Monday, May 2, 2016
Sunday, May 1, 2016
April 29th
Friday, April 29th
Today was the last day working on my project, and I did a ton! It was a very exciting day, because I really got to see all of my hard work come together. I spent a large chunk of my time today writing an introduction and conclusion for the podcast. For the introduction, I wanted to write something that explained my project but also didn't give to much away. The introduction was the easy part. I struggled a lot more with the conclusion. I learned SO much along the way during the making of this podcast, so it was very difficult to summarize the important parts. I wrote a number of different drafts until I finally settled on a few main points that I got out of my interviews.
After I wrote both of these, I recorded them, which took a few takes each. Then, I added them to the full podcast. What I didn't think of earlier was that when I added the introduction, it messed up the timing of ALL of the other clips I had in the podcast already. So, after I added it, I spent a very large amount of time moving clips around and making sure the timing was right. The trickiest part is getting the transitions, but I finally established a good technique to making the transitions effective and clean.
Finally, I did one last run through of the entire podcast, making sure there were no errors. The podcast is an hour and fifteen minutes long, so this took a very considerable amount of time. Even though it took a while, it was so worth it because I love my project! It's informative and also interesting, which is exactly what I was going for.
Today was the last day working on my project, and I did a ton! It was a very exciting day, because I really got to see all of my hard work come together. I spent a large chunk of my time today writing an introduction and conclusion for the podcast. For the introduction, I wanted to write something that explained my project but also didn't give to much away. The introduction was the easy part. I struggled a lot more with the conclusion. I learned SO much along the way during the making of this podcast, so it was very difficult to summarize the important parts. I wrote a number of different drafts until I finally settled on a few main points that I got out of my interviews.
After I wrote both of these, I recorded them, which took a few takes each. Then, I added them to the full podcast. What I didn't think of earlier was that when I added the introduction, it messed up the timing of ALL of the other clips I had in the podcast already. So, after I added it, I spent a very large amount of time moving clips around and making sure the timing was right. The trickiest part is getting the transitions, but I finally established a good technique to making the transitions effective and clean.
Finally, I did one last run through of the entire podcast, making sure there were no errors. The podcast is an hour and fifteen minutes long, so this took a very considerable amount of time. Even though it took a while, it was so worth it because I love my project! It's informative and also interesting, which is exactly what I was going for.
Friday, April 29, 2016
April 28th
Thursday, April 28th
Today was a great day for my project, full of interviews and editing. I began the day off early with an interview with a woman named Hana Taiji. She
works with Kick4Life, a unique soccer club based
in Lesotho in southern Africa.
Their mission is to change the lives and
long-term prospects of vulnerable young people in Lesotho, boys and girls,
through social activities, including soccer, that are focused on health,
education, and support towards sustainable livelihoods. In the interview, I learned a lot
about the role of women in Lesotho, and how that
translates to the opportunity young girls have to play soccer in the country. It was a very interesting interview because I hardly knew anything about the country of Lesotho going in, and I left with a new perspective of women's soccer culture around the world since I got to hear about a country in a different continent.
After my interview with Hana, I spent a number of hours doing the tedious editing work that now has gotten a little easier. I'm starting to master the previously confusing ways of Audacity, so it's making the boring process move a bit faster.
Next, I interviewed Daniel Azcarate,
general manager of Escuela de Fútbol Sarmiento
Lora in Cali, Colombia. What I learned from Daniel actually surprised me. Instead of hearing about a lot of injustice that girls face in Colombia, he said that over the years the access to soccer has become extremely easy for girls. In fact, the have all of the same access as the boys do, even a professional league (will start in 2017). It was great to get to hear about a country that actually is moving in the right direction, so maybe other countries will begin to follow Colombia's example!
Thursday, April 28, 2016
April 27th
Wednesday, April 27th
Today was another pretty tedious day for my project, but I got a lot done. The purpose of today was editing. I began the day by putting the final touches and edits on the interviews I have already done. My next priority was making sure the transitions were smooth. It was difficult to think of a way that I could transition from one interview to the next. However, I thought of the idea that I could introduce the interviews based on the countries where they were from, and it would flow a lot better. So, I added a new introduction before each interview, telling the listeners of the podcast what country the interview would be discussing. Now the podcast seems more cohesive, as if it's a journey around the world through women's soccer.
