Shaking Things Up

July, 11th 2022

Setting expectations

Starting off summer was stress inducing to say the least. I was exiting the school year buried under finals, preparations for my summer research, and the natural obstacles of moving back home in time to get a start on everything. I, of course, gave myself a rest period. Something I believe we all need from time to time.

After the first week of June, I went to work. My main objective of June was to gain IRB approval. An elusive achievement I've talked about before. However, going about this proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

Taking aim. Then missing horribly.

Going into this experience, I vastly underestimated just how hard it would be to actually get started on my research. I had spent months in advance working and revising different forms and paperwork, and naturally I believed that was the grunt of it. I had the illusion that when summer started, so finally did I. However I was wrong. It's a bit of a fallacy to believe that anything worth doing is going to be easy, or will even become easier, and yet? I persisted with the thought that it would. The beginning of

the end came with the initial submission of the IRB proposal. I had went through filling out the form 2 hours at a time, only to be interrupted or the submission to not go through causing me to enter a bit of a loop. I became more diligent with my unfortunate situation after the third time; copying my answers into a word document in the unfortunate event that I may have to fill it out again.

Finally, after about 6 attempts and a line of communication with the IRB chair, I found out I was filling out the wrong revision of the form. With this finding, and a moment of an utter feeling of idiocy, things went smoothly. I was able to submit the form and later fine tune my submission materials with my faculty advisor.

Grace in my failings

One would think after this horrific loop of mistakes I would be discouraged, nervous. Uneasy about the fact that I may not complete my research with enough time and terrified of losing a month of time. I am. I am also, hopeful. As I said, anything worth doing is never easy. I stand strong in that fact.

This month was not all for naught. Even though I may not have been able to work on the central points of my research, I found myself productive in every other aspect of it that I could be. While this summer, and this project haven't turned out the way I meant for them to, I intend to work past it and altering my plan to achieve all I set out to. While I may have faltered a bit this month, I won't have it be for nothing.