Back In the Room

The 'Drowning in Data' courses offered at the university seem particularly attractive now, since that is what is beginning to happen.

Session 1 of the Introduction to Qualitative Methods course has galvanized me into action. I was put into a 'group' and had actual 'homework' with a deadline. That's been a while. An essay is required at the end of this module. That has also been a while.

And, since our next topic is interviews, in preparation I have been busy transcribing the first of my group interviews.

I have begun to arrive at some (unscientific) conclusions:

1. The dictation app I am trying to use is worthless.
2. Transcription is extremely labour intensive. The first ten minutes' worth of talk took nearly four hours to transcribe.
3. It gets a bit quicker. The next ten minutes I managed in an hour. Though this is still an unfeasible ratio.
4. These interviews generate a huge amount of data (insightful, this one).
5. I need to back out of the talk more. I seem to have dominated the discussion at one stage in the middle.  Note to self: shut up!

Still, if nothing else, it seems I am definitely back in the room. I have the second class today, followed by my first supervision session of the year, and I feel that I have been working at it non-stop since last week. I have done (most of) the reading for today's class. Deadlines, gulp. Odd being taught again, but I quite like it.