After the editing, I was scheduled to speak with Daniel Azcarate. However, I called him a few times and he did not answer. I waited for 30 minutes for him to respond before deciding he either forgot or something came up. He apologized around an hour later and we decided on a time for an interview tomorrow.
Next, I had Lovett soccer practice for two hours, and then went straight to my club team soccer practice for 2 hours. After an exhausting 4 hours of playing, I came back home and finalized the questions for my interview with Hana Taiji for tomorrow.
Today was another pretty tedious day for my project, but I got a lot done. The purpose of today was editing. I began the day by putting the final touches and edits on the interviews I have already done. My next priority was making sure the transitions were smooth. It was difficult to think of a way that I could transition from one interview to the next. However, I thought of the idea that I could introduce the interviews based on the countries where they were from, and it would flow a lot better. So, I added a new introduction before each interview, telling the listeners of the podcast what country the interview would be discussing. Now the podcast seems more cohesive, as if it's a journey around the world through women's soccer.
After the editing, I was scheduled to speak with Daniel Azcarate. However, I called him a few times and he did not answer. I waited for 30 minutes for him to respond before deciding he either forgot or something came up. He apologized around an hour later and we decided on a time for an interview tomorrow.
Next, I had Lovett soccer practice for two hours, and then went straight to my club team soccer practice for 2 hours. After an exhausting 4 hours of playing, I came back home and finalized the questions for my interview with Hana Taiji for tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
April 26th
Tuesday, April 26th
Today was a pretty boring but also very necessary and productive day for my project. I spent a number of hours in the morning editing the interview with Ati. It took an extremely long time because there were lots of things I had to cut out. Since her English was a little broken, she tended to repeat herself a lot and explain things in a very long way. However, after I cut and pasted throughout the entire interview, it sounds really great because it has all of her important points in it! Although the process was very tedious, I'm really happy I took the time to do it because it sounds a lot better now.
After I edited Ati's interview, I continued and finished editing the other two interviews that I have done. Then, I recorded Ati's introduction and I combined all of the clips I had so far into one large podcast. After that, I went back to work on Daniel Azcarate, because I am interviewing him tomorrow. I decided that I could write his introduction because I did the actual interview, so I did that and then I recorded it. Then, I perfected the questions that are written in Spanish and made sure they were correct. I'm really excited about the opportunity to interview him tomorrow.
Today was a pretty boring but also very necessary and productive day for my project. I spent a number of hours in the morning editing the interview with Ati. It took an extremely long time because there were lots of things I had to cut out. Since her English was a little broken, she tended to repeat herself a lot and explain things in a very long way. However, after I cut and pasted throughout the entire interview, it sounds really great because it has all of her important points in it! Although the process was very tedious, I'm really happy I took the time to do it because it sounds a lot better now.
After I edited Ati's interview, I continued and finished editing the other two interviews that I have done. Then, I recorded Ati's introduction and I combined all of the clips I had so far into one large podcast. After that, I went back to work on Daniel Azcarate, because I am interviewing him tomorrow. I decided that I could write his introduction because I did the actual interview, so I did that and then I recorded it. Then, I perfected the questions that are written in Spanish and made sure they were correct. I'm really excited about the opportunity to interview him tomorrow.
Monday, April 25, 2016
April 25th
Monday, April 25th
Today I got a lot done on my project! I started off the day with an interview with Ati from Seprojoven. I had prepared my questions both in English and in Spanish for this interview, but upon speaking with Ati she insisted we spoke in English so she could practice speaking her 3rd language. Her English was a little broken, so there are some long pauses that I will need to edit out, but other than that, it was a great interview. Ati is very young, and her opinions and values are very strong. She explained to me that Seprojoven aims to educate and empower girls and women through soccer, and they want to teach girls to be confident with their gender and with their sexuality.
