Hello Friends

This will be the last post I’ll make in VRAC. In 3 days, I will be back in Wisconsin and the REU will be officially done.

This blog will be pretty long and separated into 3 parts.

The Final Week

The final week has been extremely bittersweet since we are finishing up our projects. I am excited to see the final product, but with that it will be the end of the summer program. For most of the week I have been working on finishing up the paper with Lydia and Harrison, while also finishing up some of the MATLAB code. We had finished up most of the paper by Tuesday and were proofreading. I feel really good about our paper and our project in general. We were able to run the full trivia paradigm in VR with a few bugs, but it was extremely satisfying seeing everything come together.

Today we had the research symposium where we got to present our posters from the summer. I was both nervous and excited for the presentation. This was my first time presenting a poster and I was worried I would do it wrong. In the end, I felt pretty good about how we presented our poster. All of us were able to present the poster well and I felt like we got the main points out. In addition, we had a good number of people come to our poster and seemed pretty interested.

At one point I left to look around at some of the other posters. I was interested in seeing some of the posters from the statistics REU since I am a data analytics major and enjoy statistics. I really liked one of the posters that looked at different time series models and regression. It seemed like an REU that I would be interested in maybe down the line.

Reflecting on the Summer

Looking back, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this REU. At the beginning of the summer, I wasn’t expecting to receive this kind of opportunity, but the moment it became a possibility, I took it. The summer has been extremely rewarding. I was able to gain new skills in a myriad of different topics ranging from C++ to Unity to MATLAB. And with these skills I was able to meet some of the most amazing people. Everyone at VRAC were extremely welcoming, talented, and was a thrill to be around. I am extremely grateful that I was able to meet them and get to know them.

I also enjoyed getting to know the others at the REU. Coming into the summer, I felt like I had to prove something. They had all gotten accepted at the beginning of the summer and I hadn’t, which made me feel like an imposter. As the summer went on, I felt less that way. I enjoyed every second I had with them (even when we fought). I don’t think I would have enjoyed my REU experience without them. I don’t have a specific favorite activity, but here are a few memorable ones.

• Late night movies and TV shows
• Game nights
• Our trips to Des Moines

Now to our research group. While we had our ups and downs, I enjoyed getting to work with Lydia, Harrison, Aron, and Dr. S. I never would have thought curiosity, as a topic, could make me curious. I also wouldn’t have imagined getting to work with an EEG cap and similar software. In addition, this group really pushed me throughout this summer and have helped me grow. We had faced many challenges throughout the summer, but together we were able to tackle them. In the end, I absolutely loved working on this project and wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

What does the future hold?

This summer has really opened my eyes to what I want to do in the future. I has always thought being a professor would be fun because of the teaching aspect, but I also want to do research now. The summer has shown what research is, and it is something I want to do in the future. In addition, because of my experience at VRAC, I am seriously considering coming back to ISU for graduate school. If it would be possible, I would love to do HCI (at VRAC) and statistics in the future.

For the short term, there are potential opportunities for me to continue working with Aron. And I would also be interested in doing some other work with those at VRAC if possible. I enjoyed my time at VRAC immensely and am going to really miss working with everyone.

Well, that’s all folks.

Best,

Sophie Meronek