This week, Sarah and I met up in person to sort of filter the focus of our project and finalize our question list. We thought a lot about the question list because we realized that some of them could lead more towards an entirely different topic for a project, and we also wanted to make sure that they weren’t leading questions that were already implying an answer. The list is the following, in that particular order. We organized it by questions we thought were more important and that e definitely want to ask just in case we can’t get through all of them because of time constraints. We also recognize that there may be follow-up questions depending on the answers so our priorities are to hit the first four questions and end the interview with the last, at least.
- Background questions: Do you consider yourself FGLI?
- Do you consider yourself healthy?
- Do you take care of yourself? What does taking care of yourself look like?
- How have you confronted health differently when/since coming to Bowdoin? (implying a classed understanding of health/healthiness)
- How do these approaches help us understand what we consider healthy?
- How do you navigate/what are your strategies for maintaining health at Bowdoin?
- What health-related practices, if any, do you keep from home?
- Do you go to the gym?
- What is your thought process regarding food when in the dining hall?
- Do you feel comfortable going to the doctor? Has that changed since coming to Bowdoin?
- Does the way you approach health here differ from when at home?
Sarah and I also reevaluated how many interviews to conduct. Since we were anticipating 15 minute interviews, we thought we would maybe be conducting like ten interviews, but then we realized it might be more fruitful to go further in dept with fewer students, and a possible alum.
Given the discretion people often maintain regarding their socioeconomic status (in addition to the relatively low number of first-generation, low-income college students at Bowdoin), we have recognized how difficult it may be to interview students. We have decided to try to do four interviews total. We are also open to the possibility of a case study if we conduct a particularly detailed interview.
We are aiming to have our interviews done by mid April latest and have each recruited two people to interview who are upperclassmen because of the inconsistency the pandemic may have given to underclassmen.