Woo hoo, it’s 2019, which means in May I will be done with school!!!! But before I can completely celebrate, like most people, I made some goals for 2019 so here goes. I’ll start out with the five R Stats goals I tweeted about around two weeks ago.
Well that’s pretty self explanatory. I am going to try my hardest to have a blog post at least once a week and some of them might be about #rstats. I will add on to that and say I will participate in a #tidytuesday challenge once a month and blog about that. As for tweeting, I took the initiative and signed up to be a curator for the We are R-Ladies twitter account. That will happen around April.
Signing up to be a curator for the We are R-Ladies account is a start. Someone is trying to start up an R-Ladies group in my area, but I haven’t heard much about that as of recent. Since I’m leaving in May, I feel the most I can do is help out remotely on any R-Ladies related type of work. I am curious to see if there is an R-Ladies group where I end up moving and if not, I’ll see what I can do to start one.
I still don’t know over what. I have an idea to make a package that is related to my research. Or maybe I might just make something related to my hobbies. I won’t get to that until later on this year. But if you are an R Lady and are interested in learning how to make a package, there will be a workshop about it and there’s even travel funding!
I am currently at 59% and am currently doing the Working with Dates and Times in R course. Unless something crazy happens, I think I will be able to finish this goal by the end of the year.
I am all about keeping my options open. On top of Data Camp, I am doing some online math courses and I will take a Coursera course or two this summer. Going to rstudio::conf() last year, Hadley Wickham’s visit to my school, and talking to some friends who are data scientists has really been helpful on helping me pave a learning path to be competitive for jobs. I feel that the community of R users is a very supportive community so I’m just going to keep to the path and see what happens!
Now that I got that out of the way, here’s my one and only grad school goal.
That is all. Eyes are on the prize. It is time to close this chapter of my life and see what happens next. That doesn’t mean I will close the chapter on the research I’m doing on women veterans because I have a plan to keep on doing what I’m doing after school.
And finally some personal goals.
This mostly applies to Twitter and Facebook and might sound counter-intuitive given one of my #rstats goals is to tweet more about #rstats, but I will just have more of a targeted use of these social media accounts. Instagram use will stay the same since I do photography and that’s a good way to get my content out. I have started to cut back on Facebook and Twitter last week and I’ve started to have positive benefits such as uninterrupted sleep for 7-8 hours and a better mood! I don’t think this is a coincidience. My experience with social media has been mixed with a slight skew on the negative side. I am a bit ambivalent about this push for people to have a public presence online due to that. That being said, I think if one is weary about the negative effects of having a social media presence, having an actual plan of how one uses their accounts will be helpful to mitigate some of the negative experiences that can occur when using these accounts. At the end of the day, it’s up to the person whether they want to use social media or not and I understand why people use it or don’t use it.
As I mentioned in my previous post, only way you can get better is by doing the tournaments. Hoping to do two before I leave the area, and I definitely know there are two that I can do in the area I will be moving to.
I’ve been studying and practicing the Iyengar method of yoga for six years now(but have been doing yoga longer than that) and I am interested in becoming a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher(CIYT). I seriously don’t know if this is a possibility this year, but that’s one reason I’m cutting down on social media. I tend to waste a lot of time on social media. There’s only so much time in the day and I need to dedicate some time to deepening my yoga practice and knowledge on yoga. Some years ago, I did a 200 hour yoga teacher training and received a Yoga Alliance teaching credential, but that process pales in comparison to the Iyengar Yoga Teacher Assessment. Many people compare it to being as rigorous as getting a PhD and given what I know about the process, no lies detected. I’m prepping for the teacher’s assessment the same way I’m prepping for my comps. Even if I am not eligible to take it later on this year, at least I’m taking some steps towards that goal.
I have really been underestimating the benefits of getting plenty of rest and it did me in last semester. This year, I’m going to make more of a concentrated effort to not skimp on my sleep!
Yeah, yeah, sappy I know. I think my previously mentioned goals are a good start to continue on that path. It’s so sappy that I’m not going to even talk about it more. I’m forever a work in progress.