Taking on step at a time: Most of my classmates are taking The Process of Research: Qualitative Methods, Data Analysis and Academic Writing course, which prepares students to write our master thesis. This is because we need “Methods credits” for writing the thesis, thus for completing our degree. I’m not taking this course because I already got methods credits at the master level.
Thanks to the strict norm of having lunch at 12 o’clock around here (which sounded totally insane to me a year ago), I meet up with the ECM class for lunch and we catch up rather often at the university. The “Methods”course sounded rather unappealing to me, but now that I talked with my classmates I see the importance of taking it: the assignments are helping them to narrow down their research topic, consider what methods may suit best and… practice them! We’ve interviewed people several times… but there are other methods, such as “focus group” that I think we haven’t practised yet. So, next weekend I am participating in one focus group practice about biking! Because here in Uppsala biking is part of the city and daily life. Also, there are second-hand shops, clothes swap events, vegetarian and vegan options in restaurants, lots of labels and “EKO” products in the supermarkets, active associations addressing climate change issues… and why? Maybe future ECM students can figure it out!
Ana