Unfortunately it seems that things are going more slowly than originally planned. I sent out recruitment emails on Tuesday of last week, and I anticipated having our first session last Friday. Unfortunately I have only had three participants sign up so far, so I won’t be able to test any participants until next week. 

It’s a little disappointing, but it shouldn’t be a major obstacle. The original recruitment emails weren’t sent out to all of the groups that my advisor had planned to contact, so once we send it out to a wider group we should get more participants. In the meantime I get a little extra time to triple-check all of our forms and documents before we start for real. Extra practice never hurts!

Although three potential participants isn’t a lot, it’s still really exciting to see that three people are willing to be a part of my project. The fact that two of them are from Germany makes it even more exciting. The pandemic has made the world feel very distant, and I haven’t been able to travel outside of the U.S. for years now. Being able to connect to people all the way over in Europe, and being able to collect data from them in real time, even when they’re thousands of miles away is honestly amazing to consider. These are certainly exciting times to do research!