If you’re here from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health blog, I’m grateful for your interest. Here are a couple posts to get you caught up:
The truth is, I’ve been lackadaisical lately. My last post was in October…and it’s past the middle of November already. I’m not as negligent as a certain medical student I know, nor am I as regular as an esteemed graduate student adviser. I’m somewhere in between. I’ve been collecting data, analyzing data, preparing instruments for submission to the institutional review board (IRB). The usual excuses.
Nonetheless, I’d like to write with more regularity and this little, unexpected spotlight makes me want to write more. What would you like to read about? I have a post in the works about Zipaquira, the local transportation system, and about the logistics of research. I’m happy to field questions or focus on a particular aspect of public health, living abroad, or evaluation research. Questions and suggestions are welcome in the comments!
I started focus groups with contraceptive users yesterday. It’s been providers only before, gathering data for my practicum. Women, contraceptive users, clients – however you call them, are completely different. Their stories get into your heart, their words are less precise, their qualms don’t fit into charts and tables.
Maybe it’s because I had a million things I wanted to tell them, clarify, provide resources. But focus groups aren’t about that. I can observe and try to improve things later on, but in the moment I am helpless to change anything. I agree and accept all sorts of responses, reactions I wouldn’t dream of encouraging if I were presenting, teaching, training.
The things I wish I could have said pile up throughout the hour or two, linger in my head at the end, when the women leave alone or in pairs, thanking me or walking out quietly. This happened in DR too, when I did life story interviews there. (Much messier, completely unstructured, unsupervised, ultimately unused.) So much I wish I could have said, could say. If wishes were horses…here is what I would have said, were it possible, were it up to me:
1. Your body is yours. Not your lover’s, not your husband’s, not your children’s. Yours. You are responsible for it, for doing what is right for you, for ensuring – at times, forcefully – that others respect this right, your decisions, your needs.
2. Whether or not you want to be pregnant is your choice. Yours alone. My heart aches for you that your experience has been one of disassociation, abandonment, fear, resignation. You deserve to be happy.
3. I don’t know how to help. I very much wish I did. I am working on things that might maybe end up helping you, or women like you, sometime in the future. But this moment? I am at a loss.
I didn’t sleep well the night before. It felt like Christmas. I had gone over the focus group guide with my local version of Linda Cushman three times. We were playing with the order of the questions, the wording, the probes. Key stakeholders had reviewed the guide, suggested edits, reworded questions. I reviewed my Research Design and Data Collection class notes.
Take a seat wherever you’d like.
2. Check, double check
The table was set with pencils, paper, and name tags. I had my consent forms, focus group guide, and pen. The two digital records had fresh batteries and had been checked. The large butcher paper and markers were at the ready. The corner table had drinking water and glasses. My assistant had been prepped.
I was ready.
This is me looking ready.
3. Breathe
It was 3 pm. Then 3:05. I started fiddling with the chairs, nametags, recorders. I went to ask the front desk if my participants had arrived, if they were in that day, if we could call them.
4. Send Reminders
At 3:10, four out of six had arrived. The other two weren’t available. We went on without them. Sometimes I was flustered, awkward, spoke too fast. Overall, it was okay. We laughed. We understood each other. It felt like teaching, like presenting, like interviewing. All these things I like to do mixed together.
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I tried writing a post before having my first focus group, but all I got was: OMGz sdkjfer029irflkdjlfkjslkfj. Really. That incomprehensible onomatopoeic string was the entire post.
It felt like a big deal. Back then, I thought I’d be including a videowitheverypost. I thought I’d be writing in-depth, critical analysis, biting commentary, Important Things. Instead I’ve written about toilet paper and threadbare leggings.
It’s a little creepy having all this information, knowing so much about my blog’s visitors. But it’s nice to be acknowledged, right? I appreciate y’all sticking around and reading.
So, ever-patient reader, What would you change? What do you want to read about in the next month?
The truth is, I’ve been avoiding writing about work because I don’t know how to write about work. What do I say?
I am doing Research, the kind that involves being around people and asking them questions to try to make something easier, better. Right now a lot of the work involves sitting at a desk all day, everyday. Sending emails, editing draft after draft of protocols and scopes of work and schedules. Working slowly, with much complaining, on a seemingly endless literature review.
This is the uninteresting part, the part that makes people dislike research. I understand. I don’t like opening documents filled with more comments than text, editing the same paper 23 times, fiddling with citations. I get it. But, maybe, it’s worth it? All the persnickety, nit-picky, flip-flopping that goes into making a decision about which questions to ask, how to ask them, when, to whom, by whom.
I’m in the midst of the paper part. What’s there to say?
To say that preparing for this trip began this week would be shading the truth. Preparation began about a year ago, when I decided on the Global Health track. Knowing I would have only one Fall semester at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, I took 7 classes and attended every NYC Fall event I could.
My initial attempt to secure a practicum began as a distraction from doing classwork in November. I should have been taking notes on a guest speaker’s presentation, but instead I drafted an email about my practicum. I got a response within hours, and after a couple weeks of excited emailing back and forth, I drafted a scope of work for my potential supervisor, translated it into Spanish, and sent it off expecting my practicum would be a done deal. Instead, everything came to a halt. No responses to two, three, four emails. In January, I reached out to another organization and had a similar experience. We even spoke on the phone, and scheduled another call that never came.
By the middle of Spring semester, many of my classmates had a practicum. Those that went with university-sponsored organizations or returned to previous employers had an easier time negotiating the specifics of their day-to-day. But the rest of us, the stubborn (or determined, depending your perspective) do-it-yourselfers were reaching the mid-semester scramble when finding a practicum overtakes coursework on the list of priorities. I spent hours researching and sending out emails to sexual and reproductive health organizations.
3. Ask for help
In May, feeling utterly dejected, I emailed Anne Paxton, my Global Health adviser saying I may have to drop out of Global Health. She graciously met with me that day, listened to my blithering, flailing uncertainty and connected me to Maria Lahuerta, an MPH Global graduate. Maria responded the same day, saying she didn’t have any leads. Soon, I was emailing everyone who had any connection to international careers – parents of my childhood friends, my advisor’s former students, friend’s parent’s friends. Aside from encouragement and sympathy for my plight, I received no response.
4. Find useful distractions
The Spring semester came and went, with my coterie and cohort finding practicums and quiet desperation setting in for me. My family, professors, friends asked where I was going, what I was doing, when I would know. Tickets were booked, farewell parties held, scope of work documents signed. After a couple weeks, I asked my family to stop asking. My inbox filled with polite reminders about practicum paperwork due dates. I spent days in the SIPA library, rewording and sending emails into the dark internet void.
5. Don’t stop believing.
On May 22nd, Maria Lahuerta connected me with Fernanda Abella, who provided a list of potential locations and connections. I went down the list, emailing everyone. On May 29th, while waiting to play tennis with my sister, I got a response from Cristina Villarreal – Director of Fundación Oriéntame . After an avalanche of emails, Skype calls and 12 revisions of my scope of work, I had secured a practicum. I’ll be completing a formative evaluation assessing the perceived barriers and facilitators to contraceptive initiation and continuation post-abortion. Using focus groups, questionnaires, observation and key interviews, I aim to help Oriéntame improve their services. On June 29th, I booked a ticket to Bogota, Colombia, and for the past month I have been reviewing the literature, drafting instruments, and submitting the study for IRB approval. Tomorrow, I depart. Yayayayayayayay!
