Research Apprenticeship Reflection

While saying that this research project was a rollercoaster would be an understatement, I learned so much about myself and ended this project with such a positive learning experience. I didn’t know much about media literacy to begin with so I thought learning about it prior to starting the project was incredibly helpful. In fact, it turned out that I actually knew a lot more about media literacy than I thought I did. When we began our research process by drafting the paper opening, this was when our class started to break out into groups to separate the rationale and literature review appropriately. My group was assigned the literature review which had to do with what we already knew about the topic. I initially thought this would be a piece of cake since we already did some reading and had prior knowledge on this topic, yet we did run into a few minor setbacks. As we all read different précis for that week, we found it somewhat difficult to blend all of ours in without it looking like it was disorganized as it didn’t flow properly. It took a few days of back and forth conversations to ultimately determine what was needed in that paragraph and what we could get rid of. This was just the beginning of group work and cohesion which again, we most definitely underestimated at first. When you initially think of working in a group, you sometimes forget that there are going to be a lot of different ideas, thoughts, and opinions circulating with each part of the project, such as the literature review, the coding, the methods and findings section, etc. While this seemed impossible at some points of this project, we (as a group) and myself personally learned so much in each part of the project. When we were coding individually it was interesting to see the ways that I coded, such as whether it had to do with quantity or quality being most important to me. When we met in our group to finalize the coding, we realized that we had a lot of confusion as some of us felt as though we were on different pages with the coding. While this seemed like a bad thing at first glance, this actually ended up being a blessing in disguise. Due to the fact that we all had different procedures as to how we went about the coding, this opened up the discussion for many different perspectives. It is also important to mention that everyone’s perspective was entirely valid as to why they (we) thought about coding the way that they did. Everyone was able to bring a unique idea to the table, to which we may not have thought of if we didn’t do the work individually and then come together to discuss. After two weeks of coding and recoding, we finally came to a group consensus that made so much more sense when this process was over. This was hard to see at the moment, but this back and forth notion of discussion was desperately needed in order to reach our final destination with the coding. While this was only the beginning of our journey, we also experienced a few struggles when we had to assign individuals some tasks. For example, while my priority of the assignment in week 3 of the project was to discuss the findings, I immediately thought reading and writing these results would be a piece of cake. I knew I was confident in the table I would be discussing, but got into some difficulty once I actually sat down to talk about the findings when it came to Anova. I initially thought I was just reviewing the first table, but I accidentally missed the second part of the findings which was where I was supposed to discuss the Anova and what those results looked like. As my other team members were working on different tasks, I knew I had to try and figure this out as best that I could because the project deadline was coming up rather quickly. Once I found myself rather lost and confused, I focused on some other parts of the project until I could come back to the findings section with a clear and more focused headspace. As I went to my professor’s office hours to sit down with her to discuss more about my difficulty, she helped me figure out what I was doing wrong and how I could fix everything. This was a really positive turning point in the project as I was starting to doubt myself and worry about how everything would get fixed in time. I started to let the pressure of the due date get to me, which is something I unfortunately lack when it comes to big assignments or projects. I know myself and how I work with others, therefore sometimes the thought of the deadline is what stresses me out the most so I am unable to focus or center in on what needs to get done. After I fixed all of my findings I felt much more confident about putting this in the final portion of the project and felt as though I could move on to work on some other tasks. I helped Sam with the discussion portion of this project and also edited/took a look at some of my classmate’s work to double check the grammar and flow of sentences. What truly helped me was sitting down for the last two weeks of the project deadline to discuss who was doing what and when we were going to plan on having it all in by. When I work by myself I always set deadlines for myself and set extremely high expectations while doing so. Sometimes I forget that balance is key and that the journey itself is way more important than the destination. When I was frustrated and overwhelmed with the project itself, I could only think about that rather than how I could fix this and what might help our group as a whole. When we sat down in class those two weeks prior to the deadline, I thought it would help me know exactly who was doing what so that everyone was on the same page. The first week that we did this was somewhat helpful, although once we circled back in class there was still a bit more of the project that still needed to be worked on. While I was extremely excited that this kind of group cohesion was helpful I knew this was something we should continue to do for the last week of the project. During the last class that we had before the project was due, our professor let us sit down for an hour to work on everything which was incredibly beneficial. We went through the entire document to review who did what, how they were doing with it, and whether or not they thought they needed another set of eyes to review their portion. This created an extreme level of group cohesion and mutual understanding as we were all able to see the progress in each other’s work and worked together to ensure that everyone had a fair amount of work and comprehension when it came to each task we completed. Rather than doing the work entirely alone, we started to do the work individually, communicate when that work was done, communicate whether or not we needed more help, and then came together for the final product. This was a huge turning point in this project whereas a few weeks prior to this, hitting the deadline seemed nearly impossible. I also thought it would be difficult to figure out who did what, who was responsible for what, and how we would all hold each other accountable. By sitting down with one another going step by step in this process, this ensured that everyone understood where we were in that given time frame and where we intended to be within the next few days.

