Open Source Internship - Azis Toktobaev

         Today was such a relief. Last week, I visited the doctor and was advised to start decreasing my medication intake for the autoimmune disease I have. As a result, two days ago my left eye started visibly inflaming. These inflammations are always followed by headaches and swelling around the area. It affected my mood, as well, because I was hoping that I could be off the medication permanently. Yesterday I used the steroids, and today I am feeling better. I made sure to capitalize on my well being today, and made bigger progress.          First, I shifted gears from writing teamwork to contributing to the book development process. I realized that writing teamworks for 8 hours a day took out all the joy out of the internship/research process for me, and I simply stopped being excited about starting my workdays. Today I continued learning materials of the book, primarily chapters 9 and 10. I really enjoy learning more about the tool...

         I have been a Teaching Assistant now for 2 years, and since May of this year, I have been operating at what I believe to be the highest level of any Teaching Assistance experience. In the past, I have been involved in peer-to-peer tutoring, homework evaluation, and I even got to teach classes in place of the professors. However, it is only since the start of the pandemic that  I got the chance to author 10 different exercise materials and edit two books for brand new courses in Data Science. To me, this work is far more challenging than teaching a class, because I need to constantly think of the students' needs and their trajectory in a course in order to create exercise materials. I need to have a balanced understanding of what students should know, and how much I can challenge them with new ideas. I need to think of their cognitive load.          Currently, I am building team works for each chapter of How To Think Like a ...

        I shifted from working on research for the book to creating original exercises and supplemental materials for the course. This is what I know how to do best when it comes to working in office environments - organizing materials to become well-structured, accessible, educational, and, most importantly, fun. I remember how I structured documentation in data management files for PAPER magazine's brand partnerships office. I was really thorough yet efficient throughout the process that later I was recommended for a special opportunity at the project management office to aid professionals with ADIDAS and Campari Group campaigns.          Now, working on original assignments, I constantly catch myself thinking introspectively of my experiences as a student and a Teaching Assistant. I think of all the times I wanted a certain part of an assignment to have better instructions or a different structure. On Monday, I finished the assignment...

           This is the second part of the Mid Summer Internship evaluation, responding to the blog prompts from the Computer Science Department: Ask your supervisor for a mid-term performance review, and write about what you learned.          I asked Dr. Jan for an evaluation of my work during our 1on1 meeting and I was pleasantly surprised by her view of my work. She reiterated what she has told me before, which is that she thinks I am a very fast worker, who gets things right. This is a good trait because she can give me different tasks and can rely on me. On the other hand, she hinted that I could work on trusting the process a little more. It was nice to hear as well, because I tend to control the process sometimes, instead of trusting that some aspects of it will get done by other people on their own time. What have you learned from the routine or boring parts of the internship? Explain.          This i...

         I will be answering some mid-evaluation prompts provided by the department.  This blog post serves as an evaluation of the Summer Institute as well as my own progress at a midway point. 1. Which of your stated internship goals have you met so far? Explain how you have met them and how you are planning to meet those not met yet?           From general goals, I have been successfully applying my academic skills to a non-departmental work environment, communicating complex ideas at the appropriate level for the opensource community audience in writing and in speech. These particular goals can be all well-seen in my teamwork cooperation and behavior. I am consistent as a group leader and a group learner. I try to be empathetic to the learning styles and challenges of all people, and try to lead by example and learn with an open mind. From my personal goals, I have definitely been successful at using my preparation as a Tea...

        This is almost the end of week 5 of the Summer Institute, and it feels like the semester is just around the corner. We have about 3 weeks left, and we are already working on Chapters 6 and 8. We ended the day yesterday with a conceptual discussion on the way the book reads for students who have never had coding experience. It became clear that we need to introduce Python and layer Markdown and Jupyter Notebooks on top of it. So, I spent this morning writing a short introduction to Markdown, assuming that the students already know how to code. Dr. Jan and I later discussed my work, and in the conversation, we both realized that Markdown and Jupyter Notebook introduction needs to come before Python for students to have an environment for testing and learning their code. So, I re-wrote the section to make it more general and broad. I enjoyed working this way, because I got to capitalize on my talents as a self-starter, creating the section on the Notebook e...

         Yesterday, I spent the day reading about Data Science programs and areas of research at different universities and research facilities. I was curious to find out about the slight differences between what is considered to be Data Science and Management Information Systems at some schools. I will reflect on the findings later and make a separate note, because I do not think I have a full grasp just yet. Additionally, I will be emailing professors, whose research I found interesting.          Today, I was invited to listen to a seminar by Wes McKinley, the founder of the Pandas library for Python and UrsaLabs, where he works on ApacheArrow. I learned about the conceptual differences between DataFrames in different languages, and the importance of creating a system, like ApacheArrow, that could convert and manipulate universal DataFrames across different platforms. On a personal note, I was excited to be there as a rookie in Data Sc...