Merge pull request #32 from suelynnmah/suelynn-post-edits

Edits to Sue Lynn's post

_data/authors.yml

@@ -54,4 +54,13 @@ Becca:
 Amy:
   name        : "Amy Woodcock"
   bio         : "Student intern at Open Science Tools"
-  avatar      : "/assets/images/amy2023.png"
+  avatar      : "/assets/images/amy2023.png"
+
+Sue Lynn:
+  name        : "Sue Lynn Mah"
+  bio         : "PsychoPy super user"
+  avatar      : "/assets/images/suelynn_profile.jpg"
+  links:
+    - label: "Twitter/X"
+      icon: "fab fa-fw fa-square-x-twitter"
+      url: "https://twitter.com/SueLynn_aDr"

_posts/2023-09-07-suelynn_mah.md

@@ -1,21 +1,32 @@
 ---
 layout: single
-title:  "Contributor story: Sue Lynn Mah"
-date:   2023-09-08 16:37:41 +0100 # edit this
-category: "Contributor stories"
-author: "Sue Lynn Mah"
-author_profile: false
+title:  "Perspective story: Sue Lynn Mah"
+date:   2024-05-03 16:37:41 +0100 # edit this
+category: "Perspective stories"
+author: Sue Lynn
+author_profile: true
 ---
 
-## Background
+## Origin story
 
-During the first year of her undergraduate studies in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Sue Lynn learned how to create PsychoPy tasks within the first few weeks of the semester and eventually started creating her tasks independently throughout her degree. When she started her PhD in Psychology at the University of Nottingham, she was the first in her cohort to launch a study to Pavlovia as the Covid pandemic had halted all in-person testing. Because of this, she was approached by students and staff in her school to help program and debug their task. Her tasks was also shared externally and one of it was used in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215001321000421" target="_blank">study</a> that was later published.
+I was first introduced to PsychoPy when I did my undergrad in the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. I believe it was the second week of lab practicals and we were already taught how to build our own PsychoPy task - it was of course a Stroop task. It then evolved into other cognitive tasks such as the Navon task, mental rotation etc. One of the assessments for my lab practicals was to build a psychopy task on the spot! To say I was thrown into the deep end would not be an exaggeration   😂 Fast forward to second year, I was building all my PsychoPy tasks pretty much independently and dipped my toes in Python programming for my final year project because editable textboxes were not a thing yet.
 
+After graduating, I started my PhD in Psychology at the University of Nottingham UK. This is when I really started getting into more advanced coding concepts. I attended the in-person PsychoPy workshop back when it was all taught from Coder View which made me appreciate having a Builder View even more! Although, having said that, being exposed to the "under the hood" code made the next phase of my PsychoPy journey slightly easier because a *little* thing called Covid happened.
 
-## Day in the Life
 
-I would say a typically day as a Science Officer in Open Science Tools is never really felt the same. Most of the time, I would spend helping researchers creating PsychoPy tasks or contribute by writing documentation for a new feature. I would also help out in the forum by creating minimal demos based on the user's needs or creating slightly more advanced ones like this <a href="https://run.pavlovia.org/SueLynnNotts/leaderboard/" target="_blank">online leaderboard</a>. My favourite part of the PhD was designing experiments and making them into PsychoPy tasks so I would say that being able to do it as my job is definitely very enjoyable. I also have an interest in design and recently, I've learned how to create icons for PsychoPy features and am looking forward in helping to create them in the future.
+## Intermediate user of PsychoPy?
 
-PsychoPy was created in the University of Nottingham and because of that, we would be invited to talk about PsychoPy to prospective students. It's interesting because I was an undergraduate student in the Malaysian campus and also completed my PhD in University of Nottingham so I would be able to share my own experiences as a student and user of PsychoPy.
+When the pandemic hit, all of my tasks were already built and ready for data collection but we could not collect any in-person data which meant that I had to figure out how to get my experiments to Pavlovia so that I could collect data online. Pavlovia had just been introduced for a couple of months so features like the slider was not available just yet. My thoughts back then was "Well I'll just build my own slider then!". And attending the in-person workshop back in my first year was really helpful because the idea of coding something from scratch didn't seem that scary. And with some guidance from the <a href="https://discourse.psychopy.org/" target="_blank">forum</a>, I eventually got a rudimentary slider working and my data collection was back on track! 
 
-![Sue Lynn and Becca at BPS CogDev.](/assets/images/suelynn.jpg){: .img-super-left style="width:75%"}
+I then started helping my friends to build/debug their tasks which increased my confidence as a PsychoPy user which eventually led to me helping out externally researchers and was also asked to support one of the first online PsychoPy workshops. One of my Pavlovia tasks was also shared externally and was used in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215001321000421" target="_blank">study</a> that was later published.
+
+
+## The next phase of my PsychoPy/Pavlovia journey...
+
+Towards the end of my PhD, I was employed by <a href="https://opensciencetools.org/" target="_blank">Open Science Tools</a> and began my life as a Science Officer helping researchers around the world and from various fields create bespoked PsychoPy/Pavlovia tasks and lead workshops. This job sits between academia and industry so I was happy to still be able to keep a connection within the academic community. Here's a picture of my attending the BPS Bristol conference!
+
+![Sue Lynn at BPS CogDev.](/assets/images/suelynn.jpg){: .img-super-left style="width:75%"}
+
+This role has also allowed me to expand my knowledge of Python and Javascript which has led me to create some cool gamified tasks such as this <a href="https://run.pavlovia.org/Consultancy/bart_in_space" target="_blank">BART task</a> or this <a href="https://run.pavlovia.org/Consultancy/multiplication_game" target="_blank">mathematical cognition task</a>. *Note: These tasks have been shared with permission*. As someone who's background is in psychology, I would never have thought that I would be able to venture into the world of software development. At this point, I'm somewhat of a **"super user"** of PsychoPy/Pavlovia so when I'm not doing consultancy work, I'm creating demos on the forum and Pavlovia as well as writing documentation for the software.
+
+My time as a Science Officer has now come to an end and I will be switching my focus onto more research-based roles within academia. This does not mean that my PsychoPy/Pavlovia journey is ending though. I foresee myself creating more gamified-tasks when inspiration strikes, my friends randomly messaging me questions on why their task is not working and occasionally go forum-surfing when I have some spare time to kill 😄