Journal Update #11 - 11/7/19
With Professor Snieder being out of town, there was no Every Oredigger campus-culture committee this week. Furthermore, no EO chairs meeting was scheduled to happen; in other words, I finally had a week of independent work time. Viewing this week as more relaxed was a mistake because the workload of interviews, emails, and proposals soon dominated my time outside of classes. My prerogative for the next few days was as follows: email people asking if they want to contribute to my project, interviewing selected peers, and drafting proposals for administration and faculty with roles tied to the final deliverable.
The main focus of my emails revolved around seeking faculty and staff to assist me in my final deliverable project by providing quotes of best practices that I can showcase. After going through such a task, I learned a very important rule to guide me through the rest of college: faculty and staff respond to emails in greatly varying times. Two of the professors I wrote to sent short, direct email replies within minutes of my initiation. On the other hand, a few staff responded within a couple of hours. There was a small group of three faculty/staff who took more than a day, and two faculty members have yet to respond (within five days). I selected the quotes sample based on my assumption that not everyone was going to respond; I only needed six quotes among all of staff and faculty, so sending out ten emails would most likely suffice. The process of picking who to ask was made fairly simple once I considered that the staff and faculty involved in Every Oredigger would be great resources for mental health and well-being advice. Comprising of the other section of emails were similar questions to students of various majors. I sought to vary my six student quotes so that each advice/mantra/tip was from a student of a unique major or department. Being in a fraternity, Active Minds at Mines, and Peer Education, it was fairly easy fulfilling this requirement. Three emails were sent out to students to inquire about participation, quotes, and anonymity so that I could get started on laser engraving the following week. The remaining three students were a part of my interviewee group, so I chose to just acquire their quotes directly after the interviews.
Based on the recommendations of Justin my practicum advisor, I created consent a consent form for all participants in the filmed interviews: https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/732a53_55927e8af4e84095b14fb490e4256c99.docx. I made sure that all three participants were well aware that their videos will appear on my blog and possibly on another platform, and all agreed to continue. Their signed consent forms will appear on the 'Resources' tab, and the interviews will be posted on the 'Videos' section of this blog. Each meeting lasted for over ten minutes, and I was satisfied to see that everyone gave meaningful and personal answers to my (hopefully) open-ended questions. I did notice some flaws in the questions after the second and third interviews, so I will make sure to revise them before the professor and faculty interviews in the spring. I plan to show each participant their video for edits to ensure their comfortability and permittance in publicizing the media.
Once the interviews and emails were compiled, a draft of the final deliverable (iteration 2) was made to show the progress to Justin, administration, and Sherry Muniz from the library. I will work on keeping the quotes section of the draft updated with collected quotes from students, staff, and faculty. I chose six quotes that I believe are excellent tips of best practice for anyone--they are general enough to apply to most circumstances, and they are viewed as wholesome and/or motivating. In addition, the quotes I were receiving far exceeded my expectations as most were incredibly deep, personal, and moving. For example, Rebecca Flintoft sent me the short but profound quote, "Ground Me," that was a paraphrased version of a traditional prayer. She also sent me a coaster that she has of that quote, and it gave me the inspiration I definitely needed to continue my work in making the final deliverable a reality.