Week 1&2 A record of ideas
Because I didn’t know enough about the requirements of KIPP, I started writing my blog in the third week, and now I want to catch up on the first two weeks.
I am originally from Hangzhou, China and before that I had never left my hometown, apart from travelling. Therefore, the year-long postgraduate life in Edinburgh was a new experience for me.
I studied Information Management and Information Systems as an undergraduate, which is a diverse and varied subject that covers computer, management and even finance. It involves both economic and management courses, such as western economics and management, and computer courses, such as programming languages like python, java, r, front-end development data structures, databases, computer networks, etc. In short, all roads lead to Rome, and there are quite a lot of jobs that we can do. But it’s not a good thing to have too many roads, because people become get lost easily.
Personally, I finished my undergraduate degree in three years (undergraduates in China always require to study four years long and then came to postgraduate studies in a hurry. So I didn’t have a lot of time to think deeply about what I wanted to do and was even more confused about the future direction. Perhaps I’m a little more interested in working in a technical direction and hopefully I’ll gain some inspiration during the year.
The second week I attended the Text Remix course. I took my python course in my first year of university, so it was a few years that I picked up python again, and thankfully I still had some memory of it. At the same time, the English involved in the Text Remix was a bit of a challenge for me as a non-native speaker, and I probably had to spend some time trying to understand the meaning of the text. Fortunately the course was not fast paced, perhaps with the difficulties of non-native speakers in mind, and this gave me more time to get used to it.
This week I have read some reading on inequality and they have started to make me realise that inequality is prevalent in the world, how can I look for inequality in the data and how can I use my expertise to analyse and improve inequality in the world?
Thanks for sharing a bit more about yourself! I love this phrase: “it’s not a good thing to have too many roads, because people become get lost easily.” I find this in my own life as well, having too many options or too many lists of too many things to get done, and instead of focusing my energy to accomplish one important goal I find myself doing very little on many tasks and not seeing good results. I only recently started working in data and information management and have had very little formal training in it so I am looking forward to learning more from classmates like you! I am also so amazed at people who move to another country and are learning in a second language – I just cannot imagine doing this and find it very inspiring. I am looking forward to getting to know you better and reading your blogs!
Hi Darcie! It is very admirable to see that you have recently taken up a career in data and information management. It’s very difficult to step out of your comfort zone and try new things, but you did it! During my undergraduate study, I have acquired the ability of self-study. It is feasible to learn some courses by myself through the Internet platform. Therefore, I think getting started of data and information management may not be as difficult as you imagined.I hope you can get better and better and I need to learn more from your courage.