A Final Reflection

Hello, and welcome to the final post on my blog! It’s been an interesting journey to say the least, but I’m pleased and content with the work that I was able to accomplish over the last 12 or so weeks. I’ve talked about a lot of different aspects of my projects over the weeks, and I don’t want to bore you with the same discoveries, so instead, I’m going to talk about my key takeaways from doing research in this style and about how I want to use it in the future.

Community outreach is hard. There’s no other way to phrase it, and it was definitely a shock and demoralizing in those first few weeks when I had to deal with its rejection after rejection. All interviewers need to realize that their questions are not as important as they think they are, and that understanding is necessary to actually make progress in getting interviewees. Being humble and grateful for your participants’ time is the first step to success, and expecting anything of them beyond a favor is a mistake.

Once I got into the interviews, I think that I’ve become much more comfortable with talking with strangers, even in the interviewer-interviewee dynamic. This project has taught me a lot about the research that I want to conduct in college, and also has given me the confidence to talk with people about issues that I wouldn’t normally talk about in regular conversation. Working with so many people through both an English and Spanish medium helped me discover what type of researcher I want to be, and I think it’ll continue to gravitate towards this more qualitative side.

Ultimately, this project has given me confidence, composure under pressure, and skills that I need to be a successful researcher. Thank you all for following along, and I’m honored to end my senior year with such an amazing program!

-Diyaan