Update

Gonna leave for home in less than 12 hours. I'm so excited, but yet I hope that this trip won't leave my work in bad shape :(

I've tried to do everything I can before I go.

1. Met with MG. Got the outline structured out and have started writing a little on the situations, gaps, situation movement states, network attributes, and also some impending analysis. It looks good, just hoping that it'll turn out good eventually.

2. Preparing questions for interview 2, which will commence right when I come back.

See you!

Coding of Interviews 1

For those of you who don't know (actually, none of you know except for maybe zheshen, ellen, and wei), that I've been having crazy troubles with the coding and analysis of the first round of interviews.

One, even though there are but a small number of participants (only 6), the data generated is intense. We are talking about an average of 15 pages per participant. What's more, it's an erratic set of data. So I have information regarding every detail of my participants' lives.

Two, coding is new to me. Yes, I've never done such intense coding before and it has taken a tol on me for the past week. For seven days, I live and breathe data. I look, relook, and re-relook. I coded about 6 different versions and am not happy.

Three, I was so frustrated with myself, I even cancelled my 2nd interview with one lady because there is absolutely no way I can meet with her.

I felt so lousy.

The problem was, I feel, a bombardment of information. Too much info I don't know where to begin. Too much info I don't know how to organize it.

So I've been spending the last week finding the focal point of my data.

Questions that ran across my mind:

1. How do I organize my data?
2. Where is my focus?
3. How do I make it look coherent?

And the answer was all along in my thesis proposal that I wrote in August.

It seems that looking at my proposal helped me so much by reminding me what I initially set out to find. I found the research questions and the methods section, and used that to guide me.

I found the focal point, and built the skeleton around it.

And now I'm in the process of building the meat, using the data.

Life is so good, when the light of epiphany shines brightly.

Thank God!