UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH BLOGS
The Office of Undergraduate Research sponsors a number of grant programs, including the Circumnavigator Club Foundation’s Around-the-World Study Grant and the Undergraduate Research Grant. Some of the students on these grants end up traveling and having a variety of amazing experiences. We wanted to give some of them the opportunity to share these experiences with the broader public. It is our hope that this opportunity to blog will deepen the experiences for these students by giving them a forum for reflection; we also hope these blogs can help open the eyes of others to those reflections/experiences as well. Through these blogs, perhaps we all can enjoy the ride as much as they will.
EXPLORE THE BLOGS
- Linguistic Sketchbook
- Birth Control Bans to Contraceptive Care
- A Global Song: Chris LaMountain’s Circumnavigator’s Blog
- Alex Robins’ 2006 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- American Sexual Assault in a Global Context
- Beyond Pro-GMO and Anti-GMO
- Chris Ahern’s 2007 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- Digital Citizen
- From Local Farms to Urban Tables
- Harris Sockel’s Circumnavigator’s Blog 2008
- Kimani Isaac: Adventures Abroad and At Home
- Sarah Rose Graber’s 2004 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- The El Sistema Expedition
- The World is a Book: A Page in Rwand
Second Leg of the Journey to Rabat: Boston to London
So, I made it to Boston safe and sound, thank goodness.
I only have 20 mins until I get on my flight to London, which doesn’t have any wifi, TVs, or hallmark of modern technological civilization, apparently.
It’s fine. I’m not panicking about being on a metal bird for 6 hours with no wifi…not one bit.
Can you tell I’m lying so hard?
So, this part of the journey is difficult. I’m a little under halfway through and I can smell that my arm pits are working overtime to thrust me into embarrassment about the way I smell.
My luggage got flagged to be opened up again, which I think is definitely due to my tins. But they were also flagging like every other piece of luggage going through the machine, so who knows?
Anyway, I finally got through security and went to grab some food, and I ended up sitting with two French women. So I got to practice my French, at least! It was really nice. They had just visited NYC, and since I’m from there we got to bond over our mutual love for New York.
The sun sets beautifully in Boston, and it’s become a nice opportunity to relax after the hectic bustle of this layover.
I have a cousin who goes to Boston U, and it turns out that she’s flying in at 10:30! I thought I would get the chance to see her, but my flight leaves at 9:40. We’re going to just miss each other.
Wish us travelers luck!
First Leg of the Journey to Rabat: Chicago to Boston
*Blog Post Content Warning: This post contains mentions of period products and personal pleasure toys because the TSA be like that sometimes*
So I’ve got two layovers: one in Boston, one in London.
I just went through O’Hare security, and I’ve got a story about good old security check, but first I want to tell you a little story about the O’Hare Kiss N’Fly, the airtrain to each terminal.
It’s currently under construction. I take the $2 250 Pace bus from campus to the Kiss N’Fly, and when I get to the airtrain, there’s a bus to take passengers to each terminal instead of the airtrain.
Fine. No biggie.
….Except that the parking lot surrounding the Kiss N’Fly is a Jungian, Joseph Campbell inspired maze that if MC Escher had gotten his hands on, would have probably made even him go like, “Hmm, seems a bit complicated.”
The bus ride took a half hour and we spent 20 mins of that looping around the parking lot so the bus could exit.
It’s fine, everything is fine.
So anyway, I finally get to my terminal, and then I go to check in my luggage, which is 9lbs over the 40 lb limit Spirit imposes, but this part is actually okay, because I know exactly what to take out. It mostly boils down to a French book I wanted to bring with me, a bottle of green tea I’d forgotten to take out of the bag from breakfast, and a metal water bottle I hooked onto my backpack.
Smooth sailing…
So, I go through security, and Lo! and Behold! I get pulled aside to have my stuff searched.
Before I jump to racial profiling, I do think this part is because I pack my small things in decorative tins, and this probably comes up as a red flag with the TSA agent. I have two more opportunities to go through security on this trip to Rabat. We’ll see how it plays out.
