Episode 6: Santiago Fieldwork 2015

This week has been a whirlwind! I’ll try and hit some of the highlights:

Monday: I rearranged my schedule to head up to V neighborhood to meet with the only person (so far) to have responded to my email blast. Turns out she’s a fitness instructor and works with older ladies, so I did some recruiting up there (have an appointment for next week, woo hoo!) and of course, did some Zumba with them :) That afternoon, had an interview at the library, and got the promise of some recruitment help!

Tuesday: Continuing to finish up in LP neighborhood, plugging some of those last few holes!

Wednesday: picked my mom up at the airport, hurray! So lovely to see her, and she’s so fun to have around! We had a delightful working lunch (haha) in the V neighborhood after we dropped her stuff off, and she hung out at the Parque Bicentenario while I did some networking with folks around there, specifically at the Municipalidad and a local community center. I got a bit of a runaround when asking where I could hang my posters—turns out, nowhere around the city, save of course with individual businesses. They’re pretty particular about the way this neighborhood looks, so recruitment posters aren’t really their thing. I am going to have to go full court press with online/Facebook/other community recruitment.

I also made an important decision today to change some of my criteria for age/residence in the V community. It was nigh impossible to find folks who had lived there since the age of 6, since it’s a relatively new community, and there’s a lot of movement within the upper-crust neighborhoods. I realized (through lots of help, thanks Lex & Fran & Cristina & Justin) that it will be better to get data from folks who have lived there since the 80s/the majority of their lives, rather than lose possible participants by having this inflexible requirement. Next up: letting people I’ve already interviewed know about this change, so they can keep an eye/ear out.

Thursday: took my mom to the University, had one interview (and one reschedule, so that’s ok).

Friday: in LP: my friends wanted to do a lunch for my mom, which was so lovely. She was of course lovely herself, pitching in & communicating however she could!

Got my last interview from this community, woo hoo!! Now just to fill in some holes, and then to focus exclusively on V neighborhood. The holes consist of 2 older males to do the perception study, and 2 older females that only had time for the sociolinguistic interview, so I told them we could follow up for the story and the perception part. I don’t know that I would do it like that again, because it’s been a little tough to chase them down. Hard to say.

This weekend my mom & I did the Chilean wine circuit, and have had a blast! So delighted to have had her here, and thankful for her encouragement.

Total: 37/60! Woot!

Lesson learned:

1. Gotta be willing to pivot (as Justin says). I realized that I was putting unnecessary pressure on myself in terms of recruitment standards, and as Norma says, it’s more important to come back with some data than with perfect data (I’m paraphrasing). I realized that many studies I’ve seen who’ve had residency requirements have been within the CITY, not within the neighborhood within the city. For instance, a sociophonetic study in Cusco by Ann-Marie DelForge had residents who’d lived in Cusco since the age of 6, but not necessarily particular neighborhoods. So I needed to just chill. And not lose potential participants.

Thanks for reading!