Placement

Fair warning: this post is boring as it has to do with research stuff.

So, originally I had arranged to have a placement with a peacebuilding organization for the duration of my stay. They are an organization that helps give disadvantaged people employment opportunities.

During the second week of my placement, my placement mentor whisked me out of the office rather abruptly. She took me on a day trip with her over to one of the partner universities (Coleraine), and I got a chance to watch a program that helps students all over the UK set up their own business. The government gives them each 5000 pounds and has professors from the university guide them along the way. One student had a 1 million pound turnover last year. Could this be the solution to the rising costs of higher education in America?

On the drive back from Coleraine, through the beautiful Irish countryside, my mentor and I got to talking about my placement. It turns out that because of some liability issues with my visa status, my organization decided that they could no longer accommodate me in-house.

The cons of this were that I no longer had structured goals and expectations of what I needed to do during my summer, nor did I have access to office facilities. My organization had several programs up and running that were very well suited to studying the effects of economic development on peacebuilding.

Nevertheless, my placement mentor and I were determined to be flexible and have a positive outlook. And the more I thought about it, the less horrible the turn in events seemed. For one, during my second week I had a talk with the director of the organization and another talk with my supervisor that were a little disconcerting. They both explained that their organization engaged in "soft peacebuilding," and thus would never ask any of the "obvious" or "tough" questions of its participants. That really wouldn't have been a problem with me, but they also made it sound like they were only interested in eliciting "happy, inspiring stories" out of their interviewees. In addition, they scaled down the role that I was going to play in interviewing the women, deciding that they would be in charge of writing the questions.

My supervisor expressed a lack of faith that I would be capable of navigating sensitive issues and was worried I might scare some of the participants away. I tried to explain that I was confident in my ability to do the job, and cited past experience interviewing Holocaust survivors.

Convincing them of my abilities turned out to be a moot point anyway, due to the aforementioned visa/liability issues. So, it turns out that my organization's decision to "let me go" may have been the best thing all around. They were clearly experiencing a bit of buyer's remorse, and this change in direction would actually allow me more flexibility in my research.

With that, my placement mentor and I decided to have weekly meetings to refine my research methods and check in on my plan of action. My research questions and goals remain the same, but my data collection method now consists of interviewing eight to nine people who work in the social economy sector. My placement mentor (perhaps I should change her moniker to research mentor?) used her contacts in the biz to help me find people to interview. Also, without a placement, I now have a more flexible schedule, so I can take time to travel! I immediately extended my stay in Paris so that instead of just taking the weekend, I could have two extra days there :-D