This summer, I started and finished the largest project I’ve done in my life. And honestly it was incredibly challenging, exhausting, and at times, annoying. But this has also been one of the most rewarding experiences both for my personal and professional development.

All this started months ago when I first heard about the Laidlaw Scholars Programme in September. At first, I applied for one of the faculty-defined projects but didn’t hear back. After the first rejection, I truly set aside the idea of the Laidlaw Programme until January, when I realized one think about myself: I’m incredibly ambitious. I was course overloaded, the most stressed I’ve ever felt in my life, and yet I knew that I wanted one last shot at getting into the Laidlaw Scholars Programme. So after doing homework, my nightly project was to work on making a research proposal. That research proposal was also incredibly ambitious, and also very brave of me, because almost all of the content involved in the research proposal was new to me.

To my surprise, I was accepted into the Laidlaw Scholars Programme and began my research early during May. I knew I struggled with procrastination and I wanted to fix that, so I decided to make a general plan of action. I demonstrated a lot of prioritisation and project management during this time. 

The month of May was dedicated to my literature review, which was really new to me. I knew that I didn’t have the skills for it so I did a lot of prior reading and asking questions to my advisor. A lot of my literature review was simply strategizing how I can use the information I found to tackle the problem, as well as analysing and synthesising the information. 

The next month was June, and my literature review spilled over to this month as well. This was the first time when I had to adjust my plan, as my literature review took longer than expected and I started prototyping my chatbot a bit late. The focus of the whole chatbot was to promote diversity of culture, so I spent a long time ensuring I had a good basis in literature. During the first four weeks of the research period, I struggled creating and working with neural nets. In all honesty, I was learning new things as I went, creating, then recreating, then going back to the drawing board, then creating again. My curiosity pushed me to keep on digging deeper, and my ambition allowed me to continue the process, despite my confusion and exhaustion.

The prototyping period was honestly the most challenging technical hurdle. A lot of design and system thinking went into building the chatbot, and since it was my architecture, a lot of it was up to my own creativity and discretion. During this period, I watched a lot of videos and read a lot of literature around chatbots, and learned more than I ever thought I would learn in my first year. I ended up completing the chatbot and its corresponding website around the start of week five.

The start of week five was also when my plans got completely derailed. My REB, which I submitted on-time, was stalled and not given back to me until week six, which meant I couldn’t do my planned evaluation. I had to think fast to ensure that I could complete a well-made paper, and ended up pivoting to a more psychological approach, using thematic coding.

Before I began my thematic coding, I took a very long two week break. Which might seem crazy, but during that time I also contracted the flu, which I had for two weeks. This was my lowest point in my research period. I was completely burnt out, and was losing sight on the purpose of why I was doing the research in the first place: to improve myself and try to improve something in the world. But after working on my research for the third month, I felt exhausted and completely over it, both physically and mentally. At this point, I decided that what was best for me was to take a complete step back, which allowed me to reflect on what I’ve been doing, and have a clear path forward.

During the last two weeks of August, I worked incredibly hard on completing my thematic analysis. I did the majority of it at home, and had to do the rest in the Philippines as my family planned a vacation during the last weeks of August. In the Philippines, I worked in time to complete my written report and my poster, and prioritised the most pressing matters. Luckily, my work earlier in may for my literature review really lightened the writing load. I ended up completing the writing and the whole project on the last day. 

At the time of writing this reflection, it is 10:05 pm in the Philippines. I’m with my family. And I am incredibly proud of myself. I worked for every single aspect of this research project and grew so much as both an individual and as a leader. My time management skills and critical thinking have grown exponentially, and I am extremely grateful for this opportunity, but also thankful for past me, for believing that I could get here in the first place.

This research period has been the worst thing to ever happen to my relaxing summer. But I’m happy that I did it, because the skills I’ve learned and the doors I’ve opened are invaluable.