I found this week’s workshop difficult again and struggled to follow along. I was quite overwhelmed and felt uninspired looking at all the electrical components on the table. I found myself missing coding, which has become a bit of a comfort zone for me. To try and help me feel less lost, I took notes in class, which is something I hadn’t done last year, but want to implement after Diana’s comments from her research, where students who usually take notes in class retain information better.

I haven’t been enjoying this first project and have been finding it quite stressful. I’ve been considering switching to creative computing, but I know that it’s only the start of the year, and the fact that I’m finding it difficult is a big factor for me disliking it. From Leanna Lucas’s lecture, where she mentioned growth and fixed mindsets, I’m going to try my best to have a growth mindset and persevere even though I want to run away. I want to finish the first project, electronics prototyping, see how I feel, then reconsider if I want to switch courses.

I went to the Vice Chancellor’s talk by Sarah Atkinson about gender diverse creative technologies. She talked about female innovators in the creative tech industry and the men who commercialise their inventions and take credit for their contributions. I found it incredibly inspiring hearing about these women and how they’ve contributed to the industry, and it’s giving me motivation to give tech and robotics a proper go, even though I’m finding it difficult.