Week Thirteen: Reports
Hannah Hiles | 15 April 2016 | Durham NC
With all the fun of self-led testing comes the inevitable less-fun of red tape: writing up reports.
On the one hand, we get to take a step back from testing procedure and look at all our collected data (some of which we've been collecting over weeks, and honestly have a lot of distance from), and begin to condense it into often surprising statistics.
On the other hand, it's Sitting at a Desk Doing Computer Work work. Not the most fun – but still, an entirely necessary part of the process (and one which, in the end, is extremely rewarding.)
Two final reports are in the pipes; by the time they finish, I'll have had a hand in publishing three reports during my time here. That's some pretty cool stuff! I can easily chalk up “writing reports” as something I've gained a firm amount of experience doing while here at AUX.
We have our last department meeting next week, and I'll be leading a session on DukeSpace and the institutional repository 1). I've created a Best Practices document that I'll be sharing with the department, and which I'm a little nervous about. I think this might be the first time that my Imposter Syndrome is a little bit warranted. I'm not even really an intern – I am, as far as Duke is concerned, a volunteer. But I'm still stepping in and saying, “We're doing these things differently, and I've already gone ahead and changed some infrastructure. Now have fun doing it this way while I leave you all forever.”
Knowing that I have my supervisor behind me helps. I know that I'm following one of my dear philosophies of the National Parks service – leave it better than when you got there. And that's really what matters most to me.
HRHILES 