They mostly work with girls who live in very rural parts of Costa Rica and who have fairly unstable family lives. They want the soccer club to be a place of safety for the girls, where they can act and speak their minds. The soccer drills that they do center around certain values and characteristics such as teamwork, empowerment, and sportsmanship. Ati explained how girls in Costa Rica very very rarely have any access to recreational sports like soccer, and it all boils down to the sexism in the country. She told me about how since Costa Rica is a very patriarchal society, women are seen as the weaker sex who must stay at home and work in the kitchen. She believes that before the problem of gender inequality in soccer can be solved, the country as a whole needs to find a solution to the looming sexism.
After this interview, I worked on writing the introduction for Ati. After I wrote it, I recorded it like I did with the other introductions. Next, I wanted to start putting the entire interview together. I wasn't sure how this worked in audacity, so I watched a number of tutorial videos on Youtube. Once I figured it out, I combined all of the clips. Now I have one cohesive podcast with 3 different interviews in it, and I can't wait to add the others!
Today I got a lot done on my project! I started off the day with an interview with Ati from Seprojoven. I had prepared my questions both in English and in Spanish for this interview, but upon speaking with Ati she insisted we spoke in English so she could practice speaking her 3rd language. Her English was a little broken, so there are some long pauses that I will need to edit out, but other than that, it was a great interview. Ati is very young, and her opinions and values are very strong. She explained to me that Seprojoven aims to educate and empower girls and women through soccer, and they want to teach girls to be confident with their gender and with their sexuality.
They mostly work with girls who live in very rural parts of Costa Rica and who have fairly unstable family lives. They want the soccer club to be a place of safety for the girls, where they can act and speak their minds. The soccer drills that they do center around certain values and characteristics such as teamwork, empowerment, and sportsmanship. Ati explained how girls in Costa Rica very very rarely have any access to recreational sports like soccer, and it all boils down to the sexism in the country. She told me about how since Costa Rica is a very patriarchal society, women are seen as the weaker sex who must stay at home and work in the kitchen. She believes that before the problem of gender inequality in soccer can be solved, the country as a whole needs to find a solution to the looming sexism.
After this interview, I worked on writing the introduction for Ati. After I wrote it, I recorded it like I did with the other introductions. Next, I wanted to start putting the entire interview together. I wasn't sure how this worked in audacity, so I watched a number of tutorial videos on Youtube. Once I figured it out, I combined all of the clips. Now I have one cohesive podcast with 3 different interviews in it, and I can't wait to add the others!
Sunday, April 24, 2016
April 22nd
Friday, April 22nd
Today was another great day for my project! I continued with my editing, which as I said before, is a pretty boring and tedious process. But, after I cleaned up the interviews by cutting out the unimportant things, the interviews sound a lot better. I'm excited for next week because I have 2 more interviews, and I can't wait to see how they all fit together. Next week I am interviewing Ati from Seprojoven in Costa Rica, and Daniel Azcarate from Escuela de Fútbol Sarmiento Lora in Colombia. These interviews should be exciting because I am speaking partly in Spanish and partly in English for them. I've prepared the questions both in English and in Spanish. That's another thing I worked on today. I took a good amount of time deciding what I wanted to ask these two people, wrote the questions in English, and then did my best to translate them into Spanish. I had Mrs. Mitchell help out with the translation to confirm that the Spanish was correct.
After I worked on that, I watched a number of tutorial videos. I want to make sure my podcast sounds as professional as possible, so I watched some videos on how sound can be edited on Audacity. Next, I watched Youtube tutorial videos on how to make an effective podcast, and made sure my podcast so far had all the elements mentioned in the video.
Today was another great day for my project! I continued with my editing, which as I said before, is a pretty boring and tedious process. But, after I cleaned up the interviews by cutting out the unimportant things, the interviews sound a lot better. I'm excited for next week because I have 2 more interviews, and I can't wait to see how they all fit together. Next week I am interviewing Ati from Seprojoven in Costa Rica, and Daniel Azcarate from Escuela de Fútbol Sarmiento Lora in Colombia. These interviews should be exciting because I am speaking partly in Spanish and partly in English for them. I've prepared the questions both in English and in Spanish. That's another thing I worked on today. I took a good amount of time deciding what I wanted to ask these two people, wrote the questions in English, and then did my best to translate them into Spanish. I had Mrs. Mitchell help out with the translation to confirm that the Spanish was correct.
