Krupa Hedge, PC Student Voice Team
This week we have been primarily focusing on the transition between our current state of the Coping With COVID-19 project into a more sustainable work balance as our team is moving back into school. We have been working to wrap up our co-op reports with the hopes of dissemination within the next two weeks and moving into solely focusing on our interview work. We have also been focusing on our interview process and continuing to work towards hitting our goal of 50 interviews. Our team has also been grappling with the question of leadership and how we define leadership. Throughout this study, we have been cognizant about not maintaining typical hierarchical structures in our decision-making, and we are currently working towards implementing this more long-term in our “normal” work as well.
There have been a couple of extremely exciting things that have happened this week. The first is the completion of these last set of co-op reports. This signifies an end to the regional dissemination process of our survey. We also have been able to complete multiple interviews this week, leading us to a total of 35. We are excited to begin delving into them. We’ve also begun to think about our long-term plan for the project, and how we can ensure our work continues into the school year. Though this process will likely last for a bit of time, it has been extremely formative in shaping how we go forward.
This week we were able to take a half hour or so reflect on our summer work and how that has impacted us as individuals and as a team. Together, we were able to bond collectively over our shared experiences throughout the study. This reflection period was invaluable in bonding us as a team. This also allowed us to take the much needed reflection time that we haven’t able to do so far, and really allowed us to reorient ourselves going forward. Together, as a full team, we were able to take the time to think about our work this summer and look forward to our future within the study.
This week seemed to be a tough time for ensuring that we had the capacity to do what we wanted to do this week. As most of our team is now deep into the school year, this has been a time for us to figure out our capacities and how much time we can dedicate to the study. This process has really taught us to be intentional about our delegation processes as well, and how we can rope other people in in order to ensure that we don’t overwork ourselves. Transitioning from a summer full of availability to the jam-packed school year (with everything from school to college applications to jobs) has been tough, but we are trying to make it work.