The Trails and Tribulations of having no Time Management Skills and doing a Research Project

*Spoiler* ends on a cliff hanger as the project deadline ( 1st September) is looming ever closer.
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I would never class myself as a good student. My first few years at University consisted of me in my first year avoiding an entire module and unsuccessfully trying to drop the said module two weeks before the final exam *for any St Andrew's students, there is actually a cut off date to when you can drop a module which is not two weeks before your exam* , turning up half way through class tests, spending my revision weeks reading Orwell ( I study Maths and Physics so I won't be filming any YouTube videos on how to be a top class student anytime soon), and drawing sad faces on my exams when I run out of time.

However, there was one deadline I did meet and that was to apply to the Laidlaw Program (though I do have to admit I did leave it to a day before) .

My history of poor concentration and extremely bad time-management has always made me feel like an imposter at University and especially in the Maths and Physics Department. My grades resemble a stock chart on an extremely turbulent day on the stock market. This made me rather doubtful that I would get a place even though the predefined project that I applied for was something that greatly interested me. The project was supervised by my previous adviser/lecturer whose teaching style, I greatly admired and personally benefitted from.  The outline of the project  was to help create a simulation using Mathematica, J-Query and Javascript which would help students' understanding of quantum and classical uncertainty using the concept of spin.

*Brief Interlude Here to describe what spin is *

A very incomplete description of spin is to think of the earth rotating on its axis ( the earth takes 24 hours for a complete rotation). Then dramatically reduce the earth's size (6.4 km) by  100000000000000000000 ( this is supposed to be 10^21) to the size of an electron ( spin can be applied to other elementary particles but electron is the most well known so we are going with that) which is around 10^-15 m ( or simply very small number) using some sort of technology only seen in an episode of  Rick and Morty. Spin-up corresponds to the electron-sized earth  spinning in the clockwise direction around the axis  and Spin-Down corresponds to the electron-sized earth spinning in the anti clockwise direction. 

*Brief Interlude Over*

I was attracted to this project as I find how the human's mind works and the different ways people learn immensely interesting.  I have always been in awe of Quantum Mechanics and the way Quantum Mechanics has been able to completely change our understanding of the world around us. So when I was offered a place on the Laidlaw program I was completely take by surprise but I like a challenge and I wanted to prove to myself I could make the most out of this experience. 

* Here's wee screenshot of the simulation I have been working on*

In the first few weeks, I found managing my days hard. In particular making sure that I worked on my project  each day.  I could never quite get the work-life balance right. However, during the course of  the 6 weeks I tried various ways to improve which I will briefly go through.

1. Hoping for the Best

This first method went as well as one could imagine. Needless to say, I was very unproductive in my first week and easily distracted which eventually made me very stressed out due to the fact I was doing nothing. Which in hindsight would stress most people out.

2. Blocking out Time 

This method consisted of me blocking time out using my outlook calendar so I could monitor how many hours I was working on the project. However, this didn't really work as I round it hard to just be just sitting and working on one thing for three hours. I even tried a version of the Pomodoro method where I would do 30 mins and read my book for 5 minutes but this just ended up me reading my book... ( Pretty sure it was NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman). It also resulted on me to add more hours to each coming week to make up for previous weeks which just made me more fatigued and less productive. 

3. The To-do List

I also tried writing out a to-do list during each of my meetings with my supervisor so I had a stronger direction and by broke them down into smaller and more manageable goals making myself feel more productive. This worked reasonably well but for things that required more time and couldn't be broken down any smaller I found this quite hard to manage. 

I never found a method that truly 100% worked for me which is still something I am working towards but every time a new system doesn't work, the next system I created is marginally better. These said systems are still undergoing trial and error during my current internship at a creative digital agency. But I defiantly have learnt to be more forgiving of myself and it's okay not to be spending every waking moment working.

The thing I have learnt the most  from being a Laidlaw Scholar is that anyone can become a Laidlaw scholar, you don't need to be perfect on paper ( grade wise/CV/what ever employers like to look at). It's an experience that definitely makes you understand yourself a lot more as being left to your own devices whilst researching is not as relaxing as it first appears and requires a lot of self reflection.

As for the 1st September deadline... finger's cross. :| 

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