Me

Many things have changed since I last had the time I needed to post something. I’ve finished all my exams at the University, but is still missing the last part of my thesis. I went down completely with stress, depression and anxiety forcing me to quit for a while.

I am now working full time as an IT Project Manager and I enjoy it a lot. I am getting my self back together slowly, and I have become a happier person. My new goal with this page will be to just share little stories about my life in tech. Let’s see if I am able to remember. 🙂

 

I have been at the University all day – first working on my project with the institute (Didactical competencies amongst the teacher group at DIKU) and now with my master thesis. While calculating data and writing scripts it hits me that I have completely forgotten about this blog!

I guess I’m not the born online social networking kind of person… BUT! On the other hand, I have been working full time at my company, I work 15 hours a week for the University (at least until end of July), I have my thesis and I also is involved in a few organisations – so maybe I’m just to busy to talk about what I’m doing.

But here I am – todays work is to calculate minutes with some kind of data from my participants. Just the raw numbers and then of course put them in my report… Today is the first day in weeks I have any motivation at all, so I’m pretty happy that I actually work with useful results. My participants is doing well, but some of them are beginning to think they could stop the program. And it is understandable! They have helped me getting data since the middle of November, and some of them is not used to wearing a watch, and want to be able to decide for them self if they should wear the watch a given day. Hopefully, they complete without to much struggle – only 5 weeks left. 🙂

I also need to figure out how to thank them. I know the bureaucracy at the University probably doesn’t allow any gifts for them, but they are helping me with data for my thesis, so I really think they should get something for their effort.

Today the challenge is tough. I need to sit down, and go through my entire thesis project. Figure out what I have, what I still need to do, and what is nice to have. Also – when do I do it? I need to create a pretty detailed timeplan for my supervisor, and she needs it today.

And this scares me. I am afraid of failing hence I keep pushing stuff in front of me, which means I never meet my deadlines, even if I’m the one who created the deadline. And now I need to stop it – I need to push through and realise I’m good enough! I can do this, and I will do this. This project is mine, and I will get the best result one possible can.

So – today I will create a timeplan that will be the most awesome ever, I will stick to the rest of my todo list, and I when today is over, I will be proud of what I manage to do today.

Thanks to this blogpost for reminding me, that it is me, and not other people, who decide if I fail or not. #MondayLove

Sometimes, you fight so hard for something, that you end up making mistakes – and the mistakes you make, you do not realise before it is to late. I did that… This summer. And I did not found out until ~6 months later. It is not a big thing, but big enough to make me worry. And I am not good at being worried when I have to work 60-80 hours every week. So – now I am on a break from all this studying thing. Or, a little break, because I still work on my thesis, just not full time.

After accepting this, I actually started to enjoy it. I had time to sleep! I had time to relax and stress down. And I needed that more than I thought. My supervisor have been the best – I owe her so much, when all og this is done. She is so motivating and understanding, I just want to hug her!

In all this relaxing time, which I am pretty bad at doing for more than a day or two in a row, I found the courage and got the opportunity to pursue a dream. I got a job opportunity as Junior Project Manager at Nordea! But they do not hire individuals, so I have to be hired through a consultant company. Instead of just doing that, I decided to be hired through the consultant company by my own company. That is right! MY OWN COMPANY!

I have started my own little business as event- and project manager, and Nordea will be my first customer. This is big. I love planning things, I love being a project manager, and I love creating events. This opportunity at Nordea will give me the finances to pursue my dream, and give my company some money to work with. My education will give me the skills to solve the challenges I am facing, and I can offer clients and customers more technical solutions if necessary.

Besides this, I am planning a huge Oktober-party at the University – volunteer work with the Student bar Caféen?, but an experience highly valuable for my new project- and event company!

So – if anyone reading this, is in need of help with a project or an event, do not hesitate to reed more at my companys website: www.y-management.dk – the site is still under construction, but I promise to keep you posted here. 🙂

 

And no worries – the break from the study was all I needed to gain more energy, and find the fighting spirit again.

Many things have happen since September – most importantly, I lost track. Some stuff happen and I was not able to put it on a shelf and move on with my thesis. Now I have to get back on track, and find a way to make it through the last 6 months.

Since September, I have been collecting data from 10 participants. A chaotic start with smartphone troubles, participants that jumped off, watches that would not pair with phones, data app that would not send data, new participants etc.

Also, it is pretty tough having courses at the same time I’m working on this. But I guess, that almost everyone run into motivation loss and stuff like that, when they work on projects like this…

 

SO! The next few weeks I will work hard on this to get back on the timeline. I need to summarise my data, I need to create a model for how I want to analyse my data based on my own watch and phone, and I need to write more thesis! At least I have like the best supervisor ever – she is always ready to support and help out.

 

And remember – prioritise your sleep!

Some weeks ago my supervisor wrote me and her other thesis student with a proposal. She said, she said she had an article approved for the Mindcare Symposium in Milan, but couldn’t go herself to present it and the related poster. So she offered to add our names to it, and pay our trip to Milan, so we could present the poster. Of course that was something I couldn’t say no to, so I arranged a few days of with my bosses.

But – it of course ment an extra workload to my already highly packed schedule. So I have been working my ass of the last weeks with my own course, my thesis, this poster thing which I have never tried before, teaching and my regular job. But! I would not have done it, if I didn’t have fun while doing it. 🙂 The only thing I wish wasn’t there, is my course. It is hard having a tough course next to my thesis, and it would be great being able to use all my 38-40 study hours a week on my thesis instead. But teaching the first year students in programming, working at the university to improve the teaching, and to be able to have a highly motivating and skilled thesis supervisor is great! I love it. And when this course is done, I have passes all mandatory courses on my master, and this is probably what I will classify as one of the toughest courses I have ever had. I can’t wait to cross it off the list. 😀

For now – I will just look forward to Milan and enjoy this opportunity!

It’s about 4-6 weeks since I agreed with my supervisor to take on this projekt, and I’m still pretty exited about it.

Officially I’m not starting on this project before September 1, but my supervisor is already in full speed, and from August we are starting weekly status meetings etcetera. 😀 So besides my summer project I’m handing in in a few weeks, I also work on my project description and academic objectives for the thesis. It’s quite challenging not knowing in which direction this project will go, and still have to define what you should learn from it when we are done. But it’s important because it is what I’m being evaluated on, when they have to grade my thesis.

Besides writing my project description I have also bought a Fitbit Surge Watch! 😀 Or, my supervisor got it for me. The idea is, that by tracking my own sleep and stuff, I can get inspired and get ideas for my project. So we could say I have become my own test subject. I love this watch. It can measure my pulse, how many steps I take, I can track exercises and the app for my phone can be connected to Lifesum, an app I use for tracking calories (I want to gain weight, so I have to make sure, I eat a lot). It is quite interesting to track what I’m doing and being able to create plots and see graphs of it afterwords. 😀