On the road

I’ve been on the road these past days for work. It’s part of the fieldwork of my new research assistant (RA) job. The center where I work at has been contracted by the Chemung County school district alliance (3 districts in total) to evaluate a community collaborative educational initiative they started designing some 2-3 years ago. The implementation part is just starting now and we need to collect data as a baseline to then be able to compare it to the data we will be collecting through the next 4-5 years. The goal is to assess the program and to be able to determine it’s impact, in sum to see if the money being invested in this initiative is having returns in students outcomes.

It is a very interesting and innovative project, they are the only ones in NY state doing this community collaboration to improve school readiness, and probably pioneers in the entire country. The only down side for me/us is that Elmira, the main place we need to go to meet with the district people and gather all the info needed, is about a 5 hour drive away from NYC, and as in everything related to education, the budgets are tight and the money is scarce. So we drive there. No planes, no drivers, no major commodities. Although I seem to have come in at a better time money wise, because before they would stay at people’s homes and now we’re staying at hotels (thank God!).

What is nice about the drive is that we pass through the Poconos if we take the I95, I80, 380, I81, 17 route. Or we see the Harriman State Park if we go the 17 more scenic route. Being it Fall (more or less) the view of trees, mountains and rivers is truly breathtaking, and makes the drive much more pleasant.

This is my lame attempt to photograph an orange tree using my phone camera during traffic.

See? No velocity, we were completely at a halt because of road work and traffic.

Last week I went with Radhika, my co-RA, and the professor who is head of the research center. But this time around I was on my own. How I made it to and from a place I had never been to, in a country in which I rarely drive at all? Meet Nancy, me guiding navigation system.

So it’s not that there’s no love, really. I’m not gone for good (seems to be a trend in the blogs I read, they all seem to be saying good bye), I’ve just been on the road a bit lately.