Author: Allison Karlis

A look into my room or the +10,000 unread emails in my Gmail would tell you all you need to know about my organization skills – or lack thereof. Generally, I can get by with my scattered brain and even more scattered things (I have a system, I swear), but when working with a team, this simply won’t work.

This past 1.5-ish months, I have learned a lot about organization and group work, so now I will pass it on to you all. Get ready to take notes! Class is now in session!

To-Do or Not To-Do

A To-Do list is your best friend. There’s really not much more to say here. Not only do they help you sort out your life, they give you so much satisfaction when you can check another task off your list. I like to write To-Do lists for each Day, Week, and Module (for each class). I write the due dates next to items for my weekly or module list. For example, Write Blog Post (DUE 11/12). If something is high priority, it is in all caps or maybe with a lot of exclamation points! Whatever works for you is the best method.

Team lists also help immensely. I have found when writing our team documents that creating a To-Do for each document, listing the required sections and who is going to do it, has been a game changer. Everyone knows what they are responsible for getting done, and the whole team can see how much progress we have made towards our assignment. It is a great way to see which members may be falling behind and need help, and prompts group communication.

Which software do I use? Why, thanks for asking! I am absolutely in love with Notion! I use it to take all my class notes and lists. It is so customizable, and allows things like code, image, and video embedding. You can also get the app on your phone. 10/10 recommend!

Outlook Calendars

All students at OSU have an Outlook account, so what better resource to use! We all get notifications, and all have access to important dates and email reminders. Setting up our weekly/biweekly Zoom calls with the Outlook calendar has been an amazing addition! Not only do we all have the link and meeting information, our Project Partner does, too. With the Outlook events, team members can RSVP, so you can see who will be there and who won’t. Team members also get emails if the meeting time or date changes. This is so important when working as a team with a wide range of time zones and schedule availability.

Discord: The King of Communication

Group communication is the most important part of any project. Without it, a group cannot be successful. Finding a method of communication can be difficult. Email is very rigid, text is too informal, and meetings for everything are overkill! Solution? Discord.

Discord is a very easy method of communication. Most people have it on their phones, so sending a message while away from your computer is easy. I get message notifications, so I can keep up with group conversations and chime in. It also makes a quick check-in very easy. Sometimes you are really busy – life happens! – but you need to tell your team you are still alive. A quick message in Discord saying: “Hey, guys! Super busy the next few days. I plan to get started Thursday” is all it takes. You have now communicated with your team that you are aware of a deadline and are working towards it. So simple!

Discord also allows for Polls, which have been instrumental to my group. Should we have a meeting on Halloween? Which diagram design looks better? And questions like these can be quickly answered by the whole team. Another great feature allows for pinning messages. Important updates, deadlines, or links can all be pinned, so the team can find them easily.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a great team organization tool for obvious reasons. Working on a document together requires keeping it in a place where everyone can access it. But the benefits go beyond this. My team has made the Google Drive into a treasure chest of resources. Meeting notes and recording, cool resources, summaries of YouTube videos, and more can all be kept here.

Not only has this made our group and individual assignments easier, it has made them more fun. An exciting part of learning something is sharing it with others. By adding an interesting article link or a YouTube video that answers the question we were perplexed by last meeting, we are learning and sharing this experience with each other. And it’s all in one place!

Conclusion

Staying organized is hard, especially in a group setting. There are deadlines, resources, and life events that come up. You need to find a way to organize them all and communicate them with your team. I shared some great resources like Notion, Outlook Calendar, Discord, and Google Drives and some tips to use them! Hopefully they will help you as much as they have helped me.

Until next time!

It’s 11;19 pm. A disheveled figure sits at its desk, hunched over its keyboard. Sweat is beading at its brow and streaming down its face in salty rivulets. The creature paws desperately at the collar of its shirt, desperate for some air. Desperate for an escape. This being has been given a task, a task it vowed to do never again after choosing its path, years ago. The poor, miserable brute had to write.

The brute is me, a CS student who hasn’t written more than a paragraph at a time in years. 

Who Am I?

My name is Ally. I am a Computer Science senior (though you already knew that), minoring in User Experience Research. I am a powerlifter, tap dancer, avid crocheter, literature enthusiast, film fanatic, and human. 

Why Computer Science? (this one may shock you!)

I used to watch so much House, M.D. that I thought I could very easily become a doctor. This was not the case at all because of a little thing called Chemistry. I took my first two years of college while being in high school and hated chemistry so much that when I transferred, I searched for a major that wouldn’t require any more Chem classes. My choices were very slim, and I decided that Computer Science sounded the coolest. I had absolutely zero computer science experience prior to my first day of class at OSU. This is a very serious story, and is really what happened, I swear. (sorry for the clickbait title)

Any Regrets? – A Computer Science Journey at OSU

Full transparency, I very much regretted my decision during my first year as a CS student. It was hard, and there were no shows I liked about computers to keep me going. I had always struggled asking for help, and I sometimes felt that I didn’t belong because I had no prior experience. Then I took Computer Architecture and Assembly and Data Structures and found the now-canceled British TV show I.T. Crowd, and I experienced a paradigm shift. 

The challenge of learning new things and solving complex problems started to excite me. I learned what RAM is and became obsessed. I was introduced to the language of control freaks dreams, Assembly. Most importantly, I met my true love: hash maps. Since then, I have only become more interested in Computer Science, and more dedicated to my education at OSU. 

So in short, no, I don’t regret it. 

The Project I’ve Got My Eyes On

The project I would like to do is Enhancing Localized Deformation Analysis in Materials Science Using AI/ML: A Comparative Study of Traditional DIC and AI/ML Approaches. In this project, we would create a ML model that would learn from Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images to create a predictive model for material behavior as they near their weak points. 

This project immediately got my attention because of my interested in Machine Learning and Statistics. Becoming more familiar with some tools and techniques I have already been briefly introduced to would be an exciting experience for me. I love a good challenge and throwing myself into something new. I think this would broaden my horizons and push me to become a better developer and learner. Plus I could live out my dream of studying materials and their breaking points like Tony Stark in Iron Man II when he creates a new element in his basement. 

How Am I Preparing?

While I await my project and team assignment, I am keeping busy. As a refresher of main concepts, I did a speed run of Google’s Machine Learning Crash Course. It is a great introductory resource to the main topics and methods of Machine Learning.

I have also been spending a lot of time looking at data collections on Kaggle, like the LeetCode of ML, but have yet to make a model. I am still putting out feelers for all of my courses and getting a sense of their loads and requirements.

Foretold Obstacles

I can imagine quite a few challenges I may face as I work to finish the capstone. So I have created a list:

• Course load and life – I have other classes to take and other things to do! I struggle to find balance sometimes, and I can see it being a challenge with this project.
• Group work – I have improved a lot, but I still prefer to work alone. I will need to further improve my communication and collaboration skills.
• Lack of ML experience – I have some experience, but it is fairly basic. It will require a lot more for this project, so I will need to spend a lot of extra time learning about it and material science.

In Conclusion

My journey with Computer Science at OSU has been an interesting, if not enjoyable one. I am very excited to do any project that I get assigned to because they all look great. I look forward to (at a much, much lesser extent) to writing on this blog to improve my skills on this weird programming language called English? Inglish? I’m not sure, it’s been a while since I used it. And to keep everyone up to date on my progress.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or movie recommendations, please reach out.