One of the most interesting aspects of this project for me was figuring out Anova as well as the group coding. At first I felt stumped and knew that math was not at all my strong suit. As I started to learn more about Anova by watching videos and reading some articles, I found myself understanding a bit more as time went on. Once I finally talked to my professor about the issue I was having with the data, it all made sense to me and I felt like I had a moment of truth. I would always steer away from math because it was stressful and didn’t ever make much sense to me. I realized that sometimes you just have to face things head on to come to the realization that it isn’t always as bad as you picture it to be. I can proudly say that I feel extremely comfortable in my skills of researching and will not underestimate the power of confidence and perseverance in the future. I also thought the coding stuck out to me because it was something I had always heard about, yet never imagined myself actually doing. After the coding was finished I could certainly see how and why others thought it was so stressful but I was quite proud of myself for applying myself in ways I hadn’t before.

When we spent a few weeks individually coding and then coming together to create a group consensus, I initially thought there was no way that it would take that much time. I spent a good amount of time doing the coding sheet myself, but never really stopped to reflect on how positively different my group member’s results would be to mine. When I started coding I had so many thoughts as far as the responses went, but I think part of me just didn’t think about how multiple perspectives would enhance our group rather than damage it. I wanted to get the group coding done so quickly and so bad that I forgot to think about how others’ may have perceived these responses differently. This was another turning point for me that transitioned from what seemed to be incredibly overwhelming at first to a mutually beneficial and productive task in this process. I was able to hear about Becca and Emile’s points of view on how they chose to personally code the data which was actually very interesting to me. I hadn’t thought about the different ways someone could view the participants’ responses and it wasn’t until I reflected on this after that I realized this was such an effective tool in the project itself. While we all had our own personal opinions, judgements, and ideas we were ultimately able to come together as a group to make one consensus about the group coding sheet. While it felt tough to circle back each week to see where we were at, it helped me gain perspective on how some things just take a little bit more time and effort than you may have originally thought. Working in groups was always something that I tried to avoid in college, but this project definitely helped shape my perspective into seeing group work as a beneficial tool in helping you understand more about yourself as an individual. As I usually like to manage my time in a particular way, going out of my comfort zone helped me realize that not everything always has to be done at a particular time. With that being said, it doesn’t mean that it won’t get done on time, but maybe it just won’t get done at the exact time that you planned for which is entirely okay. I learned to push myself and found myself in situations where I felt somewhat unsure of what was going to happen next, but that was just part of the process. Some parts of this felt so overbearing that I wasn’t necessarily able to see all of the progress that we were making each week. Another imperfection when I work with groups or on group projects is that I am a perfectionist that can get ahead of myself at times. I forget to think about the journey itself and find myself in complete tunnel vision to the end goal or destination. This was another instance where I could reflect on the journey itself and how it taught me a lot about myself and how I learn in group settings. I wasn’t able to properly reflect on how this project taught me so much about myself and my future goals until it was all said and done. With that being said, the process was so much more than the destination itself and I truly feel as though I now know what that means and why it is so crucial and applicable to the real world. I will apply everything that I have learned working in groups and group projects to my real job one day and reflect back on this project as a cornerstone into my development of learning.