My First Blog for KIPP
Greetings!
Welcome to my blog for Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society and thank you very much for the viewing!
This is my first blog for the whole project! This project from Edinburgh Future Institute aims to provide students with a space to structure and reflect on our learning throughout the study period. So, this first blog would be just some simple introductions, some ideas about how to structure future blogs and some goals which I wish to achieve through the project.
So here I am, a student studying MSc Data, Inequality and Society at Edinburgh Future Institue
I am Eric Liu from Shanghai, China. I studied Informatics and Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh as the undergraduate. This is actually the first time ever for me to write a blog, especially an English blog. So forgive me for all of the grammar and syntax mistakes.
Personally, it feels a bit wired but exciting at the same time to write a blog. I don’t write a lot, except for notes and essays for courses. I remember I used to write diaries but I always fail to remain to do this. Procrastination would be the main challenge for me must to be overcome for the project.
At the same time, I surprisingly enjoy organising and editing this blog. The experience is so fresh for me and I think this platform and this blog form can be a great option for me to keep track of my study. I can just put any thoughts here as a record.
So, I will try my best to keep it as a habit throughout this year. Keep writing, keep learning!
Structure and schedule for future blogs
The structure of my future blogs would be similar to the structure of this blog. hopefully? At least I like the blog divided into sections so it seems clear and organised, which would be easier for me to review in the future.
I would like to have 3 sections in my future posts:
1. Recap for my previous week
2. Review the work this week
3. Plan for next week
Ideally, I wish I have something to write every week so I can update the progression every week which is a reasonable frequency.
During this first week, I barely start my courses since I just finish choosing courses today. But luckily I have most of the courses I wanted to get enrolled in. A huge thanks here to the program Teaching Assistant and my personal tutor/Student adviser this week. Some courses are just so popular like Data science for society just been full already which just makes me think that data science is still the trending discipline that everyone wishes to study. Hopefully, I could still have the chance to choose this course next semester.
So again, I am still starting up my program. There might be changes in structure and schedule for the blogs. But as long as I have anything to update or I have suddenly brought up a brilliant idea I should just leave it into a draft of the post.
My goal for the project
Firstly, I wish this could help my English writing. Knowing that everyone can access to this blog and view it, I feel a bit embarrassed writing and reading some of the contexts in the post, but I will get used to it. I will just write what I thought here.
I hope I could do this with a fixed frequency. i.e. Once per week. and keep doing this throughout the year. That is just my goal for now.
That would be my first blog. Sorry, it is a bit lengthy and prolix. It is more like just myself talking here. The start is always exciting, I hope I would still have this passion and energy for future blogs. The first week is nearly finished, I have just attended one session for Interdisciplinary futures this week. It was nice to meet the course instructors and organisers there as well as my classmates.
Thank you so much for reading my first blog! Now that my starting up is done, I am looking forward to meeting and interacting with more people at the Edinburgh Future Institute next week!
Hi Eric, I like your idea for structuring your blog and plan to adopt something similar. Your English is gorgeous and you needn’t be shy to let it flow out!
Thank you so much for your comment! I like the idea of this structure as well! This is actually suggested by my thesis supervisor during my undergraduate. All the meeting logs with him are all following this structure which makes it so easy to organise during my final report. I really appreciate this advice from him and so I will use the same method for the blogs as well. Thank you very much for your acknowledgement of my English as well! Looking forward to seeing more comments from you in the future!
Hi Eric, thank you for sharing your journey with us! I admire how intentional you are about how you aim to use this space and think that it’s a great way to maximise the benefits. Although I don’t blog much myself, I write quite a bit and find it a great way to a) organise my thoughts and b) solidify my goals/inspire action. It’s great to see that you’re embracing this journey… I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and feelings as it unfolds.
Thank you so much for your comment, Maryam! Definitely agree with you. I used to write things like graphs or bullet points to keep track of everything, now that I use blog here it is completely new to me but on the other hand, it does make my mind clearer when organising my thoughts. And I can get some useful feedback from peers! It is so nice to have your message, Maryam! Thank you so much! Looking forward to sharing more blogs in the future!
Hi Eric! I live over in Changzhou, Jiangsu, not far from Shanghai (although it feels farther these days with all the extra testing and occasionally quarantine requirements since Shanghai came out of lockdown). I assume you’re at Edinburgh in-person, though. Have you gotten to return at all since the start of the pandemic?
I’m impressed with how organized you are in your approach to blogging. What drew you to Data, Inequality, and Society after Informatics and Mathematics?
Hello Theresa! Thank you so much for your comment! I used to live in Changzhou before! It is a nice city full of memories to me. And yes now I am at Edinburgh now though I did return to Shanghai during the first half year of the pandemic.
For the reason I study that I study this program is that, firstly, the interest? I found myself enjoying doing data related topic during my undergraduate, and myself have a bit interest in the society field. So then I found this interdisciplinary course which is just perfect to me.
The second reason would this new school of the University of Edinburgh. As the name future institute, I believe there would be more advanced and new topics I could discover here. The most important reason back then was actually wanted to study at the new campus but unfortunately it is not yet finished construction… but everything is still nice here!
Thank you very much for your comment and acknowledging my structure of blogs, Theresa! Looking forward to seeing more comments from you in future blogs!