Today is the final poster presentation day and I am super excited for it. Just two more days left.
Just keeping my fingers crossed for the presentation to go well!

I’m sure all of us will do well. 😀

Explanation of the title: With just 5 more days left, I’m gonna try to be consistent with my blogs and actually name my titles as countdowns till the last day.

It’s the start of final week here and I can’t say how happy and sad I am at the same moment. I’m sure most of us can relate to this, the happiness of completing our projects, meeting so many people, I am so sad that we won’t have to come to VRAC after this week 🙁

On the brighter side though, the Teleport team is done with the paper and poster. I’m looking forward to practicing for the poster presentations tomorrow during the Craft of Research.

PS- This weekend was super awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the farewell dinner and got to bond more with the fellow interns. It was a fun evening and a much needed one after all the hard work the previous weeks. 😀

I have not been getting enough time to blog and I wish I could do this more often. 🙁
Just two more weeks to go.

Last week Alec helped me so much in coding and I really appreciate his help!! 😀
We completed the testing demo for our project and starting this week we got our demo approved by our mentors. Tuesday, we started testing participants and I feel like our pace is good since today we are more than halfway done.

I feel good about this project and am super excited for analysing the results next week and after which we are basically done with the project.

Currently, while we are testing participants we are also working on our presentation that we have to give on Monday in Minnesota.

Before I start with the blog..I should explain my title…This is basically how the Pink Panther music goes and I can relate to it as I see all the teams have so much work do since we only have 2 more weeks here… 😀

Yesterday was super productive for me..did a lot of unity work for the project.

Got to know so many new things about unity functionality. Last night I was thinking and researching for an hour or two to get some good ideas on writing the abstract. I think I’ll start with the abstract today but I plan on prioritizing unity work over it since I have to have the final unity project completed by tomorrow.

There’s a lot of work for me to do today. I need to finish building 4 applications for our 2X2 model. And I plan to add some extra features to it after I write the abstract today/tomorrow.

Only two more weeks to go and I feel like I am more charged up to do the work than ever before. Super excited!

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The GenderMag video was very interesting. It talks about how the UX differs with respect to different genders.It has actually been proven that males and females perform and think very differently.

The speaker mentioned, for example, if we consider a software or if we even consider the economic point of view for the online retail market, we can observe that women comprise of 70-80% of all online purchases, as opposed to men. This gives us a clear reason why GenderMag is significant for us to evaluate. The speaker mentioned the five steps to go about, i.e, picking a person, evaluating a software, walking the person through the software and evaluate goals and sub goals, risk evaluation and at the end tinkering. There five steps are very clear to me and I can see how all these add up to measuring, analysing, comparing and contrasting UX experienced by different genders.

Another thought provoking thought the speaker conveyed during the question session was that in the future, they aim to write a research paper on InclusiveMag which is inclusive of race, ethnicity, culture etc. She aims to find out if debugging structural inequalities will be of significant importance for our society and furthermore, in the field of Human Computer Interaction.

I look forward to reading her paper on GenderMag once I’m done with the research here.

Today, it has exactly been a month since we all arrived here and we’re just left with one more month. I can feel like time is moving so fast…I feel really sad when I think that in a month’s time we’ll all be leaving from here and I just wish I could get to spend more time here. I even remember the time when Elliot was driving me and Roselynn from the airport and he said that since the past few years he has seen so many people, all of them who were anxious in the beginning, were the ones who were the saddest while leaving. I could not relate to it then, but I now I realize what he meant at that time. I am definitely gonna have a hard time leaving. :((

I read memes on social media that display Monday Blues but after coming here, I usually feel Friday Blues since I get a week closer to leaving from here. I am actually enjoying my work and that’s something I always wanted to have when I grow up… the feeling of excitement getting up every Monday morning to go to work. This program is not just about getting work done but also about building connections and meeting people and that’s something I will cherish the most when I leave from here.

But the good part is that we still have a month, and to quote Jennifer after Stephen’s HCI lecture today, “I’m just gonna pretend that this program isn’t ending till the last day, so that we can enjoy every moment here”..”and we’ll worry about leaving on the last day itself”. I really like this ideology! Thanks Jennifer for helping me with my Friday Blues. :))

Apart from this, I was able to implement portals in unity and now I am trying to give the effect of travelling from one dimension to another. Hopefully, I should be done with that plus the HCI homework over the weekend, and I’ll hopefully post the final version of the same next week.

Today we worked on planning tasks for our MCA. We even checked out the C6 lab with Vijay and Adam to learn how to run an application on C6. We might not make our final project using C6, but we got to learn something new today so it was good :))

I really look forward for the next few days as it’s gonna be juggling our final project work with MCA and I am super excited for both. My aim right now is to be able to contribute and be a good team member for both the projects.