Actual footage of me going through security
So, the TSA agent checking my luggage, she opens one of my tins, which has my period products in it, and I tell her, “That has my period products in it.”
She gives me a funny look, as though I’m mildly amusing and yet she says, “You don’t…you can just say panty liners.”
And I laugh to myself because she thinks I’m ashamed to talk about this. She has no idea what’s coming. I go, “Well…but, they’re not. They’re called Flex cups.”
And then I explain/advocate for my period products. Flex cups are basically a alternative to pads/tampons. They’re plastic or silicon disks that you insert to catch your blood, and then pull out up to 12 hours afterwards while in the bathroom. I personally find them much more comfortable than pads and tampons.
So I explain this, and her mouth is slightly agape, which I find inwardly really amusing considering she’s getting paid to rifle through my stuff and it’s my most intimate products are in my carry on. Somebody’s got to feel flustered in all of this, and it’s not going to be me when I haven’t packed anything illegal.
I feel like a gremlin whenever this happens but I’m not sorry.
She points to one of my packing cubes after putting my period stuff back. “What’s this?”
“Bras, underwear, socks.”
Her hands, about to open the cube, promptly move to the next thing. She unzips the other half of my suitcase and pulls out a small bag I’ve packed.
“What’s this?”
“It’s condoms, lube, some painkillers, and my vibrator.”
Better to be safe than sorry, should the moment arrive while I’m abroad
She immediately puts it down, lifts her hands up as if I’m an officer, exhales, and repacks it, shaking her head and vaguely smiling like someone who can’t quite believe this is happening.
Next we go through my liquids, my makeup bag, and while she’s repacking my stuff, she asks the famous, age old question. “What are you?” Her eyes search my face, as if she could figure out my background that way. I go through it with her, telling her that both my parents are mixed, etc, etc.. She actually makes a keen observation, that I have to check the “Other” box on forms, we have a brief convo about it, and then she sends me on my way.
So here I am, waiting for my flight to Boston. Cheers.
All is Quiet on the Midwestern Front
I finished my finals last Thursday, and the past five days have been a blur of packing. I have flashbacks of my things strewn everywhere, until they got folded and then pressed into a cube of cardboard, ready to be stored in a friend’s apartment.
It’s amazing what college can do to sabotage your cleaning habits.
If you’re a prospective student reading this, or just someone who thinks they may one day be in my position, late stay is your best friend and your worst enemy. Late stay is essentially the university giving you permission to stay in the dorms for a few days after the official end of the quarter. It’s your BFF because you don’t have to sleep on someone’s couch and figure out what you’re going to do about all of your stuff, nor do you have to stay up all night putting said stuff into boxes so your’e not charged a $100 late move out fee. But it’s your worst enemy because once everyone moves out, the dorms morph into a post-apocalyptic horror movie in which, you, (yes, you, congrats) are the main character trying to not get freaked out when doors creak in the night.
Not today, Satan.
In addition to your existential fear that death is lurking behind the door of the dorm room your neighbor just vacated, the cleaning crew that Northwestern hires (who do their jobs extremely well and definitely don’t get paid enough for putting up with the messes we leave behind) are in the buildings the very next couple of mornings at 8am, doing what they gotta do. Meanwhile, I was trying to recover from two weeks of finals-driven sleep deprivation because I’m careening towards 24+ hours of travel time across three continents. But it’s fine…I’m not bitter.
You couldn’t have scheduled these crews for a little later in the week, Northwestern?
Pro Tip: I had to clean some new ear piercings while writing this, and because I am living out of two suitcases now that all of my belongings are in storage, I was reminded of this amazing invention I wish I had owned 0275760285 years ago:
Packing Cubes.
I know, I know, I know.
Packing cubes?
…………………………………………………
………………??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
(what the hell kinda hash is this girl smoking?)
Hear me out.
I realized that I was gonna be living somewhere completely new for 8 weeks. I had to up my packing game. I did some research, read some articles, and I decided packing cubes were gonna be the way.
And they’re so much better than I even expected them to be.
