The world revolves around me.

Yes it does. At least our little research world we have going. I’m not sure how to explain it clearly and simply, but we set up shop in one of the classrooms at each school we go to (we are going to 8, selected by government/private, rural/urban, and large/small), with the projector screen (so the kids can point on the map where exactly they live, so Patrick and Steve can do their GIS intensive study of student distance from school), with Julie and Patrick in the center of the room behind their computers; Patrick manning the map, and Julie doing writing down GIS coordinates as students come up and point to the map and then doing data entry in her humungous excel table as completed surveys come in. Bordering the edges of the room are desks for students to come in and fill out the survey (with some of Julie’s networking questions, some of Steve’s GIS questions, some of Caleb’s sleep questions, and some of my political questions).

I know. My head was spinning the first 5 times Steve explained it to me.

Regardless, I feel like I’m dancing in circles around the room the entire day and it wasn’t until I sat down and thought about it that I realized, I’m the liason between every piece of the puzzle, not in an important way, I just didn’t realize how many things I was doing at once. I have to work with Caleb to time when new students come in and sit down for the survey. Then I have to work with the students to answer questions, while working with Steve to bring him students to point to the map as they get to a certain point on the survey (or finish it, there’s usually a bit of both going on at once). Then I have to bring the completed surveys to Julie, after checking for absolute completion. All while working with Stacy to pull students of certain demographics so he and Rachel can interview them for their own project on family leisure.

And it’s not like a straight forward bucket brigade of moving from point A to B, the students come in waves so at any given time, there are some just starting (who I have to orientate) some in the middle (who I have to bring to Steve and tell Stacy about) and some finishing (who I either still have to bring to Steve and then check over the surveys with Julie). So at any given time, I’m orchestrating the flow of students and surveys to 5 different people. It’s amazing it hasn’t broken out into absolute chaos yet.