Ten things that make me feel human are eating, sleeping, learning, loving, thinking, feeling, working, relaxing, talking and expressing myself.
I feel like I should engage with my audience for many reasons. One of the main reasons is to educate people about higher education. I also want to educate people about the reasons why people don’t go to higher education.
I will engage with my audience with interesting questions and try to get the most useful information from them. I will engage with my readers with interest information and results drawn from my data.
I must engage with the people I interview and my readers alike.
The challenges I care about is how to connect and make my readers feel comfortable with me. If they aren’t comfortable with you as a person, they won’t want to tell you sensitive information. I also have to overcome to challenges of time management. People’s schedules can be hectic and there may be complications to set up interviews. The opportunities that I should care about is the opportunities to diversify my sample of students. People tend to gravitate towards similar people so I will take opportunities in my life to meet new people. The new people I meet I will try to incorporate them into my research. I should take a gentle approach and not force the person to be uncomfortable. When the person is uncomfortable it will be difficult to obtain the correct information.
My epitaph might read
“As I dream of a better world
What does that actually mean?
Mean what it shall, makes no difference to me.
As I continue to doubt everything I see.
Whatever that means.”
Please don’t read too much into it. I just see big laws protecting the environment being enacted but I’m still seeing the effects of climate change.
Good work. Since you are approaching engagement mostly as a researcher and educator this shapes your philosophy of engagement to be focused on obtaining the best information and presenting it in a way that will reach people. It’s good that these specific activities or strategies are matched to your overall goal of engagement.