I am an over packer by nature, so I make spreadsheets to theorize what the bare minimum is. Packing cubes laugh at my idea of bare minimum. They give me so much space. Everything fits neatly. I can bring twice as many shirts as I thought I could. Maybe it’s a mental trick, and I would’ve crammed the same amount of things into my bag anyway, but it was so worth it. Even if I’d crammed everything in, it would’ve been a mess. At least now I know what cube has my shirts, my shoes, my hair bottles, etc.. Buy yourself the packing cubes that are the best rated on Amazon and go. to. town. They’re like little luggages that you put inside your bigger luggage. Except they’re flexible and they fit neatly next to one another. It makes you Mary Poppins.
Who knows? Maybe Narnia is going in my bag next. (Do you think I could put a portal to Chicago Pride in here?)
Nothing can stop me! It’s Tetris, but better.
ANYWAY: I got sidetracked, and no, this blog post is not sponsored by Amazon.
It’s T-2 Days before I fly halfway around the world.
Can someone help me figure out how international SIM cards work? XD
Toodleoo.
From URG to ULG: A Summer in North Africa
This past year I won a grant to study French in Morocco. The office of Undergraduate Research’s “Undergraduate Language Grant” is going to help me go the extra mile in my language learning.
I first wanted to learn French when I was in the second grade. Somehow, I remember talking with my mom about languages. I had just learned that not everyone lived their life in English, and that my mom had studied French when she was in school, but didn’t remember it. When I went into school the next day, I went to my library and asked the librarian if they had any books in French.
I found one about the circus. I remember looking down at the page and trying to pronounce the words, and my teacher came over and just laughed a little and said, “Wow you really don’t know how to speak French, do you?”
(Looking back, she was so rude for that)!
But it didn’t kill my curiosity. I studied French in middle school, but my language classes weren’t very good. I didn’t learn much more than my numbers and colors. I was still determined, though. Whenever I read about powerful women in history: Cleopatra, La Malinche, Sacajawea, all of them spoke multiple languages and were instrumental to their moments in history. I wanted to be like that. In high school, I studied Spanish because it was the only language available. Now, in college, I have gotten further in French than I ever have before, and further in my language learning in general.
Make no mistake, learning a foreign language is a frustrating, grueling process, full of repetition and idioms. Languages love to break their own rules. Even if you learn something is grammatically correct, it may still not make sense to a native speaker. But it’s okay! It’s not an impossible to learn another language, just difficult, and it gets better over time.
I’m currently at an intermediate level in French. By the end of the summer, I hope to be able to say that I’m advanced.
So the whole point of this post is to say: this blog lives! I am going to be adding to it over the summer, documenting my experiences in Morocco as a participant in the Lankey 8 week program. I hope you will stay tuned in.
From a Norbucks booth mid-spring quarter:
It’s the end of April, but the windchill here in Evanston today still hasn’t managed to creep past a balmy 40 degrees. I’m in the midst of midterms, teaching practicums, the Waa-Mu show, and countless meetings that are all beginning to weigh me down. While burdened with the spring quarter struggle–that every Northwestern student knows all too well–the enthusiasm I have for my summer travel adventures only increases. It’s hard to believe that I’ll be abroad in just less than two months. It should go without saying that a trip of this duration takes some meticulous planning. I’ve applied for visas and received my shots. I’ve continued to work out housing plans and packing lists. I’ve finalized site visit dates and secured some interviews.
Since my last post, though, I reached quite a milestone in my newfound love of traveling: I flew internationally solo for the first time. This past spring break, I travelled to Jerusalem to visit an old friend and celebrate Easter. Over the course of my trip, we travelled throughout Israel to sightsee, visit her friends, and eat some tasty food. Though I was slightly anxious as I awaited my flight’s departure at O’Hare International, I ran into no trouble in Warsaw, Krakow, and Tel Aviv airports. By the time I arrived home after a long ten days, I was remarkably more comfortable and confident to take on whatever challenges may arise when I navigate thirteen new airports this summer.
