First Day on the Job!

This is the first day of the rest of my life, and the next 3 months. As a PhD student, I think people believe you're supposed to be an expert at everything, or maybe people don't and that's just my thought process.

A palm with a light brown box on it saying "ask an expert"

It's kind of scary being the man on the job, and it's sometimes hard to remember that this is a learning process for me as well. I'm plagued with doubts and bouts of confidence, and a lot of faith.

I'm working on the University's ePortfolio project and there' a lot riding on this. It is a smaller part of a bigger project, but a pretty important part. I have three deliverables, a new more friendly ePortoflio website, a series of instructional videos for faculty and a series of instructional videos for students.

This is primarily a self-directed project. So, I had to figure out what I wanted to do first, myself. It's a little insane that I'm working largely unsupervised (cuckoo). Insane that no one is behind me micromanaging. I'm already learning. Have a plan. That's the answer. There are a lot of people I have to answer to; my professor who recommended me for the job, the boss lady, the project manager and ultimately myself. I plan to be dedicated.

I made today a research day. I previously carried out some research on the web page and made some notes on what I'd like to change, and I'm spending today finalizing my plans (for the whole project), and maybe just maybe, trying my hand at editing things. According to my super helpful helper, "nothing can be broken". Fingers crossed. Yikes!

I'm working on the web page first, because it seems like the one I have the most autonomy with. It can be reverted to a previous version if it sucks, and I have done quite a bit of research on ways to improve it already- just gotta get it ready for testing.

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Happenings

I met some super helpful people today and got my computer set up. Got a fancy headset and figured out how to get the Adobe Creative Cloud suite for free! Cha-ching! I also got access to the OMNI WYSWYG web editor. It seems pretty simple, but I have yet to explore it to its fullest breathe. I will conquer it, however.

Tip:

Fake it till you make it

Here’s how to do it:

1. Do a lot of research

2. Wear a headset and look busy

3. Write a blog post

No, but seriously...

I'm gonna go back to my research.

Update (12:19pm):

Did some concrete stuff! Yes! I created a work plan for the rest of the month~ or rather until the 26th when I will be meeting with the department head and the project coordinator [high five Jelilat! You're awesome~].

Now I have an hour to work on my today/tomorrow items [Great planning Jelilat!]~

Update (1:51pm):

I did some research and consolidated the video portion of my plan. See here.