The Cultural Research project has been extremely challenging. While I’ve had a good time learning about such an amazing, fascinating, inspiring woman, I’ve realized that maybe she wasn’t a good choice for this project. Zhou Qunfei’s story is one of economic success, not necessarily one of a woman rising to the top of the game in a STEM field. She heavily involved in the tech world, but only the products she manufactures. She is a businesswoman through and though. I’ve found myself getting stressed out many times while writing the paper and trying to follow the instructions because of this.

For example, the “trends” and “technology” sections were particularly difficult due to having little material to work with in this topic. Additionally, Zhou is a fairly unknown person in the media. There were few articles written on her and most provided me with the same details over and over. She is private and didn’t become a person of interest until within the last few years. It was hard to find information on her.

But all in all, I’ve honestly loved what I’ve learned about Zhou Qunfei. I regret not choosing a subject with more readily available information, but I’m glad I got the opportunity to learn about someone completely new to me.

This project has been pretty challenging. I’ve stopped and started working on it so many times in the last week and it’s still not even close to being done! I’ve completed bits and pieces along the way, bookmarked all my sources, I added the incomplete subpages just now, and the rest of the weekend will be dedicated to completing the research and citing all my sources.

The challenging parts for me have been finding enough information about Zhou Qunfei. As I mention in my paper, she is a rather private person so information about her is sparse and it’s more common to simply come across the same information about her over and over again. Frustrating.

But I’ve put together a decent amount of information about her and I’m still searching for more. Also, it’s unusually difficult to find information about the specific technology she manufactures. She’s more of a businesswoman that a technologist, so that’s a bit tricky to work with.

It’s a work in progress though and I know it’ll be something I’m proud of once it’s finally complete.

It’s been many years since I’ve gone to a librarian for specific research help. I decided to go to the library at Lane Community College for this assignment since I live in Eugene and am most familiar with their library.

My experience was initially not really productive towards the project itself. I asked one of the librarians about tips on how to find good peer reviewed articles or interviews with specific people. She directed me to LCC’s library website that lists various resources for research and also a function that allows you to have online chats with librarians to help you with online navigation. This intrigued me quite a bit so after I was done talking with her, I went home and tested out the chat function.

My fear with the chat function was that it would be automated responses from a chatbot. I still probably don’t know if the person on the other end was real or not, but he did guide me to the “business” section of a research database so that I could go from there and find information I needed. I was so excited to have found many articles regarding Zhou Qunfei and her business.

In retrospect, I could have done the same thing using OSU’s library, but since I don’t live in Corvallis and am dual enrolled in LCC, I went with what was most familiar to me.

Post to add cultural research to categories.