Reviewing my Peer's Reflections

Jaxson Brown

Reading through Jaxson's reflection pieces, I've gained genuine insight into his thought process throughout the year. His discussions about professional emails and resume writing detail good professional practices for these skills, which will be useful when entering the workforce.

I related to his reflection on learning to deal with distractions; as someone with ADHD, this is a daily struggle in my life, and his outcome of studying at the Curtin Library has become a favourite for me also; I usually go to the library to study 3-5 times a week now. I also relate to his struggle with learning new computing concepts. I will take his advice on focusing solely on the language of the technologies I'm trying to learn first before diving deep into frameworks and other tooling.

If I could make any recommendations to Jaxson, it would be to try using a reflective journalling framework such as the Gibbs Reflective Cycle to gain a deeper reflection and provide a more cohesive reading experience. I'd also suggest running his entries through a tool such as Grammarly to assist with some minor grammatical issues and maintaining an academic tone throughout his entries.

Max Price

Max has kept a great journal of his thoughts and progression throughout the academic year; his discussions about his work show his growth throughout the year, and his personal reflections were very moving.

I relate to many of Max's pieces. I believe we have had a similar journey this year in struggling to find a project that met our interests, developing relationships with our supervisors and learning more about the Machine Learning space. Similarly, one of the best aspects of this class has been building new friendships to support my academic journey and attending classes that focus on the soft skills needed to land a job in the competitive market today.

If I were to give Max some suggestions for his peer reviews, I would encourage him to dig deeper and be honest about his feelings in more of his pieces. I really felt this come through in his reflections about gaining confidence and building relationships, which I found to be the most insightful posts. Following a reflective journaling framework can help with this with some possible frameworks available here.

Evie Innes

Evie has maintained a thorough journal throughout the year, detailing her experiences inside and outside the classroom. She has detailed her understanding of core units and their application to her future studies and showcased her personal development through leadership discussions and her promotion at work.

I relate most to Evie's reflection on Libby Kinna's workshops. Although I missed the first one earlier this year, I attended the workshop on the 25th of August and appreciated the mindset shift from a singular leader to a group mentality. Her application of our class work to the study contract we completed earlier this year shows the depth of her reflection.

Evie's work is highly detailed and is an excellent demonstration of the reflection activities we were required to undertake this year. My only suggestion is to be more concise in recounting the class experience and focus on your biggest takeaway. Reading about her experiences this year was a pleasure, and I look forward to learning more about her work at the showcase.

Christian Saniel

Christian's journal is an excellent demonstration of his growth this year through the project he has undertaken for NPSC2001. Reading through his reflections, I felt that I understood his learnings at each stage of the project and how he would action these going into the future.

I relate most to Christian's post "Machine Learning is Hard", which is a sentiment I also agree with. Having also undertaken a machine learning project, getting the process working and improving my results took much more work than I originally anticipated. I appreciate his outlook that the difficulties are expected as a student researcher, and it's a sign of growth; I will remember this when I encounter difficulties in the future.

Christian has done a fantastic job showcasing his growth this year with his journal. An improvement I suggest is including some reflections on his growth outside of his project, similar to his first experience with writing emails to academic staff. Reflecting on some of the NPSC workshops this year would showcase how he's developed skills in all aspects of his field.

Jack Lanciano

Jack's portfolio is an enjoyable read about his experiences working alongside ICP to complete his project this year. Each entry has a lot of character and demonstrates his learnings; it's interesting to see his fast growth and ability to pivot when things change at the last minute.

Having worked alongside Jack since August, I'm impressed with what I've learned about him by reading his journal entries. In some of our discussions in person, he has been quick to doubt himself, but these journal entries showcase the great amount of work he has achieved this year. Learning React, Django and AWS in 8 months takes work.

I relate most to his reflection, "Challenges working for a startup". Having worked with a startup in the past, I was familiar with some of the difficulties that come within that space, but each startup is unique, and you always uncover new problems along the way. A positive outlook on this experience is that Jack has learnt multiple new technologies and has produced meaningful pipelines that will be utilised in the final product. I agree that having a clearer outline from the beginning and a bigger team to tackle this huge task would have produced more meaningful results.

I'm glad I got to read Jack's reflections on this year; having only met him a little over a month ago, I've gotten to know him better through his journal entries. If I could make a recommendation to him to improve his journal, it would be to try to use a reflection framework such as the Gibbs Reflective Cycle to help focus his entries on teachings that come from his experiences.