Hi again,

The last few weeks of my LiA went by so quickly! Here are a few musings and thoughts on how it all went.

Setting expectations

As I was coming to the end of my time I was realising that the projects I was working on were not going to get completely finished in the time I was there  - because I was working on so many different things - which on one hand was good for my focus as I could switch between tasks, but it was difficult estimating how long each of these tasks would take me and breaking down as I had also never worked on anything like them so was unfamilliar with the time scales for them. 

Luckily, I was able to catch up with my supervisors on each of these projects and was able to be upfront about how much I thought I would be able to accomplish, and had a more clear idea of final tasks for week 6. 

I had my final meeting on the systematic review where I handed over to the next person who would be assisting on the project, and it was good to see in the full text screenings we were able to eliminate more studies - so hopefully the final number of papers will be much more manageable.

What I should have done different

I think one thing I struggled with throughout my project was knowing when to ask for help. Generally I like to try and work things out on my own, so will do that first before I try asking others to help me out with bits of my analysis especially since I had never used the software before. 

While some people I was working with liked to set deadlines and organise meetings, it was often up to me to do this to make sure I was getting on well - which was both logistically tricky (since people weren't always in) and hard because I wasn't sure when I needed to do this.

Unfortunately, my mathematical analysis, while done well, did not use the correct measures within the dataset I was given because I failed to chase up a meeting and double check if my proposed analysis was correct before proceeding - while this would have been uneccesary to do if I knew what I was doing, but I didn't, so I made some mistakes. Luckily it worked out ok since I was only doing initial stuff before it was decided whether or not to look into the data more, but I still will try and be more aware of this in the future. I think as well as being independent, I was worried about overstepping since I am not used to this much freedom especially with analysis/ research related things - as there is usually a very cleat set of procedures that you would follow when doing this kind of research, but I am not yet familliar with these as someone with limited experience.

Self management

The end of week 5 brought the much anticipated Amsterdam pride! It was an oppourtunity for me to engage in local LGBTQ+ events and with my own community in solidarity and celebration. Unfortunately for my anxious-easily-overstimulated self, it was also VERY BUSY and I got separated from my friends and co-workers who I was meeting, nearly trampled by a crowd and very lost. I would argue it took a lot of self leadership to (literally) pick myself off the ground and get home - at which point I realised I was supposed to be meeting another friend later that night. While normally I would have just gone to bed at that point, I decided to push myself and go anyway, and I ended up having a great time chatting to my friend and enjoying myself. 

My last few days in the city were really nice - I was able to meet up with friends I hadn't yet had the oppourtunity to properly see, see more cities in the Netherlands and successfully caught the flight home despite getting lost in the airport more than once...

Hopefully talk to you soon with my reflections on the overall experience!