One of the main lessons I learned this week was, creating and passing out surveys is exciting, but retrieving, recording, and analyzing the data is not that great. I was able to round-up 82 high school students to take a survey I created, while telling them details about the program. Being in the public sector motivated and encouraged, but as I stared at the stack of completed surveys I felt bad for the individual who was going to sort through and put into words what they meant. That lucky person was the summer intern Lamar and with his hard work and efforts the Detroit Food Academy would greatly benefit. Lamar has had the task of recording survey data and coding it before, but never that many paper surveys. What made it worse for him this week was that he encountered some technical difficulties and was forced to count and record statistics using tally marks on a sheet of copy paper.
Back to referring to myself in 1st person, Thursday I took a field trip with some current participants of our program. We went to perform community service at Rouge Park on the west-side of Detroit. We assisted in a project that is working to create a natural looking mountain bike trail. In the 90 degree weather, I had to wear long sleeves, work pants, gloves, boots, and a hard hat. The mosquitoes really enjoyed my flesh as I trimmed small bushes and weeded out huckleberry trees.Despite the circumstances I really enjoyed the experience giving back to my city. I also learned I am the champion at the game ninja, and I have a really mafia game face.
