Collaboration

There’s nothing like being together.

One of the best parts about EMC is the collaboration,a community of researchers connected by the thread of curiosity and thinking discussing about what makes them curious. This is also the worst part about EMC summer work, there is only so much collaboration that can occur in an email. While I did maintain contact with my coordinators, we didn’t discuss nearly as much as we would during the school year. Also, I didn’t talk to any of my peers. This, I found, inhibited progress as from prior experience I can say that the best ideas sprout from discussions.

This morning I attended the EMC Summer Workshop. All of us students, first, second, and even third year researchers, were clustered in our favorite room in the whole building: the library. It felt nice to get the creative juices flowing, to think about things in ways we wouldn’t have imagined. We went over the structure, timeline and assignments of the course. After establishing an understanding of the course we went into discussion about our topics. It was interesting to learn about what my peers had done over the summer. The topics were so diverse; spanning from philosophy to art to science. Hearing what others had to say about my research was beneficial in that it helped me to figure out what I might want to do or explore this year with my topic. The quick question writing exercise activity was even more useful in that the audience had no time to filter or modify their response. This allowed for genuine and blunt questions that helped me further my research. When people have time to process their response, it’s almost as if the response loses value. This is because we tend to mellow our criticisms and thoughts by injecting ‘fluff’ into our answers. As a result, the researcher potentially digs less into their topic.

While it pains me to think that I’m starting senior year in a few days, I’m happy to be back. I’m eager to move further in EMC and see what me and my peers create in these next few months. I especially look forward to group discussions where we can collectively expand our thinking and draw connections to one another.