After I worked on that, I watched a number of tutorial videos. I want to make sure my podcast sounds as professional as possible, so I watched some videos on how sound can be edited on Audacity. Next, I watched Youtube tutorial videos on how to make an effective podcast, and made sure my podcast so far had all the elements mentioned in the video.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
April 21st
Thursday, April 21st
Today was another productive day for my project. Since I didn't have an actual interview today, I worked on writing the introductions for my interviews. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, after doing some research on what a proper podcast is made up of, I realized all of them have a fairly thorough opening statement introducing the person who they are interviewing and the context of the interview. Because of this, I devoted a good amount of time today to writing the introductions for Blakely Mattern and Mary McVeigh. I used their biographies that I found online as well as information I found out about them in their interviews.
After writing the introductions, I went back to editing. I continued cleaning up the interviews by cutting out unnecessary elements or parts where the sound cuts out. This can be a bit tedious, but I know its necessary for my podcast to sound professional. I edited for a while, as it is a pretty time consuming task. After my editing, I began touching up and editing the questions that I had written for my Costa Rica interview on Monday. I'm very excited about this interview, and I will get someone to look over my interview questions tomorrow to make sure I am all set to go for that.
Today was another productive day for my project. Since I didn't have an actual interview today, I worked on writing the introductions for my interviews. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, after doing some research on what a proper podcast is made up of, I realized all of them have a fairly thorough opening statement introducing the person who they are interviewing and the context of the interview. Because of this, I devoted a good amount of time today to writing the introductions for Blakely Mattern and Mary McVeigh. I used their biographies that I found online as well as information I found out about them in their interviews.
After writing the introductions, I went back to editing. I continued cleaning up the interviews by cutting out unnecessary elements or parts where the sound cuts out. This can be a bit tedious, but I know its necessary for my podcast to sound professional. I edited for a while, as it is a pretty time consuming task. After my editing, I began touching up and editing the questions that I had written for my Costa Rica interview on Monday. I'm very excited about this interview, and I will get someone to look over my interview questions tomorrow to make sure I am all set to go for that.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
April 20th
Wednesday, April 20th
Today was another good day for my project. For starters, I secured another interview! I will be interviewing a woman named Ati next Monday. She lives in Costa Rica and works for an organization called Seprojoven that works with adolescent girls and gives them an opportunity to play soccer to build characteristics such as team work and perseverance. This will be an interesting interview because the woman said she can answer some things in English but may also need to speak in Spanish, so I will have to prepare questions in Spanish as well.
I then wrote out all the questions, and then translated them to Spanish. I think that I have a good amount of questions and that this interview will be very helpful. I'm hopeful that the language barrier won't present a problem, and the interview will run smoothly!
After creating those questions, I began doing some basic editing on the interview with Blakely from yesterday. I cut out the unimportant things and any periods of long silence or random conversation. Once again, I struggled with knowing which parts to cut out, so there weren't too many things that I could eliminate next. I'm excited because I noticed some parallels between Blakely's answers and Mary's answers, but also some sharp differences. I think it is going to be very interesting as this process goes on to compare answers between people with experiences in different countries.
Today was another good day for my project. For starters, I secured another interview! I will be interviewing a woman named Ati next Monday. She lives in Costa Rica and works for an organization called Seprojoven that works with adolescent girls and gives them an opportunity to play soccer to build characteristics such as team work and perseverance. This will be an interesting interview because the woman said she can answer some things in English but may also need to speak in Spanish, so I will have to prepare questions in Spanish as well.
I then wrote out all the questions, and then translated them to Spanish. I think that I have a good amount of questions and that this interview will be very helpful. I'm hopeful that the language barrier won't present a problem, and the interview will run smoothly!
