My name is Mai Bui, class of 2024. This is where I document and reflect on my journey in the Computer Science iDesign course taught by Professor Audrey St John. Besides making, creating all magic items and learning about electricities, and coding, through each video, this is where I felt my soul baby was taken care of and embraced. I hope you will enjoy my journey with me here.
During the woodworking workshop, Kris made it so comfortable to learn, be curious and be amazed to be in the lab. So, I felt a strong sense of belongingness in the world of woodworking. That gave me a great impression of wood that I just wanted to keep coming back and creating amazing things with it, which is why I keep persisted to make my final project – breathing tree by wood.
Give feedback to your peers for their elevator pitches felt like gifting someone: I put more thoughts and concerns in what they would feel when open the box. What works great for me is straightforward ideas to move forward but keep the neutral tone to not add extra feelings affected the views of product itself. I think it is a tricky task that I want to do it carefully but it also gives me so much joy if this can help them just the same way their feedbacks help me.
In academic journey, there have been many assumptions about my ability to succeed as I thought of myself as a “___ person”. Like the flower pot in this class, I thought I was not a design person, my flower pot was assumed not to succeed in terms of visualization. Or in my First Year Seminar, I was always insecure about my English writing as it was not made for a STEM person like me. I was very nervous about my midterm essays and I did not believe I could succeed with it. But my professor met, complicated my outline and confirmed that my writing was not bad.
Not only I had assumption about myself, I also made mistakes of making assumption about someone else. When I was a sophomore, my main concern was my classes and my 2-credits research. I realized a friend in Linear Algebra was so struggling and I assumed they was not a “Math person”. But, it turned out that they were a senior, busy with graduate school application, their Physics and also wanted to graduate 1 year sooner than expected. Everybody had their own stories, concerns and priority, I was so quick to judge somebody just based on a small aspect of their life that I could see and my current experience.
However, sometimes with right intention, we still could hurt or make others feel like they did not belong. When I was in UMass Algorithm class, we had a Friday lab session where we was given 5 problems and discussed with a group to figure those questions out. In the first day, I could barely understand the questions while there was a sophomore in the group quickly understood and offered the answer. Then, when I asked him what that question meant, I felt judgement and even though he helped me, I felt I was so separated and not belonged to the group or even to the class.
It was not the only case that I felt that way. I also did that to the others as well. When I was in my Neuroscience research, it was a Computer Science project for 4 of us: 3 of them were Neuro-CS double major and I was the only one with CS major. So, I had more time than all of them and had more time to work with the coding parts. When we tried to meet and code together for 1hr, it was not efficient as it was the same Jupiter Notebook and usually you could not finish coding anything in 1hr. There were about 2 times that I finished the task by myself, sent them, explained to them and submitted to the professor. Accidentally, I was creating an intense competitive environment where they felt like they were all losing a game. Then, I could not communicate to them anymore and seek help from my PI – Neuroscience professor. He advised me to be honest to them and said he did not mind if we sent things a bit late but wanted us to be together worked as a team. I sent a message to apologize and I needed their help to move forward. Then, we collaborated smoothly and became good friends with each other. I also learned my lesson to notice my teams’ feelings and knew when I should step back to leave room for them to shine. It turned out to move fast, it was not me doing everything fast but it was spreading out the work and let everybody work in their best field.
On the day we practiced about fishbowl activity as an observer and participant, I had a chance to learn that perspective-taking can boost my cognitive flexibility and impact my sense of belonging.
When I was an observer, I noticed more how each of the team members listened, reacted and supported each other about the ideas. Sometimes, the idea came really close to the new pivot – like the piano with the pressure sensor or so far away like the adjusting light with distance sensor. I realized just by having their teammates listen and support their ideas made them more comfortable to suggest new idea, even sometimes was to throw away their established plan. There was a clear difference with teams with good care and provider of sense of belonging and teams that do not. Moreover, just by being silent and taking a step back, listen to other people brought so many new ideas for me and so many lessons for how to support my teammates.
This is also the first time I learned about CPX but thanks to taking small steps, my background of coding and the encouragement from professor, my friends and TA made it so much easier and more belonged. Brainstorming with my teammates make me realize that to grow well as a group meaning make sure everyone feel good, validated and comfortable with the ideas that we are going after. My teammate and I had different coding background. This seemed to be her first Computer Science course and this is my last semester as a Computer Science major. While I felt comfortable and excited with the idea of using the pivot, she felt a bit nervous that we could not finish those ideas on time. So, we tried to actively listen to each other’s ideas, support those that seemed comfortable for both of us, settled down ample time to make both feel realistic and doable. And most important, there were multiple times we threw away ideas that no longer served us. We had ideas together, wrote codes together, design together while kept on checking and reflecting. Thanks to that, when we actually executed the project, we moved really quickly and felt both validated and connected after the project.
However, there are many times things do not go great as planned, for example my thesis right now. I planned my thesis since the early of March this year about predicting force information for surgical robotics. Then, I went to a conference in June to see that a representative from Intuitive Surgical announcing they already had force feedback implemented in newest version of commercial surgical robot.
And the lab I visited in Nashville also did the pretty the same method that I used to solve that problem was so far ahead of us. I felt like I was just like playing catch up but it took so long for me to let it go. I decided to continue working on side project and took a step away from it for a while. I realized that this thesis topic did not suit my current skills, not what I was most interested about and not fit to any lab that I wanted to do in graduate schools.
