Daisy Fang, Entry #2, Ups and Downs

The second week in the lab had been very busy for me, as data collection for the El Sistema project is in full swing. There are three main stages to data collection for this research: recruiting, testing, and scoring. I worked on all three in the past week. This summer is a particularly busy time, because the second testing of cohort 1 overlaps with the first testing of cohort 2. I was also forced to speak Spanish outside of Peddie for the first time because a parent that I called could barely understand English. That was a pretty frightening experience even though I had Google Translate opened. None of the other RAs spoke any Spanish so they all just laughed as I attempted to explain the research in Spanish. Anyways.. I still felt super accomplished after the call. 

The participant packets to be scored

Just when I thought everything was going smoothly, Alessandra (my undergrad) caught a mistake that would completely change the agenda of rest of the research. The research requires participants that are currently in K2. However, one of the five schools, Bridge Boston, gave the lab a mixed list of both K1 and K2 children. Assuming the list was correct, RAs finished testing all of them before June without double checking their eligibility. So not only were time and resources wasted, we also lost a significant number of participants from that school. As a result, the data collection period has to be extended. To be honest, I was pretty frustrated at first. But then I realized that THIS is what doing research is all about: constantly discovering mistakes and fixing them in order to attain more accurate results. While tedious, data collection is also the most fundamental part of any research, as the quality of data directly affects the credibility and precision of the results.

Charles River sunset

I have been busy outside of the lab as well. Since everyone in the lab brings their own lunch, I also felt motivated (*obligated) to cook, which takes up a lot of my free time. So far my kitchen is still intact. I have also spent a lot of time eating and shopping on Newbury Street, and hanging out on the Charles River docks. I am so happy to be back in one of my favorite cities!!