Mary Poppins, I'm Not

This week I primarily spent gathering the names of potential interview candidates. I have a decent list now, and I have three people who have agreed to interview someone.

I also managed to conduct a third interview with Mary, a very articulate and passionate woman from ujima, the ENG for African-Americans.

In a late Friday discussion with Diana, a woman I've known since our time together on the board of the local ISPI chapter over 5 years ago, Diana was apologizing for taking so long to respond to my request for names. I in turn was apologizing for pushing so hard for names. My exact words were, "I have to get something on paper or I'm not going to graduate!" Within a few minutes of that revelation, she volunteered to conduct two interviews, saying, "Well, this is important!" My response was, "It's important to me. I don't know how important it is to anyone else." Diana replied, "It's important to this company that you graduate."

I've been mulling that over. I don't know that it is important to the company that I graduate. I don't think anyone at the company has any deep knowledge of how hard I'm working in this program, or what I'm learning. Is that a problem for me? Should I be more vocal about this program and how it is adding value to the company? I think it is a problem, and I think I need to be more vocal. I'll have to think about how to do that more effectively.

I also feel guilty/embarrassed about communicating my 'need' for interviews in such a backhanded way. I unconscioulsy fell into the old 'victim' pattern that has worked in the past to get me what I want, but I don't want to be that anymore. I really need to learn how to better assert my desires without being so damn passive-agressive. I've been making progress in this area, but apparently not enough.

But I digress. Back to the interviews.

Stupidly, I left the my carefully compiled contact list (Excel spreadsheet, two tabs) on my work computer and neglected to email it to myself at home! My original plan for this weekend was to assign interviewers to interviewees and send them the interview protocol and summary sheet with instructions on how to proceed. My hope was to get at least three more interviews generated by this team by the end of the week, and then compile the data next weekend.

I guess I can salvage some of this work. I can compose the instructions and email them to myself at work for distribution early Monday morning. People aren't going to be doing any interviewing before that time, anyway, so all is not lost. It just would have been nice to have this task completely finished this weekend.

In addition, I'm going to continue writing the final progress report given what I know now. So far I'm beating myself up at every turn. My failings as a researcher/ practitioner are many and now deeply documented and detailed!