Dipping my toes in the Mediterranean Sea
Sitting on the steps of the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Ein Karem
Since I’m terrible at wrapping up my thoughts, the rest of these blog post things will end with three things that I’m feeling especially thankful for:
1. The Circumnavigators Club of Chicago for making this entire trip possible
2. Northwestern University, a world-class university that gives me opportunities to travel and research issues that I’m passionate about
3. A loving family that’s not thrilled I’m traveling around the world alone, but fully supports my anyway
From a seat aboard Copa Airlines’ flight 229 to Panama City
A journey has begun—not the journey—but a journey nonetheless. It’s a Friday evening eight weeks deep into my third winter quarter here at Northwestern, but I’m not studying in Kresge, attending a student group meeting in Norris, or participating in my sorority’s big-little reveal. I’m sitting in seat 20A embarking on a trip to the summer music camp of FUNSINCOPA: Fundación Sinfonía Concertante de Panamá. For the next six days, I will live and work alongside music education specialists from numerous locations across the globe, teaching violin and viola to young students, and piloting the methodology for my summer research.
Exactly four months from tomorrow, I will begin the journey around the globe. I will soon be travelling to six countries—England, Greece, Kenya, India, the Philippines, and New Zealand—over a period of thirteen weeks. Flights have been purchased, so it’s officially official. I’m going. I’ve got numerous logistics to work to out between now and then, though, associated with housing and budget finalizations, visas, and countless other things. While it feels as though there’s a mountain of work (not to mention winter finals and all of spring quarter) standing between me and my journey, before I know it I’ll be abroad and researching what I love.
If you know me, you’ve most likely heard about El Sistema. If you don’t know me, here’s your chance to learn more: El Sistema originated in Venezuela in the 1970s with the goal of promoting social change through the medium of music education. Since its origination, hundreds of programs have been developed all across the world. Over the course of thirteen weeks this summer, I will examine multiple approaches to El Sistema at eight different organizations in order to learn more about best practices in music education, advocate for a more culturally understanding pedagogy, and ultimately promote social change through music.
Hopefully some of that sparked your interest, and I welcome you follow my blog and join me on this El Sistema Expedition!
Week 10!
Hi everyone,
I am excited to report on my second to last week of research this summer! This will be my last blog post, as next week I will be doing almost exactly the same thing I have been working on this week 🙂
Last week, I was on vacation at Lake of the Ozarks with my family. We spent the week boating around the lake, and I even went tubing a few times. I also did some jetskiing, which requires a lot of muscle coordination and left me a little sore! After the week at the lake, my cousin Alina from California came to stay a few days with me in Chicago. Below and to the right are some pictures of our time together!
The final day of our vacation was spent in Rocheport, Missouri waiting for the eclipse! When I was in middle school, I was very interested in astronomy. We brought my telescope and solar filter so that we could observe the eclipse not only through our filtered glasses, but close up through the telescope. Here’s a picture of me tracking the eclipse through my telescope as well as a chromatically aberrated close-up of the eclipse taken through my telescope.
When I returned to work on Tuesday, it was time to start on my interview analysis! With my transcripts finished, I had to set up an account with Dedoose, a user-friendly qualitative analysis software. I had to reformat all of the transcripts for upload, and was then able to import the codebook I wrote before going on vacation. The codebook lists the codes and definitions that I will use to parse out the responses to the questions I asked. By looking at corresponding codes from different interviews, I will be able to get a more thorough understanding of our data.
I also found a big mistake from earlier this month. I forgot to download one of my recordings and accidentally deleted it from the recorder! I have been working with Feinberg IT to get some recovery software, but it looks like unfortunately I may be one interview short. At first I felt really embarrassed about making such a simple mistake, but then I reflected about how human these types of errors are. Dr. Phillips was very understanding when I brought it up with her, so we have been working on recovering the file.
Next week, I will begin coding my interviews and then turn in a paper summarizing my findings to the Undergraduate Research Office of my interview and survey findings. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to conduct this research. This project has had such great personal meaning to me because I have been so trusted by the women in my study. I aspire that the results of this research will be useful to Dr. Phillips or another researcher in designing an exercise program for breast cancer chemotherapy patients and that we are able to support them in this difficult time in their life.
