Year-End Progress Report and Next Year's Project Completion Goal
Happy Holidays Everyone!
I would like to wish you a happy holiday season and, in the process, also provide a quick but long-awaited update on the progress of the Lenten Season Study
To date, all data collection and lab work for the project has been completed. The most significant remaining hurdle to moving forward on the dissertation is to enter all of the food diaries into a nutrition analysis program that can provide information on the nutritional content of study participants’ diets before and during Lent. The funds everyone donated have allowed me to hire several undergraduate students to help me with this process. I am grateful to now have three hard-working, dedicated students helping me enter data. Still, the process remains slow-going.
Of course, there are a number of other lingering tasks to accomplish in order to complete the dissertation project. For example, the information participants provided on the questionnaires has to be sifted through, cleaned, and turned into data that I can use in a statistical analysis. The writing process itself takes quite a bit of time as I fret over every sentence and dive into the sea of literature that supports or contradicts my research hypotheses. As time dedicated to these tasks competes with my responsibilities as a teaching assistant this year, I may not be moving forward as quickly as I would have liked. But one way or another, 2017 is the year I plan to complete this project and my PhD program!
Importantly, I wanted to assure everyone that progress is indeed still being made on this project, and that I continue to be super grateful for your support!!! Thank you, again, for your generosity!!!
Happy holidays to you! Wishing you a beautiful holiday season and a peaceful and healthy transition to the New Year!
Best wishes always, Hilary Bethancourt
P.S. Below are just a few photos from data collection and lab work this past year:
"Church Lab" #2
"Church Lab" #3
The "real" lab - attempting to measure C-reactive protein in serum samples (in the Biological Anthropology and Biodemography Laboratory at University of Washington):
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