#data science studyblr

Doing a post-grad in a different faculty to what you did your undergrad in is very interesting. I was a civil engineering student for 4 years. Now I am an inter-disciplinary student in computer science, statistics and commerce.

I have been getting these niggling feelings of discomfort whenever I am learning something new. I had gotten so used to having some sort of idea of what I was doing in undergrad and now everything is new. The trick is to acknowledge those feelings of discomfort and still push through.

At some point everything makes sense and I find myself being able to explain what used to be alien concepts to my classmates. Just last week I was able to help civil engineering students understand some of the calculations they were doing based on the knowledge I had gained this year in my new program.

I am absolutely dependent on group study sessions during my low productivity phases. That is why I am so grateful that I stay in one of the university’s residence halls.

I can always schedule a study session with other students in the vicinity. This forces me to actually prepare and show up. We police each other’s phone activities and are able to check whether we know a concept by explaining it to each other, bae in mind we are all doing different programs in various faculties

I am one of those people who rewrite my notes at least three times. The first time is during class. The second time is a neater version of the in-class notes. the third set of notes are annotated notes from my own study sessions and examples given in the reading manual for the class.

It’s very tedious but it helps me take in the information and the pages keep lessening with each extra set so I take that to mean that I am understanding the work better in a more compact format. This makes for lighter revision notes.

If there is one thing I learnt from my undergrad in engineering, it was the importance of team work. I would not have performed the way I did had I not supplemented my individual study sessions with group study sessions.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

AFRICAN PROVERB

Our guest lecturer’s flight got delayed. This meant that my 2 hours of pre-reading the library quickly turned to an entire morning in the library. Whilst going through  Financial Markets, I reflected on how much I have had to put myself out there this year. 

I have signed up for two hackathons. At the same time, I am planning a demo day on a data science project that I did in my undergrad. I also volunteered to co-supervise one of the final year civil engineering projects. I am not an expert in any of these fields. However, I picked up in undergrad that the quickest way to learn was to pass on the knowledge that I possess. 

It’s why I share my annotated notes with my classmates. Knowing that they will see it forces me to write clearly and think through the content, as they might ask me to clarify something. It helps them a lot, especially those who work and can’t make certain classes. But it also helps me a lot. Even when I do not have the motivation to study, I still have the discipline to deliver within a team environment.

It is one of the perks of being in a small class whilst coming from an engineering background. There is no way I could have passed undergrad whilst staying in my own bubble. I saw my marks increase when I started involving others in my study process. I let them help me and also helped them. It is something I am happy to carry on in my post-grad.