Sydney Dratel - Senior Project

the last week!

This week I think I did my last interview but I cannot be completely sure because I have emailed a couple of people over the last month or so and some have not gotten back to me, so if they get back to me I will most likely interview them as well. I have nine interviews right now, and although I was supposed to have ten, I have spoken with my mentor and he understands why I do not have ten (people have not gotten back to me, even when I've contacted them multiple times). After I met with my mentor late last week, he suggested that I make a list of everything that I thought would come up in my interviews and whether they did or not.

      I wrote up this list and showed it to my mentor yesterday. He was very happy with it and now I am going to flesh out every theme and fully explain what I mean by each one. After fleshing out all of those themes, I will piece them together as part of my final essay. I also need to show my outside consultant my work, which I haven't done yet. I've spoken with her and emailed her, but I have not actually shown her what I have done, so that is something I really need to do. Over the break I am going to do lots and lots and lots of work for my project so that it will turn out even better than I expected.

week 13

This week was stressful because I did not accomplish all that I set out to. First of all, I realized on Wednesday that my deadline called for four more interviews this week for a total of ten, and as of right now I only have seven. I should have ten, however, because I emailed my questions to two farmers who were not able to do the interviews over the phone, and one other person scheduled an interview with me two times and did not pick up her phone either time, even though I called her multiple times while trying to reach her during the times she specified. I talked to my mentor about all of this, though, and he said it is fine and to just focus on getting everything together.

    I still need to polish up about three of my interview notes, so that is what I am working on now. I have been listening to the interviews (I recorded them) and making sure I've written down all of the important topics that were discussed. After I get all of my notes in order, I am going to start writing my paper.

weeks 11 and 12

    Last week (over Thanksgiving break) I interviewed four people (really just three because two of them were working at the same farm together). The first person was Eve from the Garden of Eve farm in Aquebogue, and I did that interview on the phone. It went okay, but she intimidated me a bit and was not sure how to answer a few of my questions. After interviewing the other people, I realized a few of the questions were a bit hard to comprehend so I changed a few words around and made sure to ask one question that, on my question sheet is number 6, at the end because it worked better there and seemed like a good ending question.

    When I interviewed Bette Lacina from Sag Harbor, I was able to not only get a longer interview than my first one (25 minutes and my first was only 17) but also to get a little more of a connection since we met and did not do the interview over the farm. She gave me a lot of good information and I started noticing some similarities between her answers and Eve's answers, which pleased me. The last interview I had was with Emma Hoyt and Zoe Wonfor of the Shelter Island farm at Sylvester Manor. The interview went well with them and it was longer than the others (34 minutes) because they both had things to say. 

    I am interviewing someone today over the phone from Old Path farm in Sauquoit, NY (upstate). I am not sure if I am meeting with my mentor this week. We were in contact earlier in the week but he was not at school until today and since I now have a 9th period class, I am not sure when we would be able to meet since he teaches during senior project time.