Lara Schenck

Lover of programming, maker of monsters

Now

This is a Now page, a personal website trend inspired by Derek Sivers (check out many inspiring examples and even make your own here). It’s basically, “what am I doing now?”. I’m going to try to include a photo, too.

March 24, 2024

A cloudy sky with view of hills that are mostly green with some trails and paved roads going along them.
A short hike in Griffith Park after a rain.

Personal:

  • Returning from a trip during spring break to California to visit family and to go hang out in my old neighborhood, Thai Town, in LA. Ate a lot and walked a lot, it was great. There is a new coffee shop there that was also great.
  • I took a break from Nepali lessons during my exam; looking forward to resuming next week.
  • Did really well in the ATL half marathon at the end of February, and have been keeping up with running.
  • Mostly have bailed on my art-everyday New Years goal, but oh well.
  • Thinking about starting a science fiction book club.

Professional:

  • Before this trip, finished the written portion of my qualifying exam. The weeks/months leading up to that were intense. Now though, I can focus fully on my research.
  • Next, will be working on a presentation about my research for the presentation part of the qualifying exam.
  • Also will be focusing on revisions for my journal article about gatekeeping to resubmit hopefully before the summer.
  • Weekly Career Dev with a new cohort at DataWorks.

December 30, 2023

hand written text in Nepali that reads (in english), "PhD is a hard thing. Are you going to do it or not, Lara? Do it! but ... (written on a fortune from a cookie) "Don't let ambitions overshadow small successes"

Personal:

  • Enjoying some peaceful time with just one project to focus on, and spending time with family.
  • I have ideas and motivation for exercise and healthy eating routines – we’ll see what happens.
  • Made a lot of progress with Nepali when my in-laws were visiting, although it didn’t feel like progress at first because I was tired and stressed.
  • Taking the ACT book I’m reading very seriously, and I guess my one goal is to try to stick with these techniques in the new year.

Professional:

  • Working hard on a paper for about how we used LinkedIn in career development at DataWorks, and how it wasn’t so easy to use.
  • Will be taking my qualifying exam next semester, but taking a break from the studying in between semesters.
  • Sometime will redo the homepage of my website to be more “academic” and “professional”.

June 8, 2023

White woman with brown hair in a messy bun wearing navy blue outdoors jacket and jeans sitting in front of a barn in a chair that has lobster claws for arms and small eyes on the top. It is very sunny and she is wearing sunglasses and smiling.
Visiting a tourist trap in Maine.

Personal:

  • Continuing slowly with Nepali, weekly-ish classes with an excellent tutor I met through italki. I can more or less handle small talk with people I know.
  • Enjoying watching TV shows in a way that might be unprecedented in my life.
  • More travel coming up.

Professional:

  • Working with DataWorks over the summer and coordinating the rebuild of our website and the “packaging up” of our curriculum for display to the public.
  • Going to ICER in August to give a lightning talk (baby’s first academic conference talk!)
  • Trying to be a little more chill (maybe “trying to chill” is doing it wrong…) over the summer to de-stress before the fall semester.

February 3, 2023

A long line of pieces of paper laid out on a carpeted office floor.
I cut up the draft of my paper and laid it all out on the floor to help with thinking it through.

Personal:

  • Drew some monsters after a while. It was nice.
  • Starting to shop for a house.
  • Planning to start a group for Nepali learning to help with accountability.

Professional:

  • Taking two classes this semester: Educational Technology and Instructional Design. They are similar but different, which is nice so far.
  • Writing a paper. A working title, which will not be the title, was: Breaking News: Gatekeepers think novice-friendly computational work isn’t “real” programming
  • Getting ready for a new cohort to start at DataWorks, and revising the career development workshops to deliver again.
  • Transcribing interviews from the first workshop which will eventually turn into a paper.

December 6, 2022

Personal:

  • In Nepal until January for our third and final wedding
  • Hard to think of anything else apart from that! Sleep has been a lot better.

Professional:

  • Finished up the career development workshops with DataWorks
  • Recorded a shortish, somewhat rough talk about my research direction so far – see it here
  • Finished a first draft of a paper about gatekeeping in programming communities, kind of my final say about “Is CSS a programming language” and why that matters

October 31, 2022

I made these whiskey sours for myself, husband, and family visitors.

Personal:

  • It kind of feels like the personal and professional have merged…
  • Switched to a new (and fantastic) Nepali teacher on italki
  • Struggling with some insomnia and trying out very strict sleep hygiene habits
  • Only running 1-2 times per week; just hard to get it in

Professional:

  • Almost through my first semester at GA Tech and loving it
  • Delivering a curriculum on job-finding and professional networking with the team at DataWorks
  • Figuring out a research direction and going to try for a 4 year PhD
  • Resuming work on a paper about the social construction of programming languages, and combining it with current ideas
  • Applied again for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship 🤞🏻
  • Feeling confused about how to write about research on this website

July 21, 2022

A woman with brown hair in front of a white fence sitting an an outside table and a restaurant. A chess set is in front of her and she has a very focused expression.
Started playing and losing at chess again in Montreal.

Personal:

  • Finishing east coast travel before we pack up and move to Atlanta
  • Learning Nepali (made a goal to finish my Nepali book before we go to Nepal in December)
  • Fine-tuning the revamp of this website
  • Started reading Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James
  • Will resume my brother’s painting project after we get back from travel

Professional:

  • Reviewing literature about workplace learning which is quite broad in scope and will likely evolve into what is entry-level computing work and how people level up from that
  • Starting to think about my proposal for the NSF graduate fellowship (I applied last year and didn’t get it)
  • Using the time and information management skills, plus Compilce and Obsidian to manage my work – going well so far
  • Finished up at PMC at the end of June!

June 10, 2022

  • Preparing to move to Atlanta where I will start a PhD program in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech this August,
  • Enjoying the summer and my remaining time in Pittsburgh with family,
  • Finishing up my time at PMC and working on training materials,
  • Learning Nepali,
  • Gradually refactoring how I write content on this site so that I can more easily share what I learn during school i.e. working on a more digital-garden-y notlaura.com v5,
  • Finishing a painting I gifted to my brother three years ago,
  • Learning about time and information management habits and developing my own in preparation for grad school.