Even at Home...

Need to leave soon, so I'll have to keep this blog post focused on the minimals... I find it difficult to stay updated... there are so many blog posts that are still half done sitting here.

Data analysis doesn't tend to sound like drudgery, but when you're dealing with transcribing interviews, it does tend to get on your nerves. I have a bunch of interviews that need to be written out, and after having to spend over five hours writing one of them out, I am dreading the ridiculousness of the four or five more interviews I need to transcribe *groan*

To add to my ever-increasing blase for this project (who would've known), the next two weeks will be a long and arduous process to obtain all the necessary consent forms from *parents,* and that's going to be drudgery as well. There are always doldrums when it comes down to projects... and I much prefer the actual interviewing, interacting, and the intensive data collection that occurs on the front. I also love the data analysis portion sans the arduous processing bit.

This past week has basically been rest, recuperate, restock, and re-research. With a better idea of what the school looks like, I've been hiding in the library reading up on theoretical frameworks that fit a little better... I still need to return to touch up the pilot interview and make it 'shipworthy,' so to speak.

After this frustratingly long process of transcribing interviews, I've also decided giving diaries to my subjects to write in will also be a good move... A researcher (that I admire greatly!) working with students in London was pursuing a similar to project to mine and gave the students little diaries that they wrote it. No need to transcribe diaries... which is gauze on my wounds :p.

Tomorrow I re-engage my field, jumping on a plane in the afternoon and returning to the school. Hopefully when I return, I will be rested... but at the least, I'll have layers of winter clothing, a much better grip on my data, and plenty of gifts and stationery to give. This week has literally just been sitting at home, working with interviews, shopping for stuff, visiting relatives, and being a hungry hermit (you tend to miss lunch when you get stuck in there) in the library.

My father, incidentally, is also leaving tonight to America, where he'll meet my brother (Eric... I had no idea you tore *two* ligaments but not your ACL... you ought to tell me things like this!)