Time is going by really fast, but the good part is that we have so much help and support around us. I’m confident we’re all gonna be doing good :))

I just realized I have this new habit of naming all my blog posts such that is becomes an alliteration 🙂

Today started with the rains and also with the fact that I realized I need to buy a bigger umbrella..the one that I have right now is so weird as despite holding it during my entire walk here this morning, I was drenched… 🙁
But, I am alright now since I used up my lunch break to go back to the dorm, grab a bit and change my clothes. Thankfully it wasn’t raining on my way back here. :))

To be on the safe side though, I brought my hair dryer with me just in case anyone’s shoes/socks are super wet. Feel free to take it from me. And I even checked the bathroom has an extra plug point so that problem is solved 🙂

We also started with Shaders today and Vijay has been very patient with us. Shader Lab is a new language for us and despite that, he was able to explain everything so clearly in both practical and theory. It was an information intensive session and we all enjoyed it as it gave us a very good idea about a graphic card, CPU and GPU programming, and many more things. Also, I am really happy with my group also since everyone asks really insightful questions which is really helping me learn a lot. I am looking forward for the MCA and already excited about what our topic is going to be.

It’s a nice day today, especially with the rains. But rain sometimes makes me lazy and sleepy so I’d be needing a lottt of caffeine today…

The tutorials so far have been interesting. I did not get much of Maya and Solidworks but Unity is something that I am really excited about and enjoyed myself thoroughly during the lectures.
We completed the mini problem statement of our project last week and are hoping to finalize the methods of our study by this week.

It’s been a pretty productive week with all the reading material and lectures. I’m feeling good about our project and hopefully our team will achieve all the goals we have planned for us.

I haven’t blogged since a while, partly because there is nothing unique to discuss about and partly because there is so much going on apart from the research here at ISU that I don’t even know where to start from.
I’ll try getting some things off my chest and gonna write impromptu, hoping it all makes sense despite inadvertent grammatical errors. .
I follow a person named @sadhguru and another person named @garyvee on Instagram and since the past couple of weeks I have come to believe (through them) that it’s very important that we know what we are, how we are as a person, until this happens, we won’t ever know what we are bringing to any team or contributing in any work place.
So I decided to actually retrospect what I am.

2 years ago, I never imagined I’d be in the US with my entire family, sitting in a state that I only heard about from other people. Immigration to US was something that my family planned when I was born about 20 years ago when they applied for my green card in hope that I will pursue my PhD/ Masters in the States.
Bottom of the line, I was supposed to come to US 5 years later but due to Immigration Visa rules, I had to come to the US and my parents used up all the money they saved for my masters to pay my undergraduate tuition fee.
It was as if we were earning in Indian Rupees and spending in dollars (1$ = 70 Rs, btw), so it was a huge financial strain on all of us (It still is, but not spending is not an option, we gotta do what we have to do).

We had a very hard time coping up in a new country, one because we were suddenly uprooted from India..had to leave our family, home, friends, everything..and two.. we had to start afresh from scratch. That entire year..I felt as if I am getting all the problems I should be normally getting throughout my lifetime..in that one year. I was unable to talk to anyone in my family since I could not take the risk of making them feel as if they didn’t do the right thing bringing me here, the inferiority complex of having an Indian accent and not being able to fit in a group kept crumbling me down. I soon stopped eating food..it later led to a few personal health problems which I am suffering from even right now. My dad would ask me how my day went and I used to try to keep a straight face and tell him it went alright, despite the fact my classmates did not include me in any group,I was trying to get accustomed to the new culture here..I did not know half the things..for example..I did not know what a pop tart was. I worked as a cashier in a grocery shop and once had to give change back to a person..I did not even know what a dime and nickel looked like… I was having a hard time doing coding and I was experiencing newness in literally everything..I had a tough time making my point clear in a classroom whenever I was asked a question, I even had relationship issues with people I was connected to back in India. I was in my most helpless state but one thing that I never stopped was praying. I kept praying every single day..not to ask for anything but just to help me gain some peace of mind.

Why am I discussing the past?
I’d say that I want to give out a message to people, also to myself (because sometimes I forget everything is going to be okay).
The fact of the matter is that despite so much unrest in my mind…there was some sort of strength in me to wake up every morning and focus all my anger and sadness into concentration in my work. I am a firm believer of philosophy and am currently reading the Bhagwat Geeta (I also plan to read the Bible, Kuran and other such books sometime later). What that book is teaching me is be a “Karma Yogi”, i.e. keep doing what’s under your control and leave the rest to God.

