Weeks 3 and 4 were all over the place, but my team has managed to land catlike on our feet with the research project in a good place. We started this fortnight with a change of advisor, which given our accelerated timeline might seem like it would hinder the pace of our project. Instead, we got a lot of clarity on exactly how to structure our research. Primarily, our database criteria were narrowed significantly after meetings with our advisor and further discussions within the group. 

We decided to change our project format to consist of a database with various extracurricular activities we found from within the UK (our actual results), and some case studies on the state of extracurriculars in other countries. Previously, we’d intended to make two databases, one for activities in this country and another for those in other countries we were familiar with; but ultimately, we decided against this because of the inherent limitations of aggregating metrics across just a few isolated examples of extracurriculars from around the world. We’ve also got a clear picture of what the last two weeks of this research will look like, and I can see the light at the end of this tunnel. 

It was indeed not ideal to switch advisors two weeks into an already foreign six-week project, but shockingly it seems to have worked out.

 As an aside, it’s so funny to be working with young students. They keep laughing at me and I think it’s the best. Just yesterday they tried drawing me—and made quite a mess of it…