At long last, Maggie and I have finally received IRB approval to begin our interviews, and we will be able to record them as well. It has been a long and paperwork-filled journey to reach this point, but I believe having audiovisual elements on our project site will be well worth it and allow us to truly capture the voices of those who have migrated to Kirksville in recent years.
We certainly have plenty to do. With several interviews to conduct, videos to edit, and site layouts to finalize, I can’t pretend like the upcoming month will be an easy one. However, I do not think the challenges we face are insurmountable. Now that we can finally get into the bulk of the information we will be gathering and sharing, there is a building energy that is sure to carry us through until presentation day.
Despite the fast-approaching deadlines and significant amount of work to be done, I am still very hopeful about the outcome of this project. I am excited to be on the forefront of this effort to work with and understand the Congolese immigrant population in Kirksville, and I look forward to sharing what we’ve learned with the public, so that people may look back in the future to explore how the community has changed over time.
We are now at the beginning the final stretch. Throughout the whole process, it has been so intriguing to see the progression of my classmates’ projects and the passion they have for their communities and migration studies. As we begin to think about the end of our projects (and the close of the semester), I cannot wait to see what direction everyone takes their research and how they will display it on their sites. Everyone has been working so hard, and I am eager to get down to business and churn out some content in the next couple of weeks.