I went to the Jewish Community Day School in Watertown to speak about EyeWire during the middle school STEM day. Presenting is always difficult for me but this day was fun nonetheless. The kids were super psyched on science and this has provided me with an opportunity to directly chat with some teachers who know more about curriculum development than I do. They’re also my consumer. The teachers are receiving the curriculum I create, and they know what they need.
Ways the wonderful institution of Colorado College prepared me for this day of teaching: I taught classes to some of the students of Colorado Springs as an outreach assignment for my Neuroscience and Organic Chemistry courses. Also the CC Psych department requires students to lead lectures and discussions during 400-level courses. Shout out to Colo Coll.
Below you will find tidbits of knowledge I have due to my internship. The Laws of the Internet state that if I number these then this post will be more popular:
1. It doesn’t matter if you speak the same language, you will not understand each other if there is a big difference in dialect. All of my coworkers speak English. Some of them speak computer-programmer-developer dialect. All of them speak tech dialect. I will probably have a metaphorical nightmare soon where I am at a long dining room table with all of my coworkers, but instead of food on the table there will be handwritten APIs, raid cards, and tablets filled with databases. And one of my coworkers will say “Hey Nina! Can you pass the OS Platform for MySQL?” My gaze will dart between the unfamiliar objects on the table. And then in my confusion I wake up.
2. Someday will always need to be the first day that I speak up. I good at talking with one or two people, and I can talk in larger groups when I’m called upon by another person. I do struggle to speak out unprompted. This applies to EyeWire, CC class discussions, and life. At EyeWire group meetings I’ve spoken here and there, and I don’t necessarily need to talk in every group meeting. But if I have something to say, shyness should not be the reason I hold back.
3. A Squid must be at least 20 inches to be classified as a Giant Squid. My new big task is to create a list of science trivia questions for a bot to spit out during the next EyeWire competition. If you play in the upcoming Cryptozoology themed competition, you now may have the tools to answer one of the questions (see the beginning of this paragraph for further clues).
4. Fame does not always mean fortune. EyeWire is hot- it was featured heavily in the media for a couple of years now, most recently as the cover story of New York Times Magazine, and even in the Chinese media. Before coming to EyeWire, if I had seen a project on the cover of anything important I’d think: “Cool, this project has made it. They are doing well, they have succeeded.” But no- publicity is sometimes only a nudge towards huge cash flow. And with EyeWire, each time it hits the media is clearly is only a nudge; only a tiny bragging point when the team tries to score grants.
5. Faking it til you make it is real. I don’t know much yet, and I’m not really supposed to. You have to stumble while you pretend to have a clear plan the first time you do anything. But what’s even more real than faking it is asking questions. Then you won’t have to fake it because you’ll learn things, and know them for the future.
6. All of the cool adults use at least three monitors at a time. I don’t really understand how to use more than one monitor yet. I have three desktops on my mac, but they’re all on the screen directly in front of me. It’s hard to type and have your words pop up way off to your right. This takes a lot of coordination- who knew geeks had so much coordination?
More snow photos- we are now at 7feet with no sight of it slowing down. These are relevant because the photographer(credit to Will Silversmith) and the other photograph-ie(Chris) are EyeWire HQ employees:
