A rough Monday

So today was rough.  First of all, my roommate and I are having a bit of an ant problem... and they bite.  So that didn't start our day off very well.

So my partner, Aimee, and I had 4 scheduled in-home surveys to conduct today.  So we had to check out the $$ and have everything ready on Friday because our first survey was at 9:30am so going into the office at 9 was pointless.  So, our first family was actually approached last week when we were recruiting and informed us that they were packing up and moving that day.  After asking for a change of address for their new location the mother informed us that she honestly didn't know where they would end up.  It was so difficult to hear that.  They were obviously losing their house and had nowhere to go.  Surprisingly, the mother called a few days later to give us a new location and to set up an in-home survey.  So, that was our first stop of the day.

Doing the first survey was disheartening.  The children were evidently not up to par with other children their age in educational standards.  It was our first glance into the failure of the education system in a severely low-income neighborhood.  I felt so helpless.  For the second survey site, we surveyed in a house run by teenagers.  These children were raising themselves by themselves and doing the best they could.  It was really depressing.  The third and fourth survey sites were pretty typical.  But after visiting four households and surveying 9 participants my partner and I were absolutely drained.

My boss, the program director, told us the first day of training that after a week in the field we would have more experience and a greater understanding of poverty in the US than some of the top researchers in the field.  He was right.