I heard from the Spencer Foundation, didn’t get it this year. Big disappointment, lasted for a few days.
A friend made her goal, and inspired the rest of us to think about how we can make big dreams happen.
In sum: doubting myself, and believing in others. And feeling amazed it’s May, and so much has happened, and hasn’t, and it’s all about to change again.
Perspective, focus, from a favorite photo taken the other day. Waiting to hear this week about that fellowship I applied for last October (they said by end of April). A chai latte from Starbucks on the plaza in the sun (my first time in Barcelona). Wandering through the late spring afternoon, arms linked with my husband, wondering about what comes next for us. Reading the newspaper in Catalan and understanding it. Debating language politics while eating tapas, perched on high stools in a Basque place near our house. Now, dusk falling over the courtyard out our bedroom window, stillness falling across the bed. The muffled voices of neighbors arguing above us. Two weeks left in this apartment, this city, this space of our lives.
The weekends are a time when I get distance from my project, space from the day-to-day, hour-to-hour intensity of interviewing people and observing in schools. I try and take one day off, not touching the project at all, usually on Saturdays. Then the other day I prepare for the week, usually on Sundays. Yesterday we took the afternoon off, hiked up to Parc Güell, Gaudi’s famous park that is so popular with tourists in Barcelona. We kept going up and up until we could see the whole city spread out below us in all directions.
Looking forward to getting past the nitty-gritty everyday of my project (for now anyhow), and getting some perspective this summer. Until then, three weeks of intensive fieldwork remain. Time to go organize the Sunday to-do list…
…go! It’s April and I’m nearing the end of the Fulbright and this first phase of dissertation data collection in Barcelona. It’s challenged me hugely, forced me to get better at approaching people, imposing gracefully, and asking for things. Just three months ago I had to write down my introduction and build up the nerve to make phone calls in Catalan (which rapidly turned to Spanish). Today, I still had butterflies in my stomach at picking up the phone, but understood every word and was able to make 4 different phone calls in Catalan and set up interviews with people. This is important for understanding people working in education here, and a personal accomplishment to have learned this much Catalan in so little time. Now, the final phase of research begins. Goal: 50+ interviews by the second week of May. I’m optimistic and motivated to work hard these last weeks. The prize is near!
**Credit goes to my husband for these great pictures, taken on a short vacation to Italy last weekend.**
See you soon, I hope to start posting more often again!
I pick up the phone and call again, the fourth time I’ve tried to reach these people. I call three more numbers and it rings and rings. The next morning, I am doing an interview across town, and I run into someone from another office, set up an interview. When I’m doing these interviews now, I ask people for recommendations of who else to talk to, and people make suggestions that lead places, to new appointments. After months of struggling to meet people and explain my project, it’s a revelation to have the pieces coming together so easily.
The truth is, one of the most unexpectedly challenging parts of this Fulbright year has been making connections and gaining access to schools where I could do my research. I knew it would be difficult, but never imagined just how hard. Just figuring out who to talk to, which offices to visit, where to call, took days. And then getting over my own nervousness took time too, getting better at cold calling places, explaining myself and my project, and making apointments with people.
I’ve been thinking about writing up a piece on gaining access as a graduate, Fulbright or other researcher. I’ve learned a few things in these months that could be helpful for others. Indeed, as I think about it more, really anyone doing a creative, self-promoted project has to go through this rite of passage of making themselves known, talking to a lot of people, getting enough buy-in that people will talk to you. Maybe the things I’ve learned could help others.
***
What have been your experiences with gaining access or making connections? How long have you found it takes in a new place? What advice would you give for people trying to figure it out for the first time?
The birds swoop over our heads as we walk by, diving towards bread tossed from the small boy’s hand. They fly down and linger a moment, trying to fill their bellies with bits of bread. The bread blankets the beach, and the birds must quickly find as many grains of sand as crumbs of bread because they sail back to the breaking edges of waves and settle down upon the water again. But their bellies call them again, and the instinct to seek food, and once again they burst toward the bread and peck away in the sand.
