S is for Stress, Spain and Smiles!

Lauren and I camped out in the library at one of our many meet ups.

With our departure date steadily approaching, we are beginning to feel the bittersweet stress of crunch time. 11 days would normally feel like an adequate, if not ample, amount of time to prepare for a trip. Yet these 11 days bring with them, their own set of challenges which the teams are facing head on. Many of us are working full time jobs, preparing to or have moved, having to figure how to navigate technology, packing and finishing our last-minute preparations. While doing all of this, we have been putting in work to build the basis for our projects whether its meeting as group to discuss research topics and progress, creating slide decks, diving deep into literature review, processing data or meeting with past cohort members.

Lauren and I have been all across campus finding places to get to work on these tasks. We have set up shop in the library, in the union, in the field house and even outside (of course, with Kelsey in tow on our computers all the way) for the past couple weeks working to get a better understanding of what research has been completed by not only those working on the project before us, but other researchers. We finally have found our footing and think we have a clear direction for this summer's research question thanks to Clay Lenhart's multiple meetings with us and many researchers focusing on similar topics in China. We are excited to present our new findings to the group tomorrow in our last meeting with Anna and Marti before our departure. We welcome the stress for under this stress our group has begun to find success (and many smiles).

Until next time,

Elly

Lauren, Kelsey and I as we took a brain break to change up our scenery.