Over a Month Now

Huh. So last time I updated, I didn’t end on a very positive note.  And that was… about ten days ago. Oops.

I didn’t mean to go this long without updating; I’ve spent every evening for the last week telling myself to just sit down and catch up. But after spending all day trying to make something out of our project, I couldn’t find the motivation to write about it some more. So I kept putting it off in favor of my renewed obsession with Pokemon (Fire Red). And now it’s been long enough that the days have blurred together.

So I’m combining ten posts into one.

-After talking around in more circles all day Tuesday and part of Wednesday, we finally settled on a way to implement the definition we had previously created. While it wasn’t perfect, our sponsors and advisors both reassured us that it didn’t have to be, because this is social science, and by nature it’s flawed. (Not a direct quote.) We decided to run a survey presenting people with a series of posts and asking them how they would respond to those posts, and how they would rank them in terms of the three aspects of our definition. With that settled, our collective stress level dropped significantly, and we there was no more talk about our project’s worth or achievability.

-Thursday and Friday were spent writing and designing our survey. We intended to spend all day Friday getting our weekly writing done, but the survey took precedence; our advisors were kind enough to give us an extention until Monday evening so we didn’t have to work over the weekend.

-That weekend (February 2-3) was Sevens weekend. The Sevens is an international rugby tournament that takes place in Wellington and is a Really Big Deal™. To celebrate, everyone wears costumes. You’re supposed to get together a group of seven people and all dress to match, but there were plenty of smaller groups and even individuals in costume. Our sponsors said we shouldn’t work this weekend, we should just go out and have fun. So I bought a hat and gloves, which turned a dress I brought into a costume, and went out with my classmates. We found a live band playing on the streets and danced and had a good time. The variety of costumes was impressive, but the quality was underwhelming compared to, say, some Realms garb I’ve seen. I had a lot of fun, but if I’m being perfectly honest, it made me rather homesick; there were too many people I wanted there to share it with me. I also regret to say I didn’t get any pictures. I’ll see if I can snag some that my classmates took.

-Monday was spent writing and revising. We stayed late, breaked for dinner and a meeting with our advisors, then resumed and worked until midnight to get it done. It was harrowing; large portions of work I had written were scrapped and entirely re-written by my teammates, which left me wondering why I’d bothered to write it in the first place. But that’s just the brutal nature of revision. I was feeling better after our dinner break, and we finished on a good note.

-Tuesday we shared our survey with our sponsors, received feedback, and modified it accordingly. It went up on the Te Papa website by that evening. That left the rest of the week to work on (more) writing and revision, and wait for data to come in.

-Wednesday was Waitangi Day, the New Zealand equivalent of Independence Day. The treaty of Waitangi was a document, signed in 1839,(?) that gave Maori residents the same rights as the European settlers in the eyes of the British empire. The waterfront with packed with people, featuring lots of stalls selling snacks and Maori souvenirs, as well as a stage where various performances went on all day. I was lame and spent most of the day at Te Papa. I did, however, go on an adventure with one of my classmates to get a scooter. They were on sale at a local store, and the rest of my team had got them the day before. Because who wouldn’t want to scoot to work every morning? Also, there was a tsunami watch. As with most natural disaster watches, it was anticlimactic.

-More writing Thursday and today. By this point, we are all infinitely more relaxed about the project. I know my stress is significantly lower than it was two weeks ago; not only do we have a plan, but that plan has been put in action, and there’s not much left for us to do but collect the data and write about it. Our project is succeeding. It really is.

-My purse never turned up. I followed up at the train station and with the police; no luck. But my mom was able to transfer some cash to me through Western Union, and my new debit card is in the mail. I can get on fine without the cell phone. The passport card can be replaced once I return to America; I don’t need to worry about it now. The only things that aren’t so easily replaced are the purse itself, a Christmas present from a few years ago that I never got to use as much as I wanted to, and a bead necklace that one of my friends made me.  But stuff happens, lessons are learned, and life goes on.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here over a month now. I miss home. I miss my friends and my family. I miss the Realms events and the SMAS meetings. I miss FNF and the CBF girls’ sleepover. I miss being there with Pep Band to cheer on the undefeated men’s basketball team. I even miss the snow that I hear you all are being bombarded with this weekend. And I miss hugs.

But I still love it here. I really do. Sometimes I feel like I don’t ever want to leave. Often I feel like when I leave, I don’t want it to be forever.

Well, I still have three weeks. I intend to make the most of it.

Wake Me When It's Over

We spent five hours today talking in circles. I think we're all ready to kill something.

So we came up with a definition last week for meaningful engagement, and now we’re trying to figure out how to measure it. We thought we would survey people, and have them example social media posts on a scale of 1-10 for each of the three main factors. The first two are intuitive enough—personal interest and learning. But how the hell are you supposed to rank a post for its community aspect? There’s nothing intuitive about that.

So we started throwing ideas back and forth, and shooting them down as quickly as we came up with them. They weren’t specific enough. Were too biased. Were completely subjective. We debated and argued and discussed and got bloody nowhere.

Once again, the problem is that we’re engineers trying to do social science. I tried (not for the first time) to point out that we don’t need a technical, exact, thorough measurement; we just need /something/ that can later be used as a launching point, a starting ground. It’s subjective by nature; it doesn’t necessarily have to be specific. But I did a poor job of communicating that, or else they just weren’t willing to accept it; I’m not sure which. Maybe both. So we talked in circles some more.