Thank you to Dr. Phillips for mentoring me with this project, Dr. Whitney Welch and Monica Hsu for the guidance and help, and my coworkers at the Exercise and Health Lab for their support throughout this process.
Humbly,
Annie
Circumnavigated
Well, a lot has happened since my last blog post. I’m not sure where exactly to start, but notably, I am not currently in Argentina, per my original plan. I instead completed my circumnavigation (and flew straight from Australia to the U.S.) last week. Also notable are the physical risks posed by local food systems, particularly when local food production involves non-“professional” farmers in spaces like community gardens.
Following an interview at Jane Street Community Garden in Brisbane, Australia two weeks ago, I hung around for a bit to chat with a garden member working on his plot. We both got called over to help lift a heavy bathtub, which was functioning as a plant-bed, onto a wooden frame a few feet off the ground. Long story short, my hand got crushed between the sharp-edged bathtub full of rocks, soil, and plants, and the wooden frame. My metatarsal (thumb bone) got shifted out of place, two bone fragments fell off my thumb, and my wrist was fractured in two places.
The gorgeous garden that did me in
After one surgery, two nights in the hospital, many nice dinner splurges, an unplanned road trip down the East coast of Australia, and about a billion zippers opened and closed with my teeth later, I’m now back in Chicago. Technically, the hand surgeon cleared me to travel on to Argentina, but then the hand therapist convinced me that opening and closing my suitcase would be really hard with one hand (true). Were anything to happen in or en route to Argentina—say, I accidentally hit my hand really hard against the plane window when waking up from a nap (happened on the way back to Chicago)—I would likely experience unnecessary stress and extra complications in getting appropriate medical care when and where I needed.
I have so much to be thankful for: I had 11 weeks of incredible trip around the world where I got to pursue the most fun and simultaneously interesting and meaningful research project. I cannot speak more highly of my experience conducting interviews with people involved in local food systems and cities around the world. While my research paper is still TB…started…and I don’t have any groundbreaking or concise, well-worded conclusions yet, it was simply so incredible to see how certain trends, successes, and challenges regarding local food manifested in and different ways within such different yet eerily similar contexts throughout the world.
At this particular moment, I have two things that I’m most bummed about: one, I’m currently queasy because I just took my cast off to wash my hand (the position my thumb is stuck in really grosses me out), and two, despite that conducting my research was the most fulfilling part of my summer, I am currently not motivated to work on my research report. To a practical extent, the combination of dictating into my computer and typing slowly with one hand, which is how I’m writing this blog post, sucks. But then on the other hand ( 🙁 ), the extra complications surrounding writing a report on something I was so incredibly excited about all summer is taking a bit of a mental toll on me.
But more things to be thankful for: I was injured in an English-speaking country, surrounded by people who were kind and caring and called an ambulance for me. I was sent to one of the best hospitals in Brisbane with one of the best hand surgeons in Queensland. If you see me in the next few weeks, I might be cranky because of all of the time I’ve spent on the phone with doctor’s offices and my insurance company, but that’s so insignificant given that those frustrations have nothing to do with my (good) health. Granted, despite that this is only a hand injury—not my leg, not something more serious—I’m currently quite challenged to figure out how to stay healthy and happy when I can’t do the physical activities that are normally so important to my personal well-being. I’ve increased my walking stamina significantly within the past few days, but I’m still finding certain limits, like when I tried to cut a potato with my left hand this morning and realized that for my own safety, I needed to step away from the sharp knife…
The paramedic & I did not get along, but he was still very supportive of my blog (photo creds to him)
Thankful for the U.S.’s short ambulance wait times
I plan to revisit the few Brisbane blogs that I began working on before the bathtub incident very soon; I’m ready for my feelings about my injury to stop lessening my excitement about my research. Additionally, I will be posting pictures of my x-rays once I retrieve my portable disc player from my basement. Or if you happen to be in Chicago and want to stop by, the Australians don’t store X-rays digitally apparently, so I have new decorations for my room.
