Full Steam Ahead

It's been an intense week for me - conducting a lit review and writing the introduction and background to the UROP proposal. So far I have 11 solid sources that I have been drawing from: 5 of which Kelly recommended and 6 that I scrounged up on my own. I spent the early part of the week knee deep in peer-reviewed journals, trying to begin to process the deluge of information that is a literature review. A quick outline of my process: read, underline, jot down notes, gather main points of article, sort articles based on similar themes, create an outline of themes, look for gaps and overlaps, form questions, narrow questions. 

I met with Kelly again on Friday morning for what was another thoroughly rewarding conversation. I came prepared with a brief agenda, and yet we still managed to talk for well over an hour. She spoke in depth about her dissertation - background, reasons behind methodology, constituencies, difficulties so far, next steps, overall goals, and we discussed exactly where I fit into everything. We even tried to come up with a thesis for my project, but had an equally difficult time articulating my project into a succinct sentence or title that could be comprehended by a non-expert. We decided to leave that for a bit later.

I scribbled out 3 pages of notes during the conversation which I then had the divine task of formulating into an introduction for my UROP proposal. Four slightly painful hours later, and I had managed to describe just what the heck I'm doing for this research project! (I'm almost embarrassed to admit it took me that long to write 3/4 of a page, but there was much processing and wording and re-wording and re-re-wording that took place.) I will post the introduction following this post. 

The background section of the proposal I feel is thorough, though perhaps a bit wordy and still vague - especially to a non-expert. I'm still not convinced I managed to convey exactly how my project will contribute to the "conversation" of children's transportation to school, which means I have one, or several, revisions to look forward to.

On tap for this week: GIS! I downloaded some data from the City of Denver website last friday, so I have some layers to start working with. I need to create a base map and begin to plot data points. Time to break out the ArcGIS textbook and brush up on my computer lingo.