Week Three

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Weekly accomplishments

This week's primary focus has been writing the intro to our papers. My first and primary accomplishment of the week is writing my intro for the paper. I'm very happy with how it turned out, even though I will most certainly change aspects later, having a good basis down now is helping me better understand what I will be writing and how to research in support of that. Accomplishment number two is having finally finished reading all my letters. While I know I will find more as I go, I have read all letters tagged "school" as well as all those related to principals and superintendents. I'm glad to have read all the letters as now I know the scope of what info is available. Luckily many of the letters give numbers I can work with. Accomplishment three is much smaller but still feels important to me. I have finally adjusted to typing on the school laptop and can type at somewhat close to my normal speed. In the grand scheme of things its very small but it still makes me happy to finally be able to type quickly again.

Roadblocks

This week has honestly been smooth sailing, at least for the most important parts like the intro, I haven't had writers block or any other issues. There have however been some small things. Roadblock number one is familiarity with qgis. I am definitely getting better, in that I can do many things I could not last week. I still don't feel fully comfortable with it. My hope is that when it comes time to start plotting the map I will be confident enough in my own skills. Roadblock two is procrastination. While I have been on top of the things that have needed doing, I still sometimes sit around instead of doing them. While its not really a worry now and I know I will still procrastinate latter on, I'm hoping I stay on top of things like I have been. Roadblock three is the weather. I am not at all use to the amount of rain that falls here. From the sudden downpours to the day long rains it is all an adjustment. The upside is that when it rains, it is a lot less hot. Thankfully the buildings have good AC. Aside from these small complaints, this week has gone really well.

Things I have learned

I have learned a whole lot this week. The first thing I learned was how to write a more science style paper. Since my major is history and my minor writes in a similar style I haven't written in a science based format since my time in community college. I actually really like aspect of the format we are using like listing biases, and limitations. Acknowledging these things early into a paper lays good ground work for the scope of your paper. The downside of the more science based format is that it removes a lot of the conversational style that you get from writing a history paper. The second thing I learned was how the digitization process actually works. On Thursday we got to go into the actual digitization lab and digitize a few photos. This was my first time actually digitizing something outside of just taking a picture. I have far more respect for the process and the resources I use as I did not realize just how long it takes. I also know that digitizing is not the field for me. The final thing I learned was a little more about AI. While I don't personally use AI for anything, I want to go into teach and it is clear that AI will play a part in that field one way or another. Either from students using it to cheat or grading tests. I try to learn what I can about AI to gain a better understanding so it was good to hear how different fields thought about it, and good that it wasn't all positive as it can be frustrating when only the positive or only the negative are discussed.

What's next

Next up is going to be starting to work on a literature review. I already have a few books in mind. I also want to try to read some dissertations if they exist for this topic. The last big project I worked on I read a few works by grad students and it gave me insight on new writing techniques and sources worth using. The only down side I have found so far is that most pieces of literature written about my topic are broad and only have bits and pieces for me to use.