Week 3 – a week of self-leadership? 

 Hi again! As my third week is now finished, I thought I’d reflect a bit on how I have had to practice self-leadership this week! 

Self organisation  

As promised, I have started using Trello to organise my week and remind me of what tasks I have so that I can stay on top of them, as well as my calendar to keep track of deadlines and meetings. I check these and update them at the start and end of my days and I find this makes me feel more aware of what I have going on.  

It looks a bit bare because a lot of my tasks are ongoing so I migrate them accross each day. While looking at it I realise I do not use the progress labels as much as I should and it may actually be better to use more specific tasks than I am currently – so I will try doing this in future. 

In the lab - Leading my own analysis 

As previously mentioned, I have been given the oppourtunity to analyse data from a subset of asexual identifying participants. This week I met with my supervisor on this and we agreed on some research questions for me to ask, however I am finding this hard to stay on track with since there isn't a clear timeframe like my last research project. To solve this, I will try setting some deadlines for myself to complete while I am here.

Work and Life – balancing work and other things 

While it is nice to get away from Uni and experience research from its practical side, I have now fully escaped. This last week I also got my dissertation options – which was very exciting but also distracting as I have had less than 2 weeks to read through them all and create a shortlist so that I can be allocated one for next year. I have had to spend more time in the last week focusing on this and as a result I have been less productive with my research work than I would have liked.

Managing anxiety 

I'm gonna get a bit real here - this last week I have had a few more ups and downs and have had to be more considerate of how I am managing my anxiety. While I feel I have coped well living in a new space – it  tends to play up when I have a lot to do. Luckily, over the last three weeks I have got to know the people I am living and working with and made some new friends. This has been reassuring knowing I have people around, and I have been able to find support from my friends back home and from the Laidlaw programme. While I am able to work from home, going into the lab is helpful in getting me out and I am able to do things like time my trip to avoid busy times on transport when needed.

As well as looking after myself I have pushed myself to do more things I wouldn’t normally do, including to going to LGBTQ+ events by myself. This has been really enjoyable and has made me feel more confident about going to things alone.

See you soon,

Jasmine