profit work and next time I’ll talk about some of their not-for-profit projects here in Africa.
Before beginning my trip I conducted a focus group about Northwestern students’ perceptions on GMOs. The most memorable quote of the conversation: “when I hear the word Monsanto, I just think ughhh…. but I don’t really know why.” Even one of the Monsanto executives that I met in South Africa acknowledged the public’s Pavlov-like aversion to their brand. So why are people so turned off by this seed company? Well, for the strongly anti-GMO crowd, Monsanto is an easy scapegoat for all evils. They are also one of the largest seed companies in the world, so if you’re not into big corporations on principle then maybe that causes you unease (though they’re certainly not the largest company that touched your last meal – see Cargill, Walmart, Costco, Berkshire Hathaway, any oil company). They also enforce their patents, which I will discuss shortly. I don’t necessarily want to declare Monsanto good or bad, but I do want to discuss how my experiences meeting with them in Johannesburg differed from my experiences at other research institutes.
The most important way that Monsanto differed from the other institutes was how they view regulations. The scientists at INDEAR in Argentina, Embrapa in Brazil, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa each expressed how expensive GMO regulatory processes change or hinder their research. At Monsanto, the people I spoke with explicitly and implicitly described how heavy regulations can be to their benefit.
One Monsanto executive described how the Mad Cow Disease outbreak caused Europeans to lose faith in their food regulators. On the other hand, Americans generally have faith in their regulators, which means they are more comfortable consuming GMOs because they have been independently tested by a trusted government agency. Thus, applying for external regulatory approval can be expensive for Monsanto but it’s worth it if it helps gain public trust.
Another benefit has to do with patents. I didn’t completely understand how seed royalties and patents worked before someone at Monsanto explained them to me last week. Essentially Monsanto licences their transgenic traits to other seed companies, who incorporate the traits into their own seeds. Then Monsanto receives royalties for every bag of seed that company sells. When the transgenic patents expire, the seed company could use the trait without paying royalties, but someone has to maintain the regulatory approval in that country. This leaves the seed company with two options: go through the regulatory process themselves (a considerable expense), or continue paying royalties and allow Monsanto to deal with regulatory upkeep. Most of the time the seed company goes with the latter scenario, and come to a deal with Monsanto that involves lower royalties than before and is mutually beneficial from a business standpoint. In the end the expense of regulation is one factor that protects Monsanto’s royalties even after patents have expired.
While Monsanto’s work is on a much larger scale, it was similar to the other institutes in some ways. For one, it’s an enterprise that exists to serve farmers, who will only plant a transgenic seed if they find it beneficial. Second, the employees of Monsanto had the same goal as any Brazilian scientist, Argentine anti-GMO filmmaker, or Ghanaian farmer: put food on the table of their families. Naturally this goal will affect how each of these individuals view GMOs and prevent any group to be completely free of political or economic influence.
Monsanto focuses on commodity crops and traits that improve efficiency and are highly profitable. Scientists there pointed out that they have developed plenty of traits for added nutrition or for smaller-scale crops, but they don’t make it to the field because they don’t earn the company enough money. This was actually a common theme across all types of institutions – without philanthropic investment it’s impossible to develop GMOs or any crop for the sole purpose of benefiting society. It doesn’t mean that a profitable crop can’t be beneficial, but it means that a beneficial crop has to be profitable.
Of course that last statement seems obvious, but as a progressive 21-year-old with a lot of optimism for science, faith in humanity and a life goal of saving the world, it’s a good reality check to type it out. Here in Ghana I’m learning about a transgenic project funded by philanthropy. In my next post I’ll discuss my findings, as well as a bit on the Water Efficient Maize for Africa project in South/East Africa.
Thanks for reading and as always feel free to comment. Bye for now!
(Also sorry for the lack of pictures – I have limited wifi now but will upload some next week!)
Week 4: Back to the Summer Research! And… the Limbo of Unproductivity
Alright, my dear readers. If you have read my posts up to this point, starting from my very first intro post through my recounting of the first three weeks — well, first of all, thank you. I really appreciate the fact that you have taken your time to see what I’ve been up to.
That said, I’m sad to tell you that I don’t have that much exciting update for the fourth week.
Except that on Monday, July 18, as part of Northwestern’s local partnership program, a handful of Evanston Township High School kids visited NU campus to shadow some of the graduate and undergraduate students conducting research on campus for the summer, including myself. Those kids ranged from rising sophomores to rising seniors. Rising high school sophomores already thinking about career? Are you kidding me? Wtf did *I* do back in those days? Three kids shadowed me that day: one in the morning, two in the afternoon.
Technically I was asked to do the daily tasks as usual, but instead I decided to walk them through my code line by line, explaining what each line of code helps in my research so that they can understand why I do this kind of stuff (I mean, who’d think it’s fun to just sit down watching me looking at the computer screen for hours?).
Incidentally, my task for that day was to clean up the code by removing unnecessary lines, organizing the comments, and reordering and grouping some of the code lines for better readability, which enabled me to do my daily task while explaining the code to those high school kids.
So that was that.
But then for the next two days, I found myself having an unusually hard time getting back on track. Like, on Wednesday, for example, I somehow just could not pull myself to work.
Professor Riecke, my faculty advisor for this project, warned me before that he would be out of the country from mid-July to mid-August for conference and vacation. And John, the graduate student who would provide me guidance as needed, was also in that conference, scheduled to return to office on July 26. And I failed to anticipate the temporary absence of those sources of guidance to be this much impactful on my productivity level.
Do you see that huge blank space under Wed 7/20?
Ever since Prof. Riecke and I have decided to abandon the agent-based modeling platform (for the reasons described in one of the previous posts) and switch into MATLAB platform to continue my project, my contribution boiled down to implementing the modifications I have described on my URG proposal in the original MATLAB code file written by Prof. Riecke and his former graduate students.
The problem was, I found his original code file to be poorly organized. It has evolved so over time, as he explained, upon adding bits and pieces of code snippets without sufficiently explaining why each modification was made. Because the people involved in the prior projects already knew what was going on, they didn’t feel the need to explain those things, so they didn’t bother.
Hence, the tasks that I was doing — reorganizing and updating the code, as well as writing down the explanation for each part of the code while making sure the computed output remains the same — were not the most intellectually exciting tasks you could do. In fact, they were pretty tedious. They involved line-by-line comparisons of the code (which, by the way, is this one mammoth code file with over 5,000 lines) to identify where exactly the updates were made, and how. Yes, this is a problem that could have been easily avoided with sound software engineering practices like modularization, proper documentation, and version control, but that was the point — I was doing the cleanup so that this kind of frustration could be reduced in the future.
I’m one of those people who feel depressed upon feeling unproductive. Which didn’t help — it made the looming tasks seem like even greater burden, which made me feel less certain that I’d be able to get them done on time, which then made me procrastinate even more and be even more unproductive. It was a vicious cycle!
It felt absolutely terrible on Wednesday.
Thankfully, I pulled myself back up on Thursday. Once I hit the bottom of unproductiveness and managed to sit down and start working, the so-called “sense of flow” came back. And I was able to write all the looming lines of code that I had to write for this week in one sitting.
But the unproductiveness on Wednesday turned out to be a nontrivial hit. By the end of Friday, I had some output verification tasks outstanding — the tasks I promised myself to complete by the end of the week.