Three days ago, I finally gained enough to talk to my Principal Investigator to change my thesis completely. With the new idea, I felt so much more fit and interesting to pursue. This was only given by taking time to stop helped me to look at it from a different view. Even though I had four more months to complete it and was supposed to submit the background, introduction and method earlier this month, I felt so much more relieved. When I talked with my professor, she gave me her insights and endless support, validation for my thought process. She brainstormed with me and supported my new idea. She made me feel like I belonged to the lab and the field. To be honest, I am not sure if I can make it on time or not but thanks to this belongingness and perspective-taking, I can continue moving forward.
During this class, active listening helped me work with the new concepts like CPX. Circuit Playground Express contained too much information all at once. So, it would be straightforward to be overwhelmed if I did not pause to digest and reflect on a partial of the info I was just given. Especially when suddenly the A5 and A6 stopped working and I spent 30 minutes debugging with my TA and my Professor. This was hard as there was also a difference between macOS and Linux (the OS professor used). As I got lost in that, I decided to pause on it that day and revisited it on Wednesday (1 day later). Then, I realized it was all about rejecting the old sketch. Pausing allowed my brain to sleep and organize the problem in the back of my head and gave me a fresh look the next day.
When I look back, what I would love to share with the beginning of the course is completely okay with pausing when needed. It is not a sign of weakness but an essential strategy for my short and long-term learning. To be productive, reflect on and know where you are at, and take time to digest at your own pace is a tough lesson that I learned over time. Whatever takes you this far, trust yourself, listen to yourself first, and believe that voice will lead us to where we belong.
Reflecting on my academic journey, there was an experience in physics Force, Motion, and Kinematics course that may have gone differently if I had paused to explicitly use an SRL cycle. As a CS major, and it was about more than seven years since I seriously learned Physics, I found it really overwhelming and hard to catch up with. The homework questions that were related to the phenomena always challenged me to the point that I felt rushed/ pressured to even open and read the questions. When I rushed, I usually skipped the part of Planning, jumping directly to Execute and skipping Reflection. It turned out that skipping steps made it even harder for me after a while to catch up and understand the concepts as a whole. Looking back, if only I learned or been reminded about the SRL cycle, it would have been so much more beneficial to me for the learning process/ curve. It might take more time temporarily but took less time in the longer term.
Also, in that class, on the first day of in-class group work, 2/3 questions were in homework. Due to my busy schedule with my project, I had not looked at the homework yet while the other two members already did. Thus, they passed fast on those first two questions and I was lost. I asked if could we move slower through those questions and one of them yelled at me “No!” After that, I remained awkwardly silent toward the end of the class. I felt shocked, and insecure and did now know how to react. The dynamic between us in later classes also went pretty bad. We found it hard to actively listen to each other and look at others’ points of view. That led to group work near the end of the course, it was a hard math question related to phenomena. I suggested to do it in 1 way and both of them immediately said I was wrong. They had not listened yet. Both of them thought to solve it in another way, proceeding to document them down to the answer board. And then the professor came and said that was not correct and suggested another solution, proving my approach was correct. They were both lost and then it came as a shock to them that I was right. To be honest, it felt good and bad at the same time. It was not meant to be a fight between us who was right and wrong. We were supposed to be a team. We all failed at functioning well to be a team: putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, listening, and even reflecting as a team.
Sitting on a chair in front of Skinner, I realized my journey with self-efficacy and mindset has changed along with my time at Mount Holyoke College. The most obvious signal is always the same – not confidence in myself but comfort and belonging.
Ironically, the moment I realized the importance of self-efficacy was not at Mount Holyoke College but at UMass Amherst. In Spring 2023, I took Introduction to Algorithm at UMass Amherst. The professor who taught me was considered legendary at UMass. His biweekly challenge set was hard to the point that even the professor taught at the different sessions but the same homework and slides, could not solve and catch up with his lectures.
On the first week of classes, in front of the bus coming back to MoHo, I found it hard to restrain myself from breaking into tears as I did not understand anything no matter how prepared I was before and after classes. This was a shock for me as I normally could understand well inside MoHo’s classes without any pre-class reading/video. I felt dumb and isolated during the weekly lab – everyone seemed to understand except for me. “This is not where I belong” – I told myself. Since then, I did not feel comfortable being in the class and it was hard to even just come to UMass and listen to the lecture.
But then, I came to the office hours the professor, and he worked me through my ideas for constructing the algorithm, encouraged me when I was right, and let me know that I belonged in this class. In retrospect, what he tried to do seemed to be to increase my self-efficacy and change my mindset. Everything seemed hard then did not mean anything wrong with myself as a person but more of my familiarity with the knowledge. Things tended to be better with time if I gave it more time and had more resources and opportunities to sharpen my skills. Later, I found it more comfortable to learn in the class. Not because it got any easier but because my self-efficacy supported me.
A note for my past self is when comparing, try to get away from my head at that time and look more broadly. A few days after the first lab, in all of the TA hours ( about 6 of them a week), there was usually a line of other students trying to get a hint of each question in Challenge Set/ Homework. Even the guy I thought was so far ahead of me in the first lab was struggling so hard. He could be better in the first lab, and I could run faster on that TA hour. Nothing fixed. Any comparison and conclusion were too soon and seemed not fair to anyone.
Back to the present, I am intrigued by the Dandelion Painting – it was so beautiful to see the smooth blend between music, light, and art by the magic of tech. I believed my self-efficacy and growth mindset had my back. They made me comfortable and free with the idea of creating a comparable project in this class. Probably not in one day, but a small success each day is still a success. Just like the snowball effect, we will never know how big a “small success a day” can become.