And then it got worse, when one of my teammates burst out saying that not only is our project impossible, but it’s pointless. No one actually cares. No one is actually going to use anything we uncover. All anyone cares about is getting more customers, making more money, and meaningful engagement isn’t going to help that, so it doesn’t matter whether anything is meaningfully engaging to begin with.

And when I tried to argue that meaningful engagement does matter, that it is useful, the other two agreed with her, and together the three of them all but outright stated that I was wrong.

Suddenly I feel like I’m the only one who wants to see this project succeed. Who cares about it at all any more. And I feel like any input I have, any suggestions I make, are disregarded or ignored. I don’t think that’s actually true; I realize I’m likely being oversensitive and putting too much weight on a few particular instances. But it still feels that way.

Anyway. We met with our advisors today. They told us that we don’t need a technical, exact, or thorough measurement, that it’s subjective by nature, and that it doesn’t necessarily have to be specific. Go figure.

I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.

Day the Twenty-Second

For the first time since I arrived in Wellington, I slept past 11am. Then I got up, had breakfast, packed myself a dinner, and headed out.

My first stop was the train station. I got a response from the bus company yesterday telling me that they hadn’t been able to find my purse and were considering it lost, which had me just overjoyed. I figured, if it wasn’t on the bus, maybe someone turned it in to the train station? But I arrived to find that the customer service desk was closed on weekends. I’ll try again tomorrow, but I’m not actually that hopeful. At this point… I’m pretty sure it’s gone for good.

I spent the afternoon at Te Papa. At around 5pm I joined up with my project team so that we could hammer out the draft of our Lit Review which is due tomorrow morning. It was rather plain that none of us actually wanted to be doing work, but we disciplined ourselves and got it done. With luck, we won’t have to spend any more weekends doing work. I’m not feeling inclined to trust our luck.

Tonight was apparently the world championship (or something like that) for men’s singles tennis, so a bunch of us went to a bar to watch it on a giant screen. That was fun. My understanding of tennis is approximately the same as my understanding of any other sport, which is to say, not that great. But I learned more, and I was more or less able to keep track of what was going on.

Overall, today was a boring day, which means you get to hear about another Te Papa exhibit. Turns out, Te Papa is currently home to the largest collosal squid that has ever been captured. It was caught somewhere off Antarctica, brought to Te Papa, dissected for Science, and then pickled in this giant tank that’s hanging out in the museum. The tank is bloody huge, and I think it makes the squid look smaller than it actually is. Apparently, if you sliced up the mantle, it would make rings the size of car tires. Think about that next time you’re eating calamari.

There’s also a game to go along with it. You can play it [here] if you’re interested. There’s your procrastination tool for the day.

Three Weeks Done....

I didn’t even have any plans today, and I still didn’t manage to sleep in. I suppose that’s a good thing, since it means I’ve developed a consistent sleep schedule here. It also meant that I spent all day at Te Papa taking advantage of the wi-fi. I got to play Nightshade! With a new character, even. (I think this is the part where I comment on the wonders of technology, and how I can participate in a game from the other side of the world.)

And I had the last of my rice-beans-corn-chicken for dinner. It’s finally gone! I can eat something different!

I also discovered some massive and colorful bruises on the backs of my legs. Also, my tailbone hurts. Courtesy of my jump into the water. Sitting is painful. This was an unexpected consequence, and confirms that I won’t be trying it again.

This is apparently a weekend for new experiences. Jumping off platforms into water… going out clubbing… there’s a group of Australians staying in our apartment complex, and apparently last night they met some of us and hung out. So they were hanging out again tonight, and my roommate invited me to go along. Since the alternative was spending the evening alone, I agreed.

We hung out at the apartments for a while, visiting. I hovered at the periphery, not quite feeling comfortable enough to join in on any conversations. Situations like this make me shy. I was also one of the only sober people there, and planned to stay that way, having no money to spend on drinks regardless of any desire to drink them. One of my classmates offered me a beer, which I accepted; that was my only drink for the night. After a while, one of the Australians introduced himself, and we had a conversation. I started to relax. Still felt out of place, but not as much.

When we were politely informed that the noise ban had come into effect, we headed out to a club. This, too, was outside my range of experience, but it didn’t matter so much. I’ve said before that music is universal, even if it’s club music being pumped through speakers that leave you deaf. Most of it was actually familiar; I recognized the majority of the songs, and that’s saying something, given the amount of attention I pay to contemporary music. We all danced together and watched out for each other, and just generally had a good time. It was a new experience, but I’m glad I went.

Also, this may have been the first night I’ve been in Wellington that I’ve stayed up past midnight. No wonder I’ve been waking up so early.

Twenty, Part III

So. Remember that platform that people were jumping off way back on my first day here? We all decided to reconvene there after work today. And since I made a promise to myself, I decided I was going to jump off.

It was entirely backwards from what I expected, in that the jump itself wasn’t that bad, but the fall was bloody terrifying. I took the smaller jump first. I jumped, closed my eyes…. And waited…. And waited… and wondered why I hadn’t landed yet because wasn’t gravity faster than this? When I finally did land, the breath I was holding was forced out of me and I scrambled for the surface. My thoughts consisted of THIS IS BLOODY COLD with a hint of oh yeah, this is saltwater, isn’t it.

But that wasn’t the promise I made myself. I needed to jump off the top platform. So…. I did. And even though the shorter jump should have prepared me, I still felt like I was falling too long, and I still inwardly freaked out. I also leaned back too far and unwittingly drew my legs to my chest, so when I crawled out of the water, I realized that the backs of my thighs hurt. A lot. Who knew that water could cause so much pain.

Worth it once. Don’t think I’ll be doing it again.