Research Update #2: What's happening?

It's so funny, and yet, so me, to give a research update at the beginning and another one when it's almost done and absolutely nothing in between. If we've been chatting you know that it's been hard for me to find focus, not only due to my extra responsibilities with grandma but in a major way because of my ADHD. That's right, the buzzword of the year. I have never identified with labels, especially those that can be so confused with real life, who doesn't struggle to focus in the age of social media and tormenting political climate? However, you begin to realize it's an issue when you start avoiding doing things you love, lose track of personal care, and for the love of God, can't sit still to work even when the stars align.

In part my issues come from a lack of urgency and motivation and who is waiting for my work? Everyone and nobody? Let's start with the biggest entity backing up the project. You would think that the Fulbright folks would be checking in with us now and again, but they don't do that for programs like ours. I should say, it's no one's job to check on the progress of our research. I say ours because my Fulbright buddies here have had the same experience. We had a wonderful 2-day pre-departure event with Zoom meetings galore for all Fulbrighters to prepare to leave, the kind of thing that makes you feel seen and supported should you need any help. However, it's been absolute crickets otherwise. We have heard two things from them since: a survey in February, and a notification that we might lose our funding, in March, hilariously enough. That was an extremely stressful week to live through, on the verge of possibly having to return home. Remember that although I am doing research in the whole sense of the word, I am not a student anywhere and therefore have no intention to publish my work, and therefore Fulbright would be the only entity to want to see the results of the project. Officially tho, they don't seem to care. Maybe they'll ask for a pdf of the work on the exit survey? Who knows.

Another entity that has been absolute crickets is the United States embassy in the Dominican Republic, 'the Post' as Fulbright calls it. They had a Zoom meeting at the beginning of the grant with all the fulbrighters who would be coming here and expressed their interest in supporting us. So much so that when I spoke of my project one of them specifically said she'd put me in contact with folks in STEM who could support my work. Needless to say, that did not happen despite my attempts to contact her. They also swore up and down we would all meet up in the capital for lunch as soon as everyone arrived and now we're at the point where folks are almost leaving and the lunch has yet to come to fruition. It is so bad, they added us to the silent Whatsapp group chat from last year's fulbrighters. Worst of all, they didn't check in with us when the Jet Set tragedy struck (a prominent night-club in the capital collapsed during a concert resulting in 233 fatalities and 225 injuries), meaning if we had died that night they simply wouldn't know, let alone whether we're on track to complete the work we told them about. What about the university I am associated with in the Dominican Republic? It's been pulling teeth to talk to them. I have asked them several times to have regular meetings and I get loose answers, if anything, they worry about whether Fulbright wants something from them, and since I made the mistake of being honest and saying no, they've put my work in the back burner. The lack of support, caretaking for family, and mental health struggles have all made it nearly impossible for me to work efficiently and productively towards the plan I set out back when I applied.

But hope is not lost!

When you need help, you get help, and I got medical help and leaned on my support system hard to get back up again. I slowly returned to work and re-adjusted my plate to match my capabilities at the moment. Unfortunately, I will not be able to learn the accordion while I am here. That's the kind of thing you need to practice every day and I cannot handle that at the moment. There will also be no traveling to different parts of the country as much as I want to discover different parts of the island. I also will not be translating anything to English, sorry, making graphs in English it's twice the work haha but I'm happy to live translate over Zoom if anyone is interested in what's going on in the results tab of the research log. It's not all subtracting tho, I decided that although only one school would be getting a 2-week afterschool program, the others would get a 2-hour workshop where I crash-course women in STEM, a quick coding exercise and empower them to see themselves in technology through resources to keep learning. I don't want to leave them stranded after bringing up the subject. This week I decided to put my foot in my mouth and went to all the schools and asked them to schedule a date for me to come back, and luckily/unluckily for me, they all said yes and gave me a date so I must now prepare an after school program and 2 hour workshop in record time.

I am thankful tho, I work well under that kind of urgency, and knowing they want me to come back and do the work is lighting a fire under me. So that's the update, by the end of May-June, I will have accomplished everything I set out to do here, in God's name. It's important to note that when I visited one of the schools this week, one coordinator said "During our girls in tec day, inspired by your talk with the girls, we focused on the absence of girls enrolled in our tech track at the school, in fact 3 girls came up to me to let me know they were inspired to address it because they feel like the weirdos at the school for being girls in tech". My heart was glowing. There's no one way to measure my impact here but to hear just the conversation was enough to get the wheels turning and let me know I must be doing something right by simply showing. Sure, women have more rights than ever now and we have come a long way, I am not the only woman in my team. Sometimes we think the work is done, but it isn't. We must keep talking about it, we shall keep talking about it until it's truly an afterthought for girls to feel weird for being interested in technology.

Lastly, thank you all for reading and supporting me. I have truly found who I am doing this for, and it's not only the girls, it's for you. Thank you so much for pushing me to be here and for being a part of this journey. Please keep showing others as you have for me, we're changing the world!