a typical day of work

well i'm about to start working for the day and i realize, other than the transcribing post, i haven't really given a very clear picture on here of what it is exactly that i do all day.  so here's the rundown:

(used to be) running
hey so remember when i was running in the morning?  yeah me too... good times, good times... i'm going to start again... next week... i lost my ipod armband actually, so that's... y'know... my excuse...

devo time + prayer
addie and i have been very intentional about integrating prayer into our mornings.  i've been reading this book called training hearts teaching minds which is a catechism.  this week is week 7; the catechism question is 'what are the decrees of God?' and without looking i am going to supply you the answer: the decrees of God are His eternal plan based on the purpose of His will, by which, for His own glory, He has foreordained everything that happens.  mom, dad, elan, miles– how'd i do? [:

reading
right now we're reading Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd, a chapter a day pretty much.  we've read some studies that are very similar to our own from different agencies and a lot of articles on service provision that came out through the Department of Health and Human Services.  we've looked at all of these for information and also ideas of what we would like to do differently in our final documents, which i'll describe later.

contacting + scheduling
this part is pretty much over now, but this was the part where we had to make a million calls and emails and follow-ups to try to get organizations to agree to be a part of our research and to put interview dates on the calendar.  this was my least favorite part.  and i've become more comfortable with it over time, but it is still my least favorite part.  although some of the people i've spoken to– most in fact, if not all, were really very nice.  just busy.  which i completely understand.  this field is understaffed and under-resourced and one of the most time-intensive.  anyway, that's why it's so hard to do this part!  tedious, we were always updating this google doc we have with side-notes like: "07/11- emailed Jane Doe" or "07/11- Jane Doe on vacation, call back 07/16" or "07/11- Jane Doe passing on to John Doe, call if we haven't heard back by 07/18" etc. etc.

interviewing
so, i believe i've explained this before, but maybe not! so, addie and i have been interviewing staff members at different organizations that provide services to survivors of trafficking in the u.s.  ("what does that even mean, cheyenne?")  anyone organization involved with survivors of human trafficking from the point of identifying them and referring them to services all the way to providing long-term services qualify as relevant to our research.  ("what does that even mean, cheyenne?")  for example, an outreach program that goes out into the streets and speaks with women, girls or boys who are being prostituted; or an emergency shelter location that offers basic services such as food, clothing, a place to shower; or a residential facility with particular curriculum and programming designed to deal with the trauma and healing process of individuals who have been trafficked.  (if you have any more questions, feel free to leave a comment [:)  so addie and i have a set of general questions we designed at the start of the summer for organizations, but as you can see, everyone isn't the same– so depending on exactly the type of work an organization does we may alter that set of questions.

interview prep
because of everything i said above, we do interview prep to make sure we're ready, our questions make sense in the context, and we look up each organization's website to go over what information we may not need to ask about or to see if there are any unique features of a group we want to add a question about or point out.  etc. etc.

transcribing
i picked up my transcribing speed a little bit since my last post about it.  if the audio is clear and i'm not distracted i can type up 20 min. of audio in 40-50 min. instead of 60.  hey, that's nothing to scoff at.  however, most audio is not clear, and sometimes i am distracted.  BUT the headphones i've been using (which are addie's) she just told me have a noise canceling feature!  i didn't know i had to press a button, i thought it was automatic.  so hey, that might help.

drafting the resource guides
so what's the point, right?  we're getting all this information but what's happening with it?  well, addie and i are taking on different aspects at this point.  she is working on an academic report that will cover all the technical aspects of what we're researching: existing research and legal framework, needs of survivors, core characteristics of service provision (long-term nature, variety of actors, individualized continuum of care), what we should consider going forward, etc.  i am working on two resource guides: (1) for service providers – this will cover innovative programs, challenges in the field, coordination between service providers and other agencies, faith-based programming, self-care, and other resources, (2) for non service providers – this will be geared toward individuals in the community who will come into contact with victims of trafficking and those at risk, and its purpose is to equip people to recognize risk factors, red flags, how to report trafficking, how culture influences trafficking, what the demand looks like, what prevention can be done/ has been done in other places.

recently i've been almost exclusively transcribing all day while addie organizes the information from interview i've already transcribed into a database.  she does a lot of the organizing.  it's a good system.

look you can see addie in the reflection of her computer screen !!

so usually we start around 10.  we break for lunch around 12 always, for 45 min. to 1 hour.  and we end at about 5.  it's a good system.