I’m not sure what to say. I should start out by expressing my disappointment that I have forgotten my journal at home. The one with sunflowers on it that Tori gave me. It would have made an awesome travel journal, but whatever. I guess now I will write in google docs instead which works out since it means I can post more readily to the MHIRT blog should I choose to.
Anyway, I’m in Bangalore and I have been here for about a week. I arrived last Monday on the 1 June and I will be here until the 10 August. I thought it was going to seem long, but things are really working out. Earlier today I was asked to do a quantitative analysis project and I would be a co-author for the work. I was excited and freaked out at the same time because I don’t know that I know how to do quantitative analysis. Sure, I’ve taken statistics courses and I did my own project at the animal shelter, but do I actually know how to do this? I stressed about it for the majority of the morning – from 8am-11am until I started to task to Dr. Vishwanath (Vishy) and he was very excited to hear that I am very experienced in qualitative analysis. I’ve never heard that before. Usually people value quantitative skills higher than qualitative analysis skills, but he said he wanted to learn! I told him that Suneeta had asked me to do this quantitative analysis and that we should exchange skills! So Vishy is going to help me get the hang of quantitative and I’m going to teach him the steps of qualitative analysis. It’s exciting!
I was prepared before I came here to have my research project be completely different than what I expected and as it turns out, it matches my research proposal almost exactly. Even better- I will be doing MUCH more than I had originally anticipated. I will be conducting in-depth interviews with the English-speaking administrators and coordinators of the self-help group project (SPHERE is what we are calling it) and I will be leading all of the qualitative analysis for the focus-group discussions and in-depth interviews. I’m stoked! I will be assisting and learning more about the quantitative analysis and I will be helping to write the final report of this project. So if I continue to do this then I will be on two publications this summer! The main concerns I have for the SPHERE project are whether we will be able to do all of the data collection –we have the dates set for the 17, 18, 19, 22 June for the survey and then other days within that time frame for the FDGs and the IDIs, but it is contingent on people showing up of course! This is an outcome evaluation and apparently the data collection went exactly as planned for the baseline data so I have high hopes! Another part of the project will be that during the IDIs we will look for “compelling moments” to film in order to use for future presentations. This project is very dynamic – data collection, data analysis, report writing, filmography and communications, and then also mobile health components are being introduced to the group and questions are being added to the evaluation survey in order to gather baseline data for the mobile health component.
Something that I noted today that was really interesting was the way that Vishy thought about the survey questions. I wish he would speak his thought process a bit louder because I came up with wording for a few of the survey questions we were struggling with and I based it off of what he was telling me we were aiming to put the survey-takers in a dilemma for the baseline so that the evaluation would show differences in knowledge of domestic violence prevention and intervention of the community health workers. I used my intuition to come up with and frame those questions and statements for the survey and while Vishy was excited, he was matching them against hypotheses. He had a hypothesis for each type of question that we were asking and he was thinking dynamically about how to ask it so that we could test the hypothesis. Is the question too simple? What will their mind be immediately directed to? It was very interesting. Creating surveys is really fun I have to say!
By the end of this summer I’m hoping to know myself a bit better in terms of research. I do the Nigeria research (which I really need to focus on more and finish more memos) and I was losing my steam a bit at the end of the semester. I’m learning how much I can handle and I’m also learning as a result what are the things I want to prioritize. At this point, it’s too early to tell if research will be a part of my career, but it is more of a possibility than I had originally realized. I started to feel disconnected from the Nigeria stuff as I had other school work and also because I am not surrounded by my work in my settings. I realize now that the surroundings play a big role in how I learn. For instance, in the MHIRT class I always felt very strange writing about going to India and doing the project here and I felt skeptical and disconnected. Now I’m really feeling the project. There is something about thinking through the materials in a research team that really makes it all come to life. It’s awesome to have the social workers, the researchers, and just everyone there all at once brainstorming. I get it now. I get it to the point that I was asked to mentor another student here from a different university – I have skills to offer but it’s hard to know that when I’m not in the context. I am at my best when I am just doing. That being said, the research proposal was one of the best things I did in preparing to come here because when they talk about the project, I understand everything that is happening to life and it’s coming to life just as I pictured it. But even better because I’m way more involved than I ever imagined which is awesome. I’m having a good time so far in terms of work.
In terms of the hostel, it is also quite nice. I did not have wifi for the first week and that was horrible. It gets pretty boring even if I’m not using it– it’s nice to just have the option or to play music while I write. It also makes it much easier to communicate with people and distract me from my hunger in the mornings after my workout. The cafe’s and eating places don’t really open until 10am and I have been waking up around 630am now. I wake up, clean the room, do my workout, take a shower, and NOW instead of waiting around and feeling hungry, I can at least entertain myself. Also, now I can be at the campus more frequently than the office space further away that was rented out which means working more closely with the team. I love the team so it works out really well.
In the hostel I have met lots of nice people. Mainly I have Catherine from Rice University that is working on the outcome evaluation with me, Sri from Rice University who is working on a different project for Suneeta Krishnan on cervical cancer, Monica who is medical student from Germany, and Tobias and Ryad who are medical students from Britain. Tomorrow, Monica, Tobias, Ryad, and I will take our first cooking classes and learn how to make paneer, dosas, and maybe something else! I want to take another cooking class to learn how to make chicken tikka masala. That is my main priority with cooking classes. Also, it’s awesome that we are taking a cooking class because that was one of my main goals. I also found a yoga studio and I intend to go about two times per week. I’m stoked!
There is more to say – specifically about Biocon and the training sessions that we will be observing, but when they happen I’m sure I’ll write.
One last thing – we went to a concert and I think we heard Carnatic music – I’ll have to go look it up but it was just like what I had learned in my world music class. The musicians had never met each other and they just had long jam sessions and spoke to each other with their instruments- no practicing, all improvisation, or what I like to think of as a conversation between all of the musicians. Also, the food here is great. I love the food. Even the non-Indian food tastes great and pretty much everything has “Indian flavor” no matter what you order. No good chocolate which sucks. I miss burritos and taco salads. California problems. Not having air conditioning has not been as bad as I anticipated, I keep myself quite cool in the hostel. It gets a little hotter than my taste at night, but overall it’s quite pleasant.
Anyway, that’s about it for now that I’m willing to share on a public blog.
Until next time,
Remy
UC Berkeley MHIRT 2015 