Wallaby doctor > human doctor
Finally, thank you to everybody who supported me throughout all of my trip-related endeavors and happenings, from helping with my research proposal last fall to comforting me on the phone with doctors this August. Specifically, thank you to my parents, my sister, my boyfriend, Peter Civetta, Tara Mittleburg, Carol Narup, and the rest of the Circumnavigators who made this trip possible. And more blogs soon.
A Whatsapp Epic from London
I arrived in London yesterday to begin a research project, and have been having a marvelous time exploring this vast, culturally vibrant, architecturally stunning city.
I’ve been diving into seeing theatre: I saw Girl from the North Country at the Old Vic, Disco Pigs at Trafalgar Studios. Today, the saga of the £15 ticket for Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika at the National, courtesy of my family’s group chat. Did I get the ticket? You’ll have to read to find out.
Part 1: 5:15 in the Bitter London Summer Morning Cold
(actually, it’s 5:17).
(I know who Andrew Garfield is, but not Andre Garfield).
(#kisstodaygoodbye).
Part 2: The Epic Continues
Part 3: “the queue”
(that is all).
Part 4: waiting waiting waiting on the cold, hard, ground, making friends with fellow suffering Tony Kushner fans, talking about Foucault and praying it won’t rain.
(no screenshot).
Part 5: Victory. Sweet. Victory.
– shara out.
- More soon.
On Agency for Young Theatremakers and Self-Producing Plays
This summer, I was a grateful recipient of an Office of Undergraduate Research Conference Travel Grant (CTG) to produce my short play, Young Women of Valor in New York, at the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (affectionately called OOB). This is, I imagine, an atypical sort of conference, and producing my OOB play was an experience that make me unequivocally grateful for the Office of Undergraduate Research’s support for artists and for the humanities.
To say self-producing was radically educational would be an understatement, and having a CTG made self-producing my play in New York possible.
OOB was not my first producing experience. Prior to the festival, I had produced a special event at Northwestern (a one-minute play festival in celebration of WAVE Productions’ 30th Birthday). I was also lucky to be working with a director with extensive New York producing experience, who was game to help out and educate. Producing my own work was difficult and occasionally stressful, mostly because the skills of a producer were completely new to me, and I juggled many roles: playwright, dramaturg, pronunciation coach, costume designer, props designer, and producer. Also, there were problems, because there always are problems. Props and costumes were left on the Metro North. To accommodate everyone’s schedules, we had late night rehearsals, after which, due to summer subway construction, there weren’t always trains. Producing in New York is incredibly expensive, and the cost of a rehearsal space ate up lots of the budget, even though we had a discount at the rehearsal studio. I could go on…
(rehearsal, in a space I booked, because you sometimes book spaces when you’re self-producing)
That being said, bumbling through self-producing empowered me like nothing else. In my experience, young, early career playwrights in cities where art-making is both vibrant and costly can often feel disempowered. Getting produced by a theater takes a long time. Self-producing introduced me to the logistical skills and forms of delegation that have undoubtedly made me a better, more well-rounded theatre maker. Self-producing gave me agency. I sometimes find that my scripts are often better rehearsal process leaders than I am. Self-producing challenged me to lead a process, using my voice off of the page.
While I’m not planning on becoming a producer just yet, I think producing is an incredibly valuable experience for playwrights. After producing Young Women of Valor, I have an even deeper appreciation of the skill sets of those who seek out producing, production management, or stage management as life paths.
(Tech. Edit credits to Isabel Cade)
The looming specter of graduation has somewhat haunted me this summer. Taking ownership over my work by self-producing helped quell some of my fear about the uncertain life of an early career artist. I learned that the only things really getting in the way of young artists are time, space, and money. These are big things, of course, but not insurmountable obstacles.
Many, many thanks to the Office of Undergraduate Research for both helping me learn to to empower myself and providing the invaluable financial support necessary to check “NYC premiere” off of my bucket list!
(me and my director, being cute).