A Little More Structure

If I am being completely honest, I have found myself overwhelmed by the large amounts of data that I am having to sift through for the first part of my final product. When you are looking at about 6,000 data points, you can find yourself extremely overwhelmed. When I met with my mentor on Thursday, I think he could tell, as I had made very little progress on my data analysis. He gave me a smaller chunk to work with by filtering out unnecessary data and focusing solely on Texas, with the expectation being that I would finish the data analysis for Texas this week and then can move on to other states in the coming weeks. This seemed to lift a huge amount of pressure off of me and gave me a smaller piece to work with. With this being said, data analysis is my main focus for the coming weeks, especially this week. I have also simplified my program to make it a little bit easier to write and easier to work with. In all, this project has become much less complex since being paired down. I think I will still be able to achieve the overall complexity that I want, but by breaking up the project into smaller pieces I am able to take smaller, simpler steps towards this more complex goal.

In addition to making significant progress on the data analysis portion of my project, I am focusing on my research/ original work speech that is due this coming week. I really do not think that this will be a terribly difficult assignment considering how much I enjoyed my original work. I hope the stimulation I felt during my original work translates over to my final product as I think it will allow me to create an impressive and impactful project.

Overall, this week will require me to stay on schedule and follow my goals that both my mentor and I have set for myself. I look forward to seeing where this more structured work takes me as I think it will allow me to complete work on my final product in a more efficient manner.