I kept working hard every single day. I was new to coding and I absolutely despised it. I also thought of changing my major to mathematics or philosophy for a while..yet I kept working. Even writing the code to calculate the sum of 5 numbers used to give shudders down my spine. My dad played a huge role in pushing me into this..he had a feeling I’d be alright. A year went by, and nothing improved..I was okay in coding and far from being proficient. But then…Last summer, I had a moment of epiphany..I was helping out a friend and somehow whatever questions he had..I was able to solve. I wrote my own code for matrix multiplication and it ran without any error. I programmed a vending machine, movie kiosk…all the things that I could not have imagined doing a week ago. It was then I realized that hard work eventually pays off. It takes real long to get results..but it does. After some time, I applied for the job of a student instructor on campus, nailed the interview and got the job. My work now is important to me because when I see people come to my lecture..I see myself in them and I go to any lengths to help them. After the semester the look of satisfaction I get from my peer students..Is something that is priceless to me. I could have never imagined that what terrified me a year ago, is something that gives me immense joy now.

Coming back to my point, I feel that if we try hard enough, nothing is impossible. We can easily blame others, our circumstances for not being able to perform well, but the truth is that no matter how people around you are like..you have the power to change your results if you put in the hard work.

This is something that I have learnt in the past two years. I still have the same Indian accent, I wear Indian ethnic clothes sometimes to class, I still find it hard to talk to people at first, I have a huge inferiority complex but I know I am responsible for it. I’m gonna try my level best to improve myself and if not,I’ll be responsible for who I am. Priyanka Chopra, my favorite Bollywood actress and wife of Nick Jonas I guess?.. once said..whether I am in India or I am in America…I’m always true to who I am. Because if you try to change into something you’re not…you wont ever be able to know what you can do for the place you’re working for. If you stay true to who you are, then whatever little you achieve will be yours and you’ll only move forward in life and take everyone else along with you..

My aim here in Iowa is to fight all my fears. A lot of time I feel disheartened and unable to work. A few days ago my father was really unwell..Like very very unwell. That was the time I thought to myself..my mom and sister are already taking care of him what can I possibly do for him sitting 10k miles away? I can only make my time here worthwhile by doing my job to the best of my abilities..knowing my father..this is something that will give him immense joy.

I still am not tension free yet..I have team issues, I have family problems, financial issues , my own insecurities and what not but I still pray everyday and try to tell myself everything will be okay. To everyone who is reading this right now and is able to relate to even 0.0001% of it…I can assure you that as generic as it may sound at times… but eventually everything does become alright. If I am able to change even one person’s mood today..or uplift someone..I’d be very proud of myself. 🙂

The weekend passed by really fast. I still feel as if it was Friday evening just yesterday. Although, like most people, I am not a big fan of Mondays but the start of this week has been surprisingly very exciting.

We are beginning with our courses and hopefully will be done by them in the next few weeks. I do have some idea on what my project is going to be like, so I am not as anxious about it as I was during the past couple of days.

Aside from all this, I really wanna go to the the state gym and try rock climbing, and I do plan to go check it out this week. If anyone would like to tag along with me, I’d love it! So please let me know you are interested. I’m afraid of heights too, but just wanted to find some fun activities to do here on campus.

I am also taking summer school right now along with a research that I am doing back in school , but I am somehow not feeling any stress anymore. Either I can’t feel stress anymore or I’m actually getting used to it, I don’t know lol. But what I do know is that I am really enjoying my time here. Our VR lab tour last week only inspires me to do more and more in life and actually become eligible to work in such labs when I grow up. All the load that I am taking only drives me to perform better and be an asset to my team, and also help others along the way whilst I keep learning new things from my fellow colleagues. I find myself lucky to be a part of this team and I wish all undergrads should try applying for such opportunities.

That’s pretty much all I had to say for today, sorry if I was a little random, but I’m just writing by thoughts so apologies if this is confusing.

Looking forward for the rest of the week!

Coming to Iowa State for the first time ever was a definitely something that I was extremely anxious about but also something to be excited for. As an Undergrad Researcher in my university, I did have a very little idea of what really a research is, but what I’m most excited about is getting to work with interns all around the States. As a resident of California who immigrated here a hardly a couple of years ago, I am used to adapting and getting to know different cultures. Although, the idea of spending my entire summer here at Iowa, in a new state, among new people, with diverse backgrounds and different cultures, felt challenging at first, but after getting to know everyone in the last two days, I can confidently say that we all are going to a wonderful time at here.

I believe that all of us are here to make an impact and contribute our bit to the amazing research topics we have been given. All of us bring our own share of experiences and innovative ideas, and working under professors here at Iowa State will be able to further broaden our horizons and think out of the box. It has hardly been three days and I already wish I was a student here for the rest of the year. The intellectually simulating environment of the VRAC lab and the support of all the faculty, professors and mentors fills me with immense joy the the desire to work hard, learn and apply my learning to contribute my bit to our research.