After creating those questions, I began doing some basic editing on the interview with Blakely from yesterday. I cut out the unimportant things and any periods of long silence or random conversation. Once again, I struggled with knowing which parts to cut out, so there weren't too many things that I could eliminate next. I'm excited because I noticed some parallels between Blakely's answers and Mary's answers, but also some sharp differences. I think it is going to be very interesting as this process goes on to compare answers between people with experiences in different countries.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
April 19th
Tuesday, April 19th
Today was another great day for my project, and I got a lot of things done! First, I went to Lovett this morning for Spanish class. I brought the microphone that I have been using for my recordings so that I could teach the people in my Spanish class how to use it. It was a fun tutorial session and I really enjoyed teaching them how to use the Snowball microphone. After that, I wrote a bunch of questions that I want to ask for my contacts who only speak Spanish. I wrote these questions in English, and Mrs. Mitchell helped a lot with translating them! I don't have specific dates for the two Spanish interviews yet, but I'm happy that I am now prepared for them.
When I got home, I conducted my second interview! It was with Blakely Mattern, former professional soccer player turned coach. At first, we caught up because we hadn't spoken to each other in a while, but then after I started asking her the real questions. She had some very interesting experiences with soccer and they made for some great responses for questions. Growing up, she even played on a boys team for 3 years so she could get some higher level play. I also thought it was very interesting hearing about her experience playing professionally. She played both in the professional league in the US and in a professional league in the Netherlands, and her comparison between these two experiences was not what I expected. Overall, the interview went very well, and I'm super excited to keep working on it and editing it!
Today was another great day for my project, and I got a lot of things done! First, I went to Lovett this morning for Spanish class. I brought the microphone that I have been using for my recordings so that I could teach the people in my Spanish class how to use it. It was a fun tutorial session and I really enjoyed teaching them how to use the Snowball microphone. After that, I wrote a bunch of questions that I want to ask for my contacts who only speak Spanish. I wrote these questions in English, and Mrs. Mitchell helped a lot with translating them! I don't have specific dates for the two Spanish interviews yet, but I'm happy that I am now prepared for them.
When I got home, I conducted my second interview! It was with Blakely Mattern, former professional soccer player turned coach. At first, we caught up because we hadn't spoken to each other in a while, but then after I started asking her the real questions. She had some very interesting experiences with soccer and they made for some great responses for questions. Growing up, she even played on a boys team for 3 years so she could get some higher level play. I also thought it was very interesting hearing about her experience playing professionally. She played both in the professional league in the US and in a professional league in the Netherlands, and her comparison between these two experiences was not what I expected. Overall, the interview went very well, and I'm super excited to keep working on it and editing it!
Monday, April 18, 2016
April 18th
Monday, April 18th
Today was an excited day for my project because I got to start a new part of the process. That new part, is editing. Since I didn't have an interview today, I decided to begin looking over my interview from yesterday. I listened to it and realized I really did get some valuable things for this project. However, there are also definitely things that need to be cut out. I'm having a difficult time deciding which parts to take out and which to keep. I think that it will be a lot easier to make these decisions once I have done the other interviews. The interview that I did yesterday was almost 2 hours long, so if I were to include all of the interview, my final podcast would be WAY too long. I'm struggling to choose what ideal length of a podcast is, but I'm assuming this is another decision that will come with time as I go through the interview process.
After listening to the full interview a few times to try and decide what the most important parts were, I began cutting some things out that I thought were unnecessary. I was very hesitant when doing this, because I wanted to make sure I didn't actually cut out anything that could become important later based on other interviews. Because of this, I decided to keep an original version of the interview in addition to the cut one.
Tomorrow I am interviewing Blakely Mattern, and I'm super excited to see where that takes me! I'm hoping to get a great interview with her, and then begin comparing the answers that I got from her and from Mary McVeigh.
Today was an excited day for my project because I got to start a new part of the process. That new part, is editing. Since I didn't have an interview today, I decided to begin looking over my interview from yesterday. I listened to it and realized I really did get some valuable things for this project. However, there are also definitely things that need to be cut out. I'm having a difficult time deciding which parts to take out and which to keep. I think that it will be a lot easier to make these decisions once I have done the other interviews. The interview that I did yesterday was almost 2 hours long, so if I were to include all of the interview, my final podcast would be WAY too long. I'm struggling to choose what ideal length of a podcast is, but I'm assuming this is another decision that will come with time as I go through the interview process.
