I am slightly in awe of the fact that 5 weeks of Laidlaw have passed me by. I have fallen so deeply down the research rabbit hole that I have forgotten to reflect on how far I have come. In such a small period of time all the research skills that were unfamiliar have become familiar. The word research has twisted and turned from a strange and daunting word that I associated exclusively with intimidating postgrad students, to now taking form in the personal sense, a word I now associate with my 2025 summer.

At this stage things are starting to take shape which is always the best part about nearing the end of a project, the arbitrary and the random slot neatly into their intended places. That being said, my group are anticipating the last few days to be quite stressful as we have interviews to conduct just days before the deadline, not leaving much time to transcribe and analyse them. However, we’re doing our best to lighten next week's load by getting a head start on writing our introduction and methods this week.

Honourable mentions throughout this project include my new fondness for cold emailing, it’s a relaxing pastime. My group and I are also overjoyed by the amount of responses we have received on our survey, relentlessly pestering our close friends and minor acquaintances  seems to have worked. Competing over which of our colleges we have gotten the most responses from has also been a lot of fun. A title which I begrudgingly bestow on Hertford, though Worcester is a close second.