by Daniel William Bloodgood
Well it’s hard to believe that my time on PIRE is now more than halfway over. The time has truly flown by and Spring Semester in State College feels almost like a distant memory. Since coming here I’ve learned so much about Spanish culture, met some amazing people, and had my first job fully dedicated to research. More than anything I’m impressed with just how comfortable I’ve become with myself as an experimenter. It’s now normal for me to have 3 ERP sessions stacked right after each other with no break in between. In State College I would have been overwhelmed with just one participant and now I’m not even phased at all. Kaitlyn and I have also become a regular machine with capping people for the study. For the past few participants we’ve had them scrubbed, gelled and ready to go in just 15 minutes!
As an appropriate transition for the halfway point of this experience, Britney and I have now transitioned away from testing American Spring Study Abroad students. We’ve now started recruiting British and Summer Abroad students. We hope that by expanding the variety of the sample pool, we’ll be better able to understand the effects immersion has on people with different backgrounds and lengths of immersion. Like Judy warned us, these participants won’t exactly come and recruit themselves so we’ve had to become more bold in getting the word out about our study.
I consider myself a friendly person, but not the type that would just go up and start talking to a stranger about our research. In coming to Spain though I’ve decided to push myself outside of comfort zone and really get the word out about the study. It’s now totally normal for me to accost an English-speaking person on the street and see if they want to come in for our study. Most of the reactions I’ve gotten so far have been quite positive and people are usually quite interested in the study. Getting gratification that other people appreciate the work you do is one of the most rewarding things and I hope this success continues for the rest of our time in Granada.