Weekly Journal
Week One: June 2nd - June 6th
On the first day, we all met and traveled around the DePaul building where we would be conducting our research. Prof. Sheena Erete went over our requirements and we signed the necessary documents. After lunch, we went on a ride down to Woodlawn, where we learned more about the second project. For the rest of the week we worked on a literature review, looking up and reading numerous articles related to our subject material and bringing together the information to share with the rest of the team.
Week Two: June 9th - June 13th
During the second week we toured a community we were studying for our project, viewing it with our unique perspective as outsiders, researchers who were studying online tensions. We also continued to write up our literature review and started working on the second literature review for the Woodlawn community.
Week Three: June 16th - June 20th
We started to look up websites relating to gentrification in the Humboldt park community, and took care to look at the terms of agreements for many of these sites. We would later be scraping these websites and it was important that we didn't violate any privacy clauses while doing so. We also finally met the DePaul University REU students! They were a fun bunch and my partner and I were happy to sit in on many of the REU talks about graduate school and research.
Week Four: June 23rd - June 27th
We finally began coding our data scrapers, which took some time to start. It was hard learning how to language that was relatively new to me, but I had a lot of fun figuring out that I could actually build something when I put my mind to it. There were a lot of helpful tutorials and I had a great time coming in every morning and feeling psyched to work on something fun.
Week Five: June 30th - July 4th
We began implementing the data scrapers we had build on a few of the online websites, which was really fun. There were some bugs to iron out but after I started getting into the rhythm of testing and retesting, things just seemed to fly by. I had so much fun working with the code, turning it inside and out and knowing that this was a little piece of me that I knew so well that the moment any discrepancies popped out in our output, I knew exactly what to test and where to go to fix it.
Week Six: July 7th - July 11th
We began looking more into our other project on the Woodlawn community, and began reading numerous texts on how to conduct observations and interviews. That was actually a lot of fun, especially when I realized just how passionate some of the writers were about conducting interviews as a qualitative exercise. One author mentioned that at some point in everyone's lives, they should interview their parents and siblings, just to get a clear full story from every one of them. I definitely want to do that one day.
Week Seven: July 14th - July 18th
While for us the summer was almost wrapping up, the REU students were just starting midterm presentations. I had a lot of fun with the presentation, and learned a lot about myself. Presentations are more about how people receive you than I thought, and I definitely want to work on presenting myself as a more serious person. Still, it was interesting hearing feedback from the other students and seeing their own work on lung cancer and all the different applications they were building.
Week Eight: July 21st - July 25th
Data scrapers, data scrapers, and more data scrapers. In the beginning we thought we were only going to build around three to four scripts to grab the data and clean it out--but it ended up being more like eleven. But instead of 7,000 comments to grab, we grabbed more like 11,000+. I was really proud of that, and enjoyed knowing that I could not only meet expectations, but exceed them. Unfortunately, this meant that we didn't have as much time to analyze the conversations. We still started tinkering around with Atlas TI, thematically coding whatever conversations were our test subjects.
Week Nine: July 28th - August 1st
This was my last week. It was really bittersweet knowing that while I got a lot accomplished this summer, I still didn't finish the research (which was likely not to even be done for a long time). Knowing that someone else would come along and work on the project was a little like putting a kit up for adoption, even if you knew it was going to a good home. I still went hard and kept coding as many conversations in Atlas TI as I could, even while I wrapped everything up and prepared to go back to NYC. I left knowing that when push came to shove I could exceed even my own expectations, and that building with empathy was something I definitely wanted to do. Also research. I really love research and am definitely planning on getting my PHD in the future, if only to have something like this experience again.
On the first day, we all met and traveled around the DePaul building where we would be conducting our research. Prof. Sheena Erete went over our requirements and we signed the necessary documents. After lunch, we went on a ride down to Woodlawn, where we learned more about the second project. For the rest of the week we worked on a literature review, looking up and reading numerous articles related to our subject material and bringing together the information to share with the rest of the team.
Week Two: June 9th - June 13th
During the second week we toured a community we were studying for our project, viewing it with our unique perspective as outsiders, researchers who were studying online tensions. We also continued to write up our literature review and started working on the second literature review for the Woodlawn community.
Week Three: June 16th - June 20th
We started to look up websites relating to gentrification in the Humboldt park community, and took care to look at the terms of agreements for many of these sites. We would later be scraping these websites and it was important that we didn't violate any privacy clauses while doing so. We also finally met the DePaul University REU students! They were a fun bunch and my partner and I were happy to sit in on many of the REU talks about graduate school and research.
Week Four: June 23rd - June 27th
We finally began coding our data scrapers, which took some time to start. It was hard learning how to language that was relatively new to me, but I had a lot of fun figuring out that I could actually build something when I put my mind to it. There were a lot of helpful tutorials and I had a great time coming in every morning and feeling psyched to work on something fun.
Week Five: June 30th - July 4th
We began implementing the data scrapers we had build on a few of the online websites, which was really fun. There were some bugs to iron out but after I started getting into the rhythm of testing and retesting, things just seemed to fly by. I had so much fun working with the code, turning it inside and out and knowing that this was a little piece of me that I knew so well that the moment any discrepancies popped out in our output, I knew exactly what to test and where to go to fix it.
Week Six: July 7th - July 11th
We began looking more into our other project on the Woodlawn community, and began reading numerous texts on how to conduct observations and interviews. That was actually a lot of fun, especially when I realized just how passionate some of the writers were about conducting interviews as a qualitative exercise. One author mentioned that at some point in everyone's lives, they should interview their parents and siblings, just to get a clear full story from every one of them. I definitely want to do that one day.
Week Seven: July 14th - July 18th
While for us the summer was almost wrapping up, the REU students were just starting midterm presentations. I had a lot of fun with the presentation, and learned a lot about myself. Presentations are more about how people receive you than I thought, and I definitely want to work on presenting myself as a more serious person. Still, it was interesting hearing feedback from the other students and seeing their own work on lung cancer and all the different applications they were building.
Week Eight: July 21st - July 25th
Data scrapers, data scrapers, and more data scrapers. In the beginning we thought we were only going to build around three to four scripts to grab the data and clean it out--but it ended up being more like eleven. But instead of 7,000 comments to grab, we grabbed more like 11,000+. I was really proud of that, and enjoyed knowing that I could not only meet expectations, but exceed them. Unfortunately, this meant that we didn't have as much time to analyze the conversations. We still started tinkering around with Atlas TI, thematically coding whatever conversations were our test subjects.
Week Nine: July 28th - August 1st
This was my last week. It was really bittersweet knowing that while I got a lot accomplished this summer, I still didn't finish the research (which was likely not to even be done for a long time). Knowing that someone else would come along and work on the project was a little like putting a kit up for adoption, even if you knew it was going to a good home. I still went hard and kept coding as many conversations in Atlas TI as I could, even while I wrapped everything up and prepared to go back to NYC. I left knowing that when push came to shove I could exceed even my own expectations, and that building with empathy was something I definitely wanted to do. Also research. I really love research and am definitely planning on getting my PHD in the future, if only to have something like this experience again.