magic number!

Pull up a chair, Friends, it's been awhile since we've caught up. I know that my posts have been less frequent, especially if you compare it the rate I'd been posting beforehand.

Not too long ago, I promised you a post updating the progress of my research. My main reason for not it discussing with you sooner is that I didn't to write about the struggles of recruiting prospective participants in the City Centre nor about the joys of people saying that they will show up to a scheduled appointment and not show up. But, today, I reached the magic number of 12. Twelve is the desired number of interviews that needed to be conducted for the first phase of my thesis. Thank goodness for touchy-feeling qualitative research and their small sample sizes.

Even though I was able to get 12 interviews done in about a month's time, it wasn't easy let me tell you. Many tears were shed at home in the evening due to the recruitment struggles and the no-shows I faced. But I fought and scraped my way through, and even after I got picked up in the City Centre one afternoon.

Any additional interviews I conduct now will be bonuses but the focus these days will be on transcribing these interviews verbatim. Let me tell you, even though hearing my recorded voice makes me cringe ever-so-slightly, it's not as bad as hearing me sound painfully British. I use words like autumn (instead of fall), trousers (instead of pants), trainers (instead of running shoes), straight away (instead of right away), and biscuits (instead of cookies). Worse yet, at times I hear myself drawing out the first syllable of words, reminiscent of the famed Yorkshire accent (think Full Monty).

Even though I've lived in this country for 16 months now and interacted with many people, I am still amazed how much I still don't fully understand what everyone's saying, which makes transcribing the interviews that much more difficult.