After listening to the full interview a few times to try and decide what the most important parts were, I began cutting some things out that I thought were unnecessary. I was very hesitant when doing this, because I wanted to make sure I didn't actually cut out anything that could become important later based on other interviews. Because of this, I decided to keep an original version of the interview in addition to the cut one.
Tomorrow I am interviewing Blakely Mattern, and I'm super excited to see where that takes me! I'm hoping to get a great interview with her, and then begin comparing the answers that I got from her and from Mary McVeigh.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
April 15th
Friday, April 15th
Today was a super exciting day for my project, because I did my first interview! Although I expected to interview Blakely Mattern today, something came up and we moved her interview to Monday. I was disappointed at first, because I didn't think I'd have anyone to interview, but then luckily I got an email from Mary McVeigh, the woman who works at Soccer Without Borders. She said she'd be willing to talk to me today at 1 if that was okay, and I decided to take her up on it. I was pretty nervous before the interview, because I didn't know how it was going to go since it was over the phone. However, it ended up being a great interview.
Mary had some extremely interesting statistics about the percentage of men who play soccer compared to the percentage of women who play soccer in several countries. Additionally, she has tons of experience seeing how the game of soccer empowers girls, and she's a huge advocate for equal opportunity for women in soccer. She believes that in order for women to get more opportunity in soccer, social norms and perceptions have to change, and the governing bodies of soccer need to do a better job promoting and producing revenue for their women's side. Mary had some very good stories to tell about how the girls she coached in Nicaragua couldn't even name one female soccer player. She said she believes that having women's soccer players as role models for girls around the world would be extremely valuable to the development and growth of young girls, but female soccer players just don't get enough exposure in the media. She gave me a lot more interesting information, and we had a great conversation. I'm excited to start editing this interview and see how the rest of the interviews fit into it!
Today was a super exciting day for my project, because I did my first interview! Although I expected to interview Blakely Mattern today, something came up and we moved her interview to Monday. I was disappointed at first, because I didn't think I'd have anyone to interview, but then luckily I got an email from Mary McVeigh, the woman who works at Soccer Without Borders. She said she'd be willing to talk to me today at 1 if that was okay, and I decided to take her up on it. I was pretty nervous before the interview, because I didn't know how it was going to go since it was over the phone. However, it ended up being a great interview.
Mary had some extremely interesting statistics about the percentage of men who play soccer compared to the percentage of women who play soccer in several countries. Additionally, she has tons of experience seeing how the game of soccer empowers girls, and she's a huge advocate for equal opportunity for women in soccer. She believes that in order for women to get more opportunity in soccer, social norms and perceptions have to change, and the governing bodies of soccer need to do a better job promoting and producing revenue for their women's side. Mary had some very good stories to tell about how the girls she coached in Nicaragua couldn't even name one female soccer player. She said she believes that having women's soccer players as role models for girls around the world would be extremely valuable to the development and growth of young girls, but female soccer players just don't get enough exposure in the media. She gave me a lot more interesting information, and we had a great conversation. I'm excited to start editing this interview and see how the rest of the interviews fit into it!
Thursday, April 14, 2016
April 14th
Thursday, April 14th
Today I figured out a lot of logistics for the actual interviews for my podcast. I began the day by meeting Mrs. Brackett at Lovett at 8:30. We met because we needed to figure out how to record a phone call. Although I set up the software the other day that allows me to record the audio of Skype, it is a whole different process for phone calls. It took us a while to figure it out, because the cord that we got for the purpose of recording phone calls was not working. However, the best solution we found was to have the call on speaker phone, and use the Snowball Microphone to record me speaking and the person on the phone speaking. That worked, but the sound was still a little unclear.
So, after working on a few more things at school with my interview questions, when I got home I tested out using a bluetooth speaker instead of just the speaker of my phone. It ended up working much better than the phone speaker, so I'm excited to record phone calls that way.
After figuring all of that out, I finalized my questions that I am going to ask Blakely Mattern tomorrow. I am Skypeing with her at 1:00pm, and I am extremely excited to hear what she has to say. I'm asking her about the wage discrimination lawsuit, pay inequity in the NWSL, about her experience playing soccer overseas in Holland, and much more. I'm so excited for my first interview!
