First day of research.

I know this is small potatoes to some of you, but I’m pleased with how the first meeting went.

Someone asked me what I was doing there, and I said that I was basically figuring out whether or not they (the research group) had any use for me.  One of the advisers for the group walked in and said, “What?  Why wouldn’t we?  We asked you to come, didn’t we?”

They then proceeded to give me a large chunk of research to do.  I get to look up ways that distance learning students can use the university’s resources to get help should they need it – since they’re affiliated with the school, the school feels that it’s its responsibility to provide resources within those students’ areas, since not all of them can come on campus if they need to.  If that doesn’t seem like it made sense…well, that’s because they were just brainstorming about it today.  I’m in charge of putting it together.

I have to say, I’m really disturbed at how the counseling center at that university handles things – they want to help students, but they don’t want to release demographic information to the research and education departments so that programs tailored to specific groups can be formed.  It’s a dead end waiting to happen (no pun intended).  Yet they’re perfectly happy to support a testing system for troubled students that’s based off of an elementary school evaluation system.  Think about that for a minute, and you’ll see why hearing about it gave me a headache.

I know my power is limited, but hoo boy, if they wanted to tell me something that would get me overly involved, that was it.

They spelled my first AND last name wrong on the minutes.  I’ve never had that happen before.  el oh el.

Monday I start at CREP, and I’ll be getting login information to the University intranet – at that point, I’ll be able to do more for the STEPS research, as well.  I’m really looking forward to this.

*happy dance*