I’ve been shamefully neglectful of my Survey Girl duties for the last few months, so I jumped at the chance to answer the question that was posed to me by our YouthSense publishing team, “What does Survey Girl do all summer?”
Not surprisingly, what Survey Girl does in the summer is the same thing that keeps her away from posting new questions online for months at a time. Since Search Institute Survey Services is so closely aligned with the education sector, one would probably expect our work flow to reflect that of the schools— with summer and other vacation periods having lighter work loads, right? Well, it’s actually the opposite. May, June, and July are generally our busiest months. A lot of schools choose to survey their students in the last couple months of the school year, so we in Survey Services stay busy processing and running reports for those surveys. Once the rush is over, we generally go back to working on other survey-related work, such as writing and posting new Survey Girl Q & As.
With that said, I’ve never been one to let a little bit of hard work get in the way of other shenanigans! Summer is a good time for more “informal” learning opportunities. It’s not unheard of to schedule a “Very Important Meeting” to play Hidden Treasure of Assets or sample something from Great Group Games. Summer is also ideal for actually—you know—_interacting_ with our research subjects. Many progeny (or as I like to call them, Unpaid Interns) of Search Institute staff stop by to hang out in our air conditioned, fire-pole equipped office.
We’ve had visits from Matthew, godson of Sr. Data Analyst/Programmer Kathie Fraher; Linus and Friday, sons of Publishing Manager, Tenessa Gemelke; Kylie, niece of Resource Specialist Stephanie Drakulich (and also our office Girl Scout Cookie dealer); Miles, son of Communications Manager Kaija Shaffer; Survey Services Manager Deb Grillo’s daughter, Liana (who can walk now!); and Lucia, Glee aficionado and daughter of Parent Project Manager Mary-Margaret Reagan-Montiel.
Many Search kids spend their summers pursuing their sparks—attending art camp, playing golf, or joining the baseball team. As adults, I think it’s important to continue to pursue our sparks, even when we’re swamped. I’m lucky to be one of several theater nerds at Search Institute, so it’s always a pleasure to come back from the weekend, or from a 10 Fringe Festival “binge”, and discuss what I saw.
While being knee-deep in surveys most of the summer is a bit of a drag, I like the non-stop activity—both work and play—that summer usually brings.
‘til next month (I promise),
