Hi again! 

I have now reached the end of my second week here in Amsterdam so its time for another update on what I have been doing and what I have learned so far... 

Leadership – what I have learned from others leading me 

This week I have been brought in to work on a few more research projects, doing qualitative analysis of interviews and proposing areas for statistical analysis of a large data set. This has meant that I am now being lead by a few different people- which has allowed me to observe different approaches to leading. One thing that I have noticed is that when leading someone in the context of research, there is a need for a good balance between instruction and freedom. When I started in the lab leas week, I remember being struck by how despite my relative inexperience, I was treated like any other researcher on the team, and when I am being introduced to a new research project, I am given a good level of instruction, and pointed towards useful readings so that I may learn myself how to tackle things, but also given a certain amount of freedom. This makes me feel more capable and confident in my own instincts and abilities, while still feeling supported. As a result of this, I feel able to ask questions when I am unsure – something which I imagine to be very important to establish as a leader, since it means there is less of a chance of me (as the person being lead) doing something completely wrong. 

Methods and research 

The new projects I am working on have allowed me to revisit my old friend qualitative thematic analysis, but with the different analytical approach of framework analysis! This has been interesting because while I am initially going to start coding in very similar way to how I have done it previously to create meaning based on the data I have, I will then use this to create a framework, from which I will code my next set of transcripts. I think this will make my coding a bit more cohesive and hopefully will be helpful when thinking about common experiences between participants – which is important for this research project. 

At the same time, I am both excited and scared to start my statistical project – while it will give me the chance to apply the skills I have learned in R from my coursework projects, however I am a bit scared of things going wrong, since I find coding very tricky (but also satisfying when I finish it) and I know it will take a lot of editing and running and re-running. 

Challenges going forward 

The main challenge of this week and something I will need to work on going forward will be time management, particularly in regards to allocation of time to various tasks – as I have been allocated more projects to work on aside from the one I started on last week. While this has been nice in that it allows me to take breaks from one to work on another I think I will need to be careful about making sure I keep on top of my various deadlines since I am mostly self-managing. To do this I will re-visit the task management trello board I used to use for my job last year, as I think this may be useful to me for planning my days, as this helps me get the most out of them. This will be my challenge for next week – allocating time at the start and end of my work days to plan what to work on and check my progress. 

Also... coffee update 

An update on my challenge I set myself last week – I did just about manage to order a coffee in Dutch yesterday. 

See you next week! 

Jasmine