3 Days to Departure

Hey Everyone:

So I finally created the blog that I have been talking about creating for the past three months. With only three more days before I leave for Ghana, I figured it was time to stop talking about blogging and actually start doing it.

As many of you know, I will be leaving this Friday to begin research on a Fulbright grant. I will be living in Kumasi for nine months. My research will focus on how effective current policy initiatives have been in improving water access to disadvantaged peri-urban communities largely isolated from piped water networks. I am very eager and thankful for such an awesome opportunity.

For this first post, I want to take the time to define my goals and objectives for this blog.

Goal #1: Use this blog as a way to analyze the findings from the research I will be conducting over the next nine months, personally process my experiences and share them with all of my loved ones back home.
     As I mentioned before, I will be spending the next nine months immersing myself in literature on all things water and doing field-based research on current policy initiatives in Ghana. When I was in Ghana last year studying on a Boren scholarship, I was fortunate to get to conduct fieldwork for my senior thesis. One of the lessons I learned from this experience is the importance of taking the time to process. What I mean, is that it is very easy to take what you hear, read, or see at face value, but it is vital to take the time to ask questions; to think critically about the information presented. A personal goal of mine for my research is to look at current policy initiatives and derive lessons from their application. What is or isn't working about a certain policy and why? What local contexts are either facilitating or constraining the successful implementation of a policy initiative? What can be done better? What can be replicated elsewhere? These are all important questions that I am seeking to answer; maybe I will ascertain answers to all, maybe only some, maybe none, but the one thing I am sure of is that if I don't take the time to process information and be open to learning from other people, then I won't find any answers.
      I also want to use this blog as a platform to share my experiences and my impressions of my time in Ghana with my family in friends. I wish I had the money to fly the people who mean the most to me to Ghana to live with me for the next nine months so that they can personally share in my experience, but alas, as a recent graduate on a budget, I don't. So, I'm going to use this blog, hopefully, in conjunction with phone calls, emails, Skype sessions, and facebook posts, as a connector so that family and friends and whoever else decides to read this blog, can share in my experience with me.

Goal #2: Blog at least once a week
      For those of you who know me well, know that I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit throughout college. And if you know that, you also know that each time I have gone abroad, I have steadfastly declared that I will keep a blog. With the exception of the blog I updated when I returned from Malawi and South Africa, I have pretty much failed to earn the title of a blogger. Well, not this time. One of my personal goals is to improve my writing skills and to refine my writing style. What better way to do that than to actually write? So, I am stating it here, on this post, publicly, that I intend to blog at least once a week. I am putting this out there because studies have shown (see Poor Economics) that  successfully following through on the things you say you will do is more likely if you have someone else holding you accountable or you know that there is a consequence for doing, or not doing, what you set about to do. Therefore, I would like someone to call me out if I start to deviate from my goal to blog at least once a week. Courtney, Shannon, Brent, Paul, Anastasia, and Vansch I am relying on you for this.

Well, I think that about covers my bases. I am sure there are plenty of other goals I could define for myself here, but for all intents and purposes, I think that those two will do the trick.

The next time I post will be from Ghana. Crazy!