We walk with shoes off, toes curling around pink, gray and brown rocks that spot the grainy sand. My nose is filled with the smell of fried food, myseriously blanketing the beach though I see no fast food joint in sight. The smell, and the loud roar of traffic in the distance remind us that we are on an urban beach, on the edge of a teaming city.
I hold my breath, stare into the foam, feel the cold Mediterranean water on my toes, and hope to follow the birds this week, bursting forth again and again, pecking in the sand, flying on inertia and instinct. My bread is my research. I am here, in this city, knocking on doors, calling for interviews, looking for people who will talk with me and share their stories. Like the smell of fast food as we walked down the beach, the weight of the project is ever present, nagging at me, sometimes scraping and grinding, sometimes sparkling into inspiration. I wonder what I’ll find in the sand this week.
***
How’s the week looking to you, dear readers? Thank you for your thoughts, reactions, comments. I love hearing what my writing and photos bring to mind for you.
This year in my work is about data collection. Gathering the stories, interviews, statistics, fieldnotes, curriculum that I will analyze for my dissertation. It’s hard to imagine what all of this will look like when finished. The time here in Barcelona has been a very good start on it though, and it’s getting better by the day, as I gain confidence and access to schools. And who knows, maybe between now and May I’ll finish, and I can make new goals for the rest of 2010. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?!
More and more lately I find myself spending breaks from writing up pages and pages of fieldnotes reading blogs. Sitting on this black pleather rental apartment couch in the Eixample of Barcelona, or holed away in my windowless office, I follow links and photos to far-flung places where people write about their lives, and take pictures, and put it on the world wide web for all to see. New York, Seattle, more Seattle, San Francisco, Texas, Sweden, New Zealand (I think). And all the places these writers and photographers and foodies lead me through their links and inspirations, like Colorado, and Long Beach, California or Portland, ME and Portland, OR. My first love in blogging had long been my one and only, but the extra time home on the computer here, and lack of a social life in this new place, mean there’s more time to hop around from site to site finding new loves.
These escapes fill my mind with delicious food and images of neighborhoods and houses and places that are not HERE. They also make me think how HERE could be so much more through the effort of sharing it beyond our family and friend blog. What if I take a walk around my neighborhood every day and post pictures? What might I find, what might it add up to mean, when put out there in images and words, day after day?
Mostly they take me away from the frustrating process of trying to figure out how to do what I’m doing here. How to get access to people who will talk to me, get access to schools that will let me observe, and get over the hurdles of language and shyness. They provide connection to real people (mostly women) figuring out their lives. They fill some of the space left by not having friends here (yet).
So thank you, blogging world, for putting yourselves out there for the rest of us.
Missing conversations with friends over coffee today. An hour here or there, fellow Ph.D. students or other smart friends, coffees are a regular way to get together back home. This was a big way I connected with friends at Berkeley, and we always talked about our work, school, or just life. I’ve had it a few times here, but not much yet. I think I’ll seek out more people to talk with over coffee in Barcelona.
I’d seen a few yellow-splashed trees around campus and the city, but hadn’t yet seen a deep red fall leaf. And finally, a month into the autumn, I’m feeling fall here in Barcelona. Maybe it’s because along the Mediterranean it comes later. Or maybe because without classes, I didn’t have that feeling of settling into school. But now here I am, sitting at my desk at the university, looking out on pines and spots of yellow-dotted poplars. My project papers are spread around me, and the idea of research design is starting to feel less like something other people do and more like something I might get good at.
I’ve got a long list of things to do (people to contact, websites to read…) in this first week of real fall work on my research project. And I’m going to work on these. But I have one simple goal that is at the top of the list, part of a long-term goal of becoming a writer and researcher in my field: start writing 700 words every day. At first. And then once I settle into that, perhaps a bit more. The goal is to work on making daily writing a routine during the next month. I’ve tried this before, but it’s usually fizzled if I don’t have a deadline. So I’m trying anew, inspired by writer blogs I follow and their efforts to write furiously during the month of November.
What are you working on this Fall? How’s it going?
