It has been quite a while since I have been able to blog but I will try to make up for the lost time here:
What I didn’t expect…
First I want to begin by talking about my challenges. I had a lot of difficulty managing the parts of my research and putting together my website. It always seemed like I had a lot of great ideas (sometimes too many) and that I couldn’t possibly narrow everything down. It was challenge trying to make sure that my research would follow the requirements in terms of evaluating conflict resolution. First, I had to decide to focus on one conflict withing my project to evaluate because there were several layers of conflict involved. I had to figure out how to satisfy my primary interest, which was how to evaluate the impact on the African American community. Initially, I thought I would be able to accomplish this by simply interviewing people and hoping for some revealing information. Since this project is so contemporary, I wasn’t sure of what other types of sources I could use without meeting with people. This is where the IRB came in and changed my entire project! Long story short, after all the weeks I put into putting together an extensive application I was denied. At this point I had to come up with another plan!
Of course my stubbornness would not allow me to change my topic, or change my research goals I wanted to do the same thing! So I did. For that reason, I struggled along lagging behind everyone else and that really gets to me because I am not used to asking for extensions or concessions when it comes to my work. i met with several professors a long the way and they helped me devise a new plan which was to do a content analysis on the comments from a public hearing. I thought this sounded very boring and like a lot of work even though it would be an interesting way to accomplish what I needed. With all the content in the database i was very overwhelmed and figured there was a computerized way to do this analysis through excel or some other program. I watched some YouTube videos to see if I could self-teach myself how to do a content analysis on the computer. This was not encouraging because again I am not a computer nerd, just a regular nerd! Dr. Manthei was able to help calm me down and show me at least how to narrow down the comments, but in the end I ended up doing it the old fashion way with pen/pencil, and highlighters. When I got this done I was so proud of myself I felt like I needed an award for just that but I had to snap back into reality because I still had an entire website to build!
At this point a lot had changed since I made the structure of my website and all the placeholders. This made it complicated for me because I had to decide what to keep and what was extra. I had to figure out what was visually appealing, and what made sense to the website visitor in terms of navigation as well. Around this time all of my other major assignments were due in my other classes so I had to do some prioritizing. It was really a different feel working on a large project like this where you never really know when you have completed a task or when you have completed the entire thing because its YOUR project. This project is something you could work on forever and never be done, so I ended up always doing work in my other classes first because they were more concrete in terms of what I needed to do. I really felt the impact of not having a partner at this point, I felt like it would have really helped me stay on task in terms of deadlines and having someone more accessible to share ideas with. I really appreciate everyone who did take extra time out to help me develop my ideas and connect with other people who could help me or provide resources.
I didn’t really get to play around with a lot of aesthetics on my website, but fortunately it still came out looking great! The only thing I really wish I had got a chance to put up there was information on the Springfield 1908 Race Riot, because the land where this riot happened will be acquired along with the rest of the project. I think this is a very huge and i will go back and add it later. This is very symbolic because African American people are losing a part of their history with this project. My project also pointed out how African Americans will be absorbing much of the impact made by this project and a symbol of their history will be lost as well. Even though I was not able to expound upon this point, in the end I was really happy that I figured out a way to accomplish all the goals I set for this research project. I did not end up following my research plan almost at all, but I was able to bounce back from the challenges and accomplish all my research goals.
My goals were:
- Create a website that explained to the visitor (in easy terms) what the Springfield Rail Improvements project was about.
- Make the website easily navigable
- Provide links for visitors to learn more about the topic and related topics
- Tell a story in some way
- Relay the impact on the African American community
- Evaluate conflict resolution and communication
- Use the website as a tool to give a voice to underrepresented groups
- Create a website that could be used as a tool for similar projects in the future, or for conflict resolution in general
- Challenge myself to do something I had never done that would give me a lot of skills
What I learned…
I learned SO many things from this project i don’t think I can list them all here. I learned a lot about African American History and African American people in Springfield. I learned a lot about Springfield history and became more accustomed to the character and culture of the city. I learned how to build a website, and write for a website. I learned that research projects are often ongoing things and cannot always be accomplished in a short amount of time. I learned the importance of networking, time management, and planning for higher level academic work. Collaboration is a really important tool when it comes to research in my opinion. You can learn so much from one person to the next, but you also have to be careful with learning too much if you have hard deadlines because if you’re anything like me you will get lost in learning! Even though it all went so fast, I really want to commend our professors for how they structured this class I look up to them and hope I can be this creative and effective in my future career. As a future professor, I am always double learning in a class. I have to learn the material and pay attention to effective and ineffective ways of teaching.
How I grew and transformed…
At the end of this project I became a better researcher and a better student. I believe moving forward I will be able to better prioritize my assignments. I learned more about myself during this challenge with technology including not to compare myself to others. I learned that I will probably always be a pen and paper kind of person and I will learn how to embrace that and plan for it. I have learned how to connect my ideas better and learn how to relate findings on the micro level to the macro level. I also learned the value of having evidence to back up an opinion rather than simply writing based on emotion. It feels good to be able to have valid evidence back up your research.
Peace & Love,
Abriana Robinson