Hello everyone! This week has been a bit overwhelming academic-wise, so Claire and I paused our research for a few days. Therefore, we don’t have a big update in that regard. Instead, we spoke to the chairperson of IRB on our campus and completed our project proposal. After meeting with the chairperson on Wednesday, I realized that there was a bit of miscommunication through email. There is a COPLAC event happening soon on campus where students can present their research and projects. He thought that our project had something to do with that. After clearing everything up in person, he explained that since our website will be public, we have to fill out paperwork. Luckily, this process is quicker than what the typical psychology major has to go through to start their research. It should only take a week once he has the necessary paperwork. Before we can conduct any interviews, our questions must be approved by the IRB committee on campus. Claire and I plan to type up our questions tomorrow and bring them to the chairperson early in the week. We hope to complete the process soon so we can conduct an interview with Dr. Guignard in the beginning of October. In regards to our project proposal, I am very excited that we have it laid out in front of us. It makes the project more tangible. The only concern I have, is that we want to tell the whole story of fracking in our area. To do that, we have to make sure readers have a complete understanding of fracking, its history, and the positive and negative impacts it has on the community and the environment. After planning it out, I noticed that we have a lot of information to dig for and sort through. Though, we have our sources planned out, I still worry that we might have planned something too time-intensive. On the other hand, I fear that cutting things out will lessen the impact of our writing. We want to tell the complete story and not leave holes in our research and presentation of what we found. Time management and our outline will be our biggest assets in this process. I am hoping to conduct more research on Monday and pull together the complete origin story of fracking so the first tab of our website can be completed! I think the best approach to this project is to have a plan and take it one step at a time.