{"id":341,"date":"2010-04-19T17:53:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T17:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ecs.soton.ac.uk\/blogs\/ian_gilham.php"},"modified":"2013-06-06T20:52:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T20:52:14","slug":"19-april-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/19-april-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"New Challenges and Problems to Solve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New Challenges<\/p>\n<p>The world is full of great challenges. They may be problems to solve, people to meet, or experiences to explore. Where one person sees a problem, another will see a challenge, an opportunity for growth and a step on their personal road to success.<\/p>\n<p>Getting a degree is one such challenge. I&#8217;ve been involved with the University of Southampton for nearly 5 years now, and I am constantly finding new challenges in my work. Sometimes it is just a case of struggling for an acceptable grade, or pushing myself through a difficult concept until I can finally grasp the point of it.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time however, my most exciting challenges come from my own private projects, such as the work I&#8217;m doing for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breadtree.co.uk\/\">Bread Tree<\/a> or a powerful tool for the translation industry I am currently trying to close a licensing deal for.<\/p>\n<p>This year, one of the bigger challenges has been in trying to answer the question of what to do after university. I have applied to a few positions along the usual graduate track, taken on a couple of personal projects and am looking forward to interviewing for a teaching fellowship in Ghana. There&#8217;s also a dissertation project to squeeze in there somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Even this blog has been a valuable challenge for me, as I have been developing my writing skills and am writing a few more complete articles on such topics as overcoming performance anxiety and exam stress, progress in the martial arts and developing a gentle touch. I am getting into the habit of writing down some of the more valuable life lessons I have learned over the years with the eventual aim of sharing them with others.<\/p>\n<p>Then there are more esoteric challenges. Last week I was on holiday in Dawlish Warren with the kung fu club. On the last night, I decided to get up and sing karaoke for the first time. It was an eye-opening experience and not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. Little personal victories like this help us all become stronger, more confident and ultimately better people.<\/p>\n<p>So what obstacles stand in your way that can be seen as challenges on your path to greatness?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Challenges The world is full of great challenges. They may be problems to solve, people to meet, or experiences to explore. Where one person sees a problem, another will see a challenge, an opportunity for growth and a step on their personal road to success. Getting a degree is one such challenge. I&#8217;ve been involved with the University of &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":283,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33309,33311],"tags":[430908,17952,389065,430907,428171],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-work","category-southampton-university-life","tag-bread-tree","tag-challenges","tag-fellowship","tag-ghana","tag-project-work-2","column","twocol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BSCk-5v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}