Update+4

The main problem I see right now is that I don’t know what I’ve got and what I still need. I’ve done a lot of interviews, and the usefulness of doing interviews with students is running out, for the time being, because I’m not sure what to ask, and that’s because I’m not sure where I’m heading with the study. The photography project is underway, and I’m interested to see what they bring back to me.

I don’t know where to tap into next. A teacher asked me today about how long my study would continue and what the next phases were, and I felt like I stumbled my way through the explanation. In essence, this is a study of globalization and transnationalism at the local level. That much is clear to me. How I make it relevant to/within the educational context is still not clear to me. I am grasping at straws, following hunches, wondering if I’m on the right track—or any track at all.

I had planned on moving to a nearby town for the next trimester, but I feel like the inroads I’ve made here are important, and I could use more time in situ to try to get to know more people better. In the meantime, I can make weekly trips to that nearby town to extend the study to schools/students there. The extension is important. I am in my current town mainly because of its history of ethnic friction, but that doesn’t complete the story. But then, what is the story I’m trying to tell? What is the story that // needs // to be told from here?

As much as possible, I need to spend the next weeks reviewing the data I’ve collected and identifying patterns. The days get away from me. I’m exhausted when I get home from the school, and when I get back to my apartment, I want to hibernate. I watch too much tv. Right after school lets out (3-4pm), the Neox channel broadcasts re-runs of a series called “Física o química,” about a high school in Madrid with beautiful, troubled teens and teachers. It is half after-school special—with themes of acceptance, forgiveness, inclusiveness, safe sex, and anti-racism—and half soap opera, but in a sense that perhaps only the Spanish can get away with; beyond love triangles, there are trios, fleeting hook-ups, bisexual intrigues, teen pregnancies, cancer, neo-Nazis, and incest.