Week 4 – Quick checkpoint
Hi there,
I hope everyone is having a good start into the week! I have certainly enjoyed all the sun we had yesterday! Doesn’t it just make life seem so much easier & everyone much happier? 🙂 Anyway, I thought I will use this week’s “freeform” to reflect a little on where I have started and where I currently am. What goals I might have started tackling and what challenges still lie ahead. So let’s call this a “quick checkpoint”.
First and foremost, I thought I’ll share a wee anecdote with you. When I did some of the reading for my “Datafication, Accountability and Democracy” class (more specifically I was reading “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” – it struck me “Wow I have come a long way!”. The text was basically going back in time to the beginning of facebook and talked about how personal data was initially seen as “data fumes/exhaust” and only when faced with the economic threat of going bust did Facebook realise that the data they have been collecting all along can be used for profit. This is was the author calls “Behavioural Surplus” (really fascinating book, I recommend). However, it struck me how amazing it is that only a year ago I was in a business school learning how to use “digital marketing analytics” and now I get to dig so much deeper and explore the ethics, governance, accountability etc. behind it. I’ve certainly come a long way, but I am super grateful that I get to dig deeper now!
On that note, let’s see where I stand with regards to my initial goals/initial list:
Soft skills:
- Learn as much as I can about new cultures! Exchange food, traditions, expressions!
Last Saturday I seized my opportunity to learn something new about cultures and joined a few Indian girls from EFI for “Dusherra” – an Indian festival. Wonder what it is?“Dussehra, also called Dasara or Vijayadashami, in Hinduism, holiday marking the triumph of Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, over the 10-headed demon king Ravana, who abducted Rama’s wife, Sita. The festival’s name is derived from the Sanskrit words dasha (“ten”) and hara (“defeat”). It symbolises the victory of good over evil” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2022).
Prior to that I had never heard about it either, but it was an ABSOLUTE blast and I really, really enjoyed learning more about Hindu culture, drinking masala chai & meeting new people! It was so inspiring, I’d like to go off travelling right away!
- Leadership and Team work skills
With regards to the second point, we certainly have lots of teamwork in EFI and I am looking forward to the new teamwork coming up e.g. in Insights through Data and Datafication, Accountability and Democracy. And I am determined to work on it more, because during my first intensive class I something felt like the power dynamics in group work was very uneven and I am aware that I contribute to that, since I usually tend to be quite a strong personality in group work. Afterwards, I felt like not everyone was getting the same amount of contribution time and I want to learn from that experience and try again next time! - Timemanagement and I need to learn how to say “no”
Surprise, surprise! I actually have an update on this goal. I managed to find a substitution teacher for one of my classes so I can decrease my workload a little and after struggling with myself for a while, ended up texting my other work, whether we can have a chat about hours/I am taking 1 day of holidays in weeks where I have intensive courses now. While I was initially apprehensive of how they would react and felt very guilty they were very understanding! - Be creative like when I was 15!
Yea – no updates here yet.
Hard skills:
- Learn how to use data sets with confidence & where to find them
I am getting … somewhere, but it does take me a while to finish my coding assingments. However, I am super super ready to start a coding bootcamp on Wedneday for the next 8 weeks. So hopefully with time everything will make more sense. - Understand the ethics behind data science
Reading amazing books such as “The Age of Surveillance Captialism”
Have also bought “In the Camps” and “Africa is not a country” – so my personal reading list is definitely going strong! - Languages – Languages – Languages
While I never feel like I do enough for my languages, I do try and keep practising a little. I’ve recently watched “Luckiest Girl Alive” in Spanish (on Netflix, very dramatic), read a French book by one of my favourite french authours “Delphine de Vigan” & one of my lecturers kindly borrowed me a book on exclusion &inequality in French! Languages – ahoy! - Marketing skills
No particular updates - Academic writing skills
No particular updates
Overall, it was nice having a wee look back and seeing that (without realising) I have started to tick some of my goals off the list. While time is flying back and sometimes there isn’t much time to reflect on what has happened so far in the semester, it is safe to say that we are on a journey and we are advancing & learning new things constantely. Isn’t that exciting?
#lilac
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