This Summer has gone by incredibly quick. I have had to dust off my “nice voice” that I haven’t used since I was taking orders at Texas Roadhouse, and honestly, I will be glad to put it away again. I have learned that most people are incredibly nice and a shocking number are willing to take time out of their day to take a survey. There are other people who are not as accommodating. I forgot how bad it feels for people to avoid eye contact and try to make you go away by ignoring you. Hopefully interacting with this much of the public will not be in my future.

On a more positive note, I have gotten to gain experience with R studio and see some of the innerworkings of what happens to all this data we are collecting. I won’t say I have a great understanding of data analyses but more than I did last week. Early on we sat in on some meetings where a survey was being developed and sample design was being decided. This Summer has given me a more complete picture of the planning, execution, and analyses process that is human dimensions research.

Knowing what I know now I would have tried to get an earlier start on some of the R studio work and tried to be a little more productive with my days off. Time has gone by so fast and there never seems to be enough to get everything done. The next few days will be filled with surveying in Cape Falcon and putting our final presentation together, hopefully the wifi in Garibaldi is working.