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| Emely Rodriguez '13 |
CW is proud to have another i3 scholar, Emely Rodriguez. This summer, she spent all of June in Pittsburgh, PA at the University of Pittsburgh's iSchool Inclusion Institute of Information Sciences. Having just met her team, her team research project is only getting started. She will spend the rest of the year researching and putting the project together with her team long-distance in order to get it ready for next June, when the entire 2013 Cohort will return to Pittsburgh for a two week program. During that program, Emely and her team will present their year-long project. I spoke with Emely to learn more about her i3 experience and her plans for the future.
Olivia: How much did you know about the program and why did you decide to do
it? What was the selection process like?
Emely:
I didn’t know anything at all, honestly. It was presented to me by my former
boss. He recommended me and so did my English professor. I didn’t even know
Information Science existed at first. I went because it was a new experience
and I know that there was something I wanted to learn beyond what I was
learning here. So, I thought it was going to be a good opportunity to get out
for the first time and travel and learn something that I’ve never heard of
before. I went there with an open mind, didn’t expect anything, because it was
my first time leaving the state without my parents and I never really took an
opportunity like this to go out of the state for something academic.
Olivia: What was the day-to-day schedule? Where some of the other student
from?
Emely:
Every other day, we would wake up early enough for breakfast at 9 and, from
usually 10:30 to 4, we would have a speaker and they would give a presentation
about either social media or technology or the environment. We would have
activities as well for about an hour or two. Also every other day, we would
have lunch provided for us. After 4 or 5 we would have time to ourselves. There
was one strip that’s very famous for Pittsburgh students, so we tried to
explore every store that was on that strip. It was really exciting because
there was a lot of food that I’ve never seen in New York. A lot of the other
students were from North Carolina and I met some students from Ohio. There were
2 other new Yorkers, some from Jersey, Connecticut, and I think one of them is
from California.
Olivia: Can you describe the project you will be working on and your team?
Emely:
We chose an environmental project- we wanted to do something to go green. We
got to group up with whatever advisor we wanted to work with and it would be
usually a group of 4, but we were lucky enough to have a group of 5 because we
have a set of twins in our group. Basically, we want to find a method so that
we can make big companies, like McDonald’s and Subway, more environmentally
friendly because we noticed that a lot of their companies don’t help the
environment as much as we need it to be helped. We were hoping that with the
small step that we do, we can provide them with a method of being eco-friendly.
They can become more helpful to the environment and we can have a more
sustainable place to live. Actually, one of the girls from my group is from
Puerto Rico, but luckily we’re all in the same time zone so communication isn’t
as hard. It’s only hard when there are events that are happening in their lives
that they can’t communicate with us, but we have Google Hangout and we do mostly
everything on Google. There’s a program online called Asana and that’s a task
manager or project manager, I believe, and we talk through there. We downloaded
an app, GroupMe, and we text through there as a group. Right now, my computer
crashed so I’m having trouble there. Aside from that, my phone has a front
camera so hopefully I can work through there, but it’ll be a little difficult
because I don’t have the actual documents on my laptop. We’re hoping that we
can find a way to all group up in one location, hopefully Spring Break we can
all go to Puerto Rico and have a little mini i3 getaway and work on our
project.
Olivia: I know that you just graduated in May, so what are you plans for after
CW?
Emely: In the i3
program, many schools came to explain their graduate programs and I really fell
in love with Carnegie Mellon. Hopefully, I can get a scholarship or work through
something there and get my Masters. As a group, we also want to work on going
to the iConference, so we want to get our project published so we can present
it at the conference, which will be in California next year. This year it’s in
Germany. [The schools] were talking about information management systems, which
sounds pretty cool, but I’m not completely sure yet what I want to do. The
field that I really want to get into and information science… I don’t really
see the bridge yet, but I’m hoping
that little by little it becomes more clear to me.
Olivia: What was the most interesting thing you learned from this experience?
Emely:
To not be afraid of people. I honestly had a little meltdown over there because
it was the first time that I broke out of my shell, I guess. We had a debate
and I couldn’t handle the pressure. Little by little, I learned to notice that
it’s not bad and it’s a learning experience and people don’t bite! So it was
really really nice. The people were very warm and welcoming. They weren’t judgmental at all, which is the first thing people think when they’re going to
go present. I was really thankful that the people I got to experience this with
were so nice and friendly. But I was able to present eventually, so I lost that
little fear I had that day!
Interviewed by Olivia Rosenberg
