Half a year, six months, hundreds of days, thousands of hours, countless effort, thus, Science Mentorship Program (SMP) comes to the end. Feeling a bit lost yet satisfied, I sat at the desk, started to recall the sweet memory little by little, in silence.
Our project was titled Transparent Bitrate Estimation in Digital Music Coder. Although the scientific background knowledge was not that esoteric, it still took me quite a long time to grasp the essential materials assigned by our mentor, Ms Li Te. To be honest, the process of literature review was painful and tasteless at the beginning. No matter how many times I read the notes, the concepts were just too abstract and alien to digest. Luckily, the situation improved tremendously under Ms Li’s facilitation. She patiently explained the terminologies to us during our meetings. Chen Chen and I also helped each other by sharing our thoughts and progressed together. Thus, the obstacle was overcome eventually.
The most painstaking process in the whole research journey was testing. There were nearly three hundred music sequences to test all together. Even listening to all the songs would take days, let alone testing every single one and recording the data over and over again. Running programs was really time-consuming. I could not remember the number of weekends which I spent in front of my computer screen doing testing from sun rise to sun set. The worse thing was that we could not obtain satisfactory results despite all the hard work for months. Repeated failures really disappointed me. However, Ms Li and Chen Chen were always there to encourage me and cheer me up. I would not forget the numerous time and endeavor we invested in seeking the desired result. Yet I believed it was the perspiration which made the ultimate success so exhilarating and contented. This arduous road of research is the heart and soul of scientific learning.
The experience of writing our research paper and designing our own project poster taught me how rigorous yet inspiring scientific research could be. In the report, every punctuation and footnote had to be correctly used. At the same time, the poster needed to be designed to present our research finding succinctly and directly. Chen Chen and I really had great fun. Nonetheless, I must confess that I contributed much less that Chen Chen in the procedure. I felt thankful towards her toleration and understanding.
In conclusion, the experience of taking SMP was definitely invaluable and memorable. My time management and project management skills were sharpened and I benefited greatly from doing this project. It was so contented to end the journey clinching Distinction and 3M Best Poster Award. Here, I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards our mentor Ms Li Te for guiding us, Mr Kuo Yu Hsuan for caring for us, the Science Department and the school for providing us such great opportunity to learn and progress.
