Blog

Friday, September 4, 2020

Last fall, when I pictured September 2020, I certainly didn’t think that I would be back in my hometown starting grad school online during a global pandemic. And so, for me, this post is about a series of firsts: first pandemic crisis, first time in grad school, and the first week with my MDEI cohort. Over the course of the week, I realized that this could be a real opportunity to learn by embracing the uncertainty and jumping in with both feet.

I’m so excited to learn from and with the wonderful people that I met this week. This MDEI cohort is one of the most diverse academic groups I’ve worked with in terms of experience, specialties, and geography. The Bootcamp curriculum highlighted our respective strengths in ways that I didn’t expect – and I’ve already learned so much!

Day 1: Finding a Community

New things can be scary. I didn’t know what to expect coming into Bootcamp, and getting to know such talented and supportive people was both comforting and intimidating, and this is something I’ve been thinking about.

The earliest parts of Bootcamp were about forming a community. I was immediately impressed by the skill and creativity that the MDEI students and professors demonstrated in their Miro boards. I spent a long time developing mine, and then even more time engaging with others. I loved seeing everyone express themselves through their board and learning about their favourite television shows and foods or about their families and homes – it was a great way to feel a sense of togetherness, even when we’re all across the globe and I want to use the Miro board as a low-pressure opportunity for creative expression in the future!

Recording the short, low-production intro video was much more stressful! I spent hours trying to film mine, but I couldn’t get a take that seemed natural and friendly and engaging. I deleted each take almost immediately. I finally filmed a video that I felt was acceptable and immediately uploaded it. I knew I still seemed anxious in the video, but this simple task had become large and frustrating. From here, two things happened.

1) I knew that I had to improve my video skills, and so I set a goal to film a video of myself talking through the best and worst moments of each day; and

2) I got to thinking about why I was so nervous about introducing myself. What was going on?

Day 2: Finding My Place

As Bootcamp continued into the second day, I got to know some cohort members better, through games (Skribbl!), morning check-ins, and the buddy system and teamwork activity. We got a team together to learn about interactive storytelling:

We were all a little confused at the start, but after talking through the instructions we got the hang of things. The interactive storytelling activity let us share stories about ourselves that ended up facilitating conversation between our new buddies! The Teams chat we made to conduct this activity persisted throughout the week so we could continue to support each other, and through these conversations and the teamwork workshops, I learned some things about my introduction anxiety: as I’d spent the first day getting to know my amazing classmates, I realized how much talent and experience everybody around me had. A lot of the curriculum in MDEI is very new to me, so I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge my cohorts already had coming into the program. After the interactive storytelling activity my buddies stayed to chat and I expressed that the Teams module helped make me feel as though had a place in the program after all. My team was very kind in reassuring me that I also have specialized knowledge in certain areas of the program! Having that chat with new friends made me feel a lot better. Instead of being intimidated by everybody’s talent, I’m approaching it as an opportunity to learn from and with some of the best!

The module on working in teams offered a surprising amount of reassurance that there is a place for me in this program – this was a powerful and important experience, and one I want to keep thinking about. We talked a bit about Impostor Syndrome, and so I decided to dig a bit deeper into this – you can listen to a short podcast interview I did with a historian of medicine about Impostor Syndrome, discomfort, and “finding a place” in professional success here:

Days 3, 4 and 5: Finding New Skills and Goals

More days of learning – to start, I learned that I am NOT good at Jackbox games. At all.

After the game we had a coffee chat with Daniel Harvey, whom I discovered also does games research! I can’t wait to learn more about VR games and design this term! I focused most of the day on the LinkedIn Learning modules. Project Management is not something I have been taught before, so I will likely seek out more modules on that to reinforce what I was able to learn during the Bootcamp module – even though it can be overwhelming to not know everything, I’m here to learn. Bootcamp was important in helping me identify some weaknesses that I will work extra hard to address.

Overall, I feel as though I have a much better grasp on defining, planning and implementing projects now. The applied innovation module was also very informative as I have not looked at applied innovation from a business or customer-oriented standpoint!

We also played a few rounds of “Two Truths and a Lie” – 10/10! Like the interactive story, it is a game that encourages sharing information with each other and asking for more details (even if some of those details are lies), and I so valued the opportunity to learn more about my cohort.

Leah’s lecture and supplementary readings provided a lot of new information on usability testing which (unsurprisingly) I’ve never learned about before! I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Adobe XD Essentials training and will be fiddling around with the program more this weekend.

I spent all of day five catching up, working on my website, writing my blog post and watching the modules. I will take time over the weekend to watch the extra content from throughout the week.

I have also spent time reflecting on what a unique opportunity I have this year. I get to work with really talented and experienced individuals, and I have been able to see how much the faculty cares for Stratford students.