Life of an IT student | Graduation Internship Thesis Road Update

Hi readers,

It’s been a short while since my previous Life of an IT student blog post about September 2019. Written in October and now it’s December and I write a graduation internship thesis road update. Why the delay? The excuse everyone uses: life is busy especially when you are doing your graduation internship. If I want to write a blog post and share it, I need to have some peace in my head.

Peace, peace and peace…

Peace with time flying by super fast, more than you would like. Peace with the pressure a graduation internship gives – or in general this IT study – from all kinds of sources. An internship like this, the big final project before you graduate, is fun, exciting, very challenging and it is eating your energy and mind creativeness like a panda having cravings. Enough sleep? Now and then… mostly not… partly due to being disturbed by living in a student studio in a big busy getting more crowded city, the other part is due to having a busy mind. So I wrote a poem this evening and this will be posted soon in the next blog.

This road to a thesis is so challenging, the subject is so intruiging, the time is very tight – no room for errors, the amount of people I talk to and their knowledge sharing I take into account… does this Life of an IT student October 2019 blog post still have a story or is it already a view in my mind: a lost and found.

Questions, questions and questions…

Questions in my mind. Even when I not try to think about one. For example preparing for tomorrow… what to do next is most efficient? What is important? What do they want to hear or to see? What is expected? Priorities first. Is the subject too big? Is the subject too small? Is it too complicated? Or is it too easy? Are there gaps in the road I’m not seeing yet, are undetectable or unlikely but suddenly are there… and will I step into one of those? Or will I step into all of them one by one?

So many opinions, so many questions, so many things seem so important in this moment of life and for the next couple of months (read: until the mid of February). And the last question I ask myself in the last moments before I finish parts of my thesis are: what do I want?

Don’t get me wrong: All these questions – and the above written are only a few – are vital to my thesis; are in one way or another vital to the subject and each one of them are interesting or important for a person. If I do not answer it for myself or for the value of the subject, I answer it for somebody else. And this makes it so big and so incredibly challenging to capture everything that is important and put it all together as a puzzle piece you are able to solve or give some direction.

Avocado and Artificial Intelligence

The subject of my thesis is in short ‘Avocado data and Artificial Intelligence’. And the avocado fruit is one of the most popular fruits nowadays all year round and therefor it is getting more and more challenging.

Because the avocado fruit is stubborn, unpredictable, therfor very intruiging, full of a bright green to yellowish color, a soft to more firmness and hard pit inside difference and then the amount of oil that decides how it tastes, smells and the different sizes, shapes, fitting into one of the fifteen different classified ‘types’ of avocado, hard to detect and measure everything and so sensitive to changes. Do you get it? All these variables, all these facts about a fruit. It’s nearly an abstract story-telling of the avocado and it’s DNA. If I was studying biology with a specialisation in food, fruit and vegetables, I would suggest to investigate the DNA behavior of the avocado since it is a fruit with a peculiar character.

‘The avocado is a a fruit with a peculiar behaviour.”

– Sophie van den Akker, December 14th, 2019

And how do we call this very interesting change by the day and season fruit? Just avocado, like there is not so much to it except for that it is quite an expensive fruit compared to the apple or a pear and it tastes delicious if you have finally found the right one for your to taste.

Is it possible to do something with Artificial Intelligence and a fruit that is so peculiar? Well, that is a question I have to answer in my thesis through investigation of avocado data – yes, seriously! – and the combination of Artificial Intelligence theory and known practices because as far as I have discovered up till so far: it has never done before. And if it is or is not possible? Well I suggest: for the sake of creativity being an important factor for inventions; never say never. Give the peculiar fruit a try.

If you have experience with writing a thesis and / or doing a thesis internship, I am curious for what you have experienced.

How do or did you get peace in your mind?

Greetings by Sophie