Skills

The past few days my routine has been to meet with the field teams in the morning and then work on my own stuff during the day. It's necessary because this week is finals week at UW and I have some assignments due. I am working in the data entry room, where my two Data Typists are entering the first week's completed questionnaires. That works out nicely because I can see problems on the questionnaires (i.e. Field Worker mistakes) plus any bugs in our data entry system in real time.

I came here with little experience using Microsoft SQL Server and no experience using CSPro, the US Census software that we have adapted for our project. I'm a bit proud of myself right now because I've been able to change our system from the server, revising the data entry front end for the DTs and manipulating data when needed.

Essentially I've been called upon to do things I wasn't very confident about, and it has turned out well (so far). I think this sort of practical experience could be really useful when I start up my own projects that include a data collection phase.

\end boastful post