Survey Development and Debating

It’s been quite a while since my last entry, but I’ve finally found a moment to take a break from my hectic schedule and write out another blog post. I can’t really say when exactly I became so busy; I suppose things have just been happening at a faster pace than previously and I simply lost track of time. By now, I’m already more than halfway through my first year at Oxford, which means that I’m one sixth of the way towards completing my degree. College life sure is passing by quickly.

I found the Harry Potter stairway!

Anyway, I can now finally take the time to let all my readers know precisely what I’ve been up to during this brief hiatus. Predictably, most of it has been work. On a weekly basis, our tutors assign us hundreds of pages in reading, and we crank out roughly six pages of political theory essays as well as several additional pages of economics reading. Not that I’m complaining of course. Both subjects have remained fascinating for me, and tutorials are still an excellent learning opportunity that I look forward to every week.

Books!

As you may recall from the last time I posted, I am currently working on a team of students as consultants for the Oxford City Council in the development of a Quality of Life survey for seven of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Actually, when we first met with our client, we were told that they expected us to both develop and carry out the survey. Specifically, they wanted 1,700 responses on a twenty-page survey that we were to test, refine, and implement within the span of six weeks before Spring Break. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen.

When we brought up our concerns to the client, we were informed that they were already on a fixed time scale due to the parameters of the project that had been approved by the Council (read: bureaucracy). We did, however, manage to meet a compromise in which we have recruited even more students to our team who will actually oversee the process of conducting the survey over the first few weeks of the coming vacation. With this new vision in place, we began work on the project.

Look at that logo. That is a nice logo.

Most of our work thus far has consisted of reviewing the survey that the Oxford City Council had copied from Bristol City Council and eliminating all of the questions that seemed irrelevant to Oxford or to quality of life in general.

Questions like this one.

More excitingly though, just this past Tuesday, we conducted a focus group with members of the target neighborhoods to go over our revised survey and give us their feedback. Much of their feedback concerned the lengthiness and spelling errors of the survey, but we did gain some valuable insight into how people felt about specific questions. Interesting points were brought up such as: how do we distinguish between homelessness and “rooflessness?” Or, should a recipient of public services really be referred to as a “consumer?” Perhaps most importantly though, it very much contributed towards one of my principle goals in signing up for the Student Consultancy: I now have work experience in running a focus group.

Regarding the Oxford Union, the big piece of news that I have is that I will be traveling to Manchester this week to take part in my first ever debating competition! I am quite excited, although also fairly nervous about this opportunity. The competition consists of four rounds (more if we make it to the finals!) of seven minute speeches on motions revealed shortly before each debate. I have continued my attendance at the Oxford Union debating workshops this term - in addition to competing in the internal Debater of the Year competition against some far more experienced peers - so hopefully that will have prepared me well for the challenge that I am soon to face. My train to Manchester departs at 7:13 PM tomorrow.

 I'll just leave this here. See also the 2014 "One Round More"

With respect to other Union affairs, I’ve seen a number of very interesting speakers so far, including Richard Dawkins, the former Director of the NSA General Michael Hayden, former Crown Prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi, and Tea-Party leader Christine “I-am-not-a-witch” O’Donnell. Furthermore, in my capacity as a member of the always exciting Library Committee, I was assigned the duty of preparing the economics purchases list for this term, which is not nearly as dull a task as it sounds.

Ideally, it won’t be too long till my next post, as I hope to write another one in summary of the Manchester IV after this weekend. Of course, other things are happening in my life besides work and extracurriculars; I recently attended a murder mystery dinner party as well as a random Irish dancing event. Those events though are mostly self-explanatory.

Before I go though, yet another mention of Rachel, who was sweet enough to send me Valentine’s Day gifts even while we’re an ocean apart, including a sweater, a bow tie, and chocolates.

Fancy chocolates!!