Today I figured out a lot of logistics for the actual interviews for my podcast. I began the day by meeting Mrs. Brackett at Lovett at 8:30. We met because we needed to figure out how to record a phone call. Although I set up the software the other day that allows me to record the audio of Skype, it is a whole different process for phone calls. It took us a while to figure it out, because the cord that we got for the purpose of recording phone calls was not working. However, the best solution we found was to have the call on speaker phone, and use the Snowball Microphone to record me speaking and the person on the phone speaking. That worked, but the sound was still a little unclear.
So, after working on a few more things at school with my interview questions, when I got home I tested out using a bluetooth speaker instead of just the speaker of my phone. It ended up working much better than the phone speaker, so I'm excited to record phone calls that way.
After figuring all of that out, I finalized my questions that I am going to ask Blakely Mattern tomorrow. I am Skypeing with her at 1:00pm, and I am extremely excited to hear what she has to say. I'm asking her about the wage discrimination lawsuit, pay inequity in the NWSL, about her experience playing soccer overseas in Holland, and much more. I'm so excited for my first interview!
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
April 13th
Wednesday, April 13th
Today was an exciting day for my project because I finally got some of the responses I had been waiting for! I was worried that no one would respond to my emails, and I wouldn't be sure when to move on and email new people. Luckily, I will not run into that problem because I got 4 responses today! I have set up an interview with Mary McVeigh from Soccer Without Borders on Sunday afternoon. I'm extremely excited to speak to her, as I know she knows a lot about the culture of women's soccer in South America. I also received a response from Ati from Seprojoven, an organization in Costa Rica. She is happy to do an interview, and we are figuring out when the best time to have the interview will be. We will do the interview half in English and half in Spanish, which is her primary language. I'm both excited and nervous to see what challenges a possible language barrier could present, but I have enough confidence in my Spanish abilities to think it will go pretty smoothly. Mike Geddes from "Street Football World" also responded to me, but the news wasn't as exciting. He is very busy right now with his organization, so he doesn't have much time for a full interview. He said he's very supportive of my project and still would like to help, so he can answer any questions that I have via email. I'm interested to see how this will play out in my podcast since I can't get a direct personal statement from him. The final email I got today is the email that I am most excited about. My uncle, who lives in Chile, managed to get someone to talk to the goalkeeper for the Chilean women's national team about my project, and she agreed to do an interview! She only speaks Spanish, so I'm a little nervous, but more just excited! I think it will be awesome to get the perspective of a professional women's soccer player in a country where there is not much opportunity for women to participate in soccer. My uncle said he is also trying to get into contact with the coach of the Chilean national team, which would be an AMAZING interview.
After reading these emails I spent most of the rest of my day formatting questions to ask each participant, and I think I came up with some good ones. However, I'm definitely not finished and I want to make sure I have a second set of eyes look at them before I do the interview. I also went to school today and went to my Spanish class, so I could catch up on the project they were working on and also ask my two project advisers, Mrs. Brackett and Mrs. Mitchell, some questions. Overall it was a good day!
Today was an exciting day for my project because I finally got some of the responses I had been waiting for! I was worried that no one would respond to my emails, and I wouldn't be sure when to move on and email new people. Luckily, I will not run into that problem because I got 4 responses today! I have set up an interview with Mary McVeigh from Soccer Without Borders on Sunday afternoon. I'm extremely excited to speak to her, as I know she knows a lot about the culture of women's soccer in South America. I also received a response from Ati from Seprojoven, an organization in Costa Rica. She is happy to do an interview, and we are figuring out when the best time to have the interview will be. We will do the interview half in English and half in Spanish, which is her primary language. I'm both excited and nervous to see what challenges a possible language barrier could present, but I have enough confidence in my Spanish abilities to think it will go pretty smoothly. Mike Geddes from "Street Football World" also responded to me, but the news wasn't as exciting. He is very busy right now with his organization, so he doesn't have much time for a full interview. He said he's very supportive of my project and still would like to help, so he can answer any questions that I have via email. I'm interested to see how this will play out in my podcast since I can't get a direct personal statement from him. The final email I got today is the email that I am most excited about. My uncle, who lives in Chile, managed to get someone to talk to the goalkeeper for the Chilean women's national team about my project, and she agreed to do an interview! She only speaks Spanish, so I'm a little nervous, but more just excited! I think it will be awesome to get the perspective of a professional women's soccer player in a country where there is not much opportunity for women to participate in soccer. My uncle said he is also trying to get into contact with the coach of the Chilean national team, which would be an AMAZING interview.
