Is it hard or just new?
As most of you know, I am finishing up my Master’s degree in Environmental Science here at UWF. My actual thesis work started as a directed study in my undergraduate classes, and turned into something that I have been working on for over a year. That being said, there are several components in my research that started out as being way outside of my realm. I have been engulfed in not only environmental science, but also advanced statistics that use computer coding techniques. Sounds complicated, right? When I first embarked on my research journey, I started with things I knew how to do and I knew I was good at. Once I hit the actual data analysis component, I was utterly lost. I spent more time in the math department than I did in environmental science. Once I felt like I had a good understanding of the computer coding part of my analysis, I was hit with another, more advanced task at which I had, yet again, not a clue how to do. It was new. Even now, I still seek help with the coding aspect of my work. But, I have found myself to have fallen in love with it. This concept that seemed so hard for me to grasp in the beginning has turned into something that I make a game out of doing. I see how much I can do by memory then go back and check my work, which has increasingly become more right than wrong.