The other week I used the phrase "causal mechanism" in my entry. I apologise to all those I have offended with my transgression to the social sciences.

I've continued to learn a lot of new things these past couple weeks; primarily that in research, plans may be more likely to go wrong than right, and that it's critically important to remain adaptable (adaptability is also one of the soft skills that we're researching). I printed 77 surveys the other day (thank you to Merton College for free printing), took 10 minutes to staple them and then walked 20 minutes in the rain to leave them in the SDG lab so other groups could take them into their schools. It was frustrating to later learn that half the groups didn't do this, and whilst we later remedied this with one of us biking to the schools and also calling in a favour, we're also aware that this means that we're likely to get fewer survey responses and also in a less timely manner. At the very least, everything seems to be alright now.

We also went into the primary school last week knowing that there were some more communicative issues between the SDG lab and the school, but we didn't know that this was to the extent that the children were not told about our club. We had one sign-up, but were luckily able to have two in our club because a staff member intercepted a child leaving the school and asked if she wanted to join. Since then, we now have a team of five! The children seem to really enjoy it. They remind me of the energy that I used to have when I was a child. I admire the way in which they're somehow bouncing around the room after school on a Thursday when I could only do so if heavily caffeinated. They've enjoyed acting and prop-making, they've been responsive to our advice, and hopefully they'll bring back their hand-stapled hand-placed-in-envelope surveys but also its fine if they don't because they're optional but also it would be incredibly beneficial to be able to contextualise our data into an area in Oxford where people generally come from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Despite all this, everything is going alright. I've enjoyed this month so much, from getting bubble tea, going on bike rides, and going bowling (the lower the score, the better, right?). I'm excited to put together our chapter to have something to show for all the work we've done.