After reading these emails I spent most of the rest of my day formatting questions to ask each participant, and I think I came up with some good ones. However, I'm definitely not finished and I want to make sure I have a second set of eyes look at them before I do the interview. I also went to school today and went to my Spanish class, so I could catch up on the project they were working on and also ask my two project advisers, Mrs. Brackett and Mrs. Mitchell, some questions. Overall it was a good day!
April 12th
Tuesday, April 12th:
Today was a very productive day for my podcast! I began my day learning how to set up the software on my computer than allows me to record Skype, so I can save the interview for my podcast. It was a pretty confusing process, but after reading a few different websites I figured it out. There were a number of different settings I had to change on my computer and a few applications I had to download. Once it was all set up, I decided to do some testing to make sure that it worked. I had my mom Skype me from another room in the house, and recorded the entire phone call. The first time I did it our voices sounded like they were echoing, so I decided to move to a smaller room in the house. This seemed to fix the problem and the acoustics sounded good. I played back the recording and it worked perfectly, so I'm ready for the actual interviews.
After setting up that software and testing it out, I began thinking about the concept of my project. I had gone from "how does soccer empower women?" to "lack of opportunity and reward for women's soccer players around the world", but I felt like I needed to make another small change. The people that I have reached out to all have extremely different experiences with women's soccer, because they come from different countries all over the world. In order to make my podcast as interesting as possible, I decided I wanted to make the topic "the culture of women's soccer around the world". For each person I interview, I will ask them similar questions, hoping to get different and unique responses based on the country they are from. I wrote a list of questions to ask. These include:
-What is the role of women in society in this country in general? How does this translate to sports?
-How much access do girls have to recreational sports/soccer?
-What are the barriers preventing girls and women from total access to soccer?
-Have there been any public figures, scandals, or stories surrounding women's soccer in this country?
-What is the perception of female athletes/ soccer players in this country?
-Is there any opportunity for professional or higher level soccer in this country?
-If there is professional women's soccer, what is the pay like compared to the men?
I think that these are all very stimulating and thought provoking questions, and I am excited to get to hear the answers!
Today was a very productive day for my podcast! I began my day learning how to set up the software on my computer than allows me to record Skype, so I can save the interview for my podcast. It was a pretty confusing process, but after reading a few different websites I figured it out. There were a number of different settings I had to change on my computer and a few applications I had to download. Once it was all set up, I decided to do some testing to make sure that it worked. I had my mom Skype me from another room in the house, and recorded the entire phone call. The first time I did it our voices sounded like they were echoing, so I decided to move to a smaller room in the house. This seemed to fix the problem and the acoustics sounded good. I played back the recording and it worked perfectly, so I'm ready for the actual interviews.
After setting up that software and testing it out, I began thinking about the concept of my project. I had gone from "how does soccer empower women?" to "lack of opportunity and reward for women's soccer players around the world", but I felt like I needed to make another small change. The people that I have reached out to all have extremely different experiences with women's soccer, because they come from different countries all over the world. In order to make my podcast as interesting as possible, I decided I wanted to make the topic "the culture of women's soccer around the world". For each person I interview, I will ask them similar questions, hoping to get different and unique responses based on the country they are from. I wrote a list of questions to ask. These include:
-What is the role of women in society in this country in general? How does this translate to sports?
-How much access do girls have to recreational sports/soccer?
-What are the barriers preventing girls and women from total access to soccer?
-Have there been any public figures, scandals, or stories surrounding women's soccer in this country?
-What is the perception of female athletes/ soccer players in this country?
-Is there any opportunity for professional or higher level soccer in this country?
-If there is professional women's soccer, what is the pay like compared to the men?
I think that these are all very stimulating and thought provoking questions, and I am excited to get to hear the answers!
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