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Good afternoon everyone. Well maybe it's afternoon for you. I am on a lunch break and it was on my list to record a podcast. So here I am. It is finally summer in Milwaukee. And so, you know, that's exciting. Um, I really enjoy the Midwest or being in Milwaukee because, um, in the evening for the most part it does cool off and there's a nice breeze coming off the lake, especially now cause the lake is still it. Um, it's not as warm. It might be like 50 or 60 degrees, but um, so it gets a nice, cool breeze. But anyway, today's episode is something that has been on my mind. Um, something so I don't know, maybe most of you know that I also have, um, a full time job where I work as the Women's Center director, um, at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

And uh, part of that job is having to go to various meetings across campus to work on different projects or events. In not too long ago, I was in a meeting and the person who was leading the meeting was, um, we were planning like an annual event and we got on the topic of evaluation and looking at, we use like a paper, uh, we historically use a paper questionnaire for students just to get more information about their experience in, in how, like how the event went from them for them, what did they learn, et cetera. Like, you know, suggestions for new or upcoming events or things like that. Just to give feedback. And the person who was leading the meeting was saying, you know, like, I really liked the open ended questions or it's like three or four questions at the end of the evaluation. Just really like it, but it's very time intensive. Um, the coding process was very long and tedious and we had to do all these rounds and people had to learn and she essentially said, you know, it's just too much work. And so I'm thinking we could either s um, significantly reduce them or get rid of them and just have the likert scale questions, um, to make things easier for my staff because it took us almost a whole year to, you know, analyze the open ended questions. And so there's about 10 people in this meeting. So I have to the leader got through talking than someone at the table. It was like, Oh, you know, I'm from a different office I'll gladly, you know, volunteer my staff to help you with the coding if it's a matter of you needing additional people to make things go faster. And the leader was like, no, no. I mean she just kept saying like, it's just so much and I just don't want to do it. And then someone else was like, well yeah, we would also be willing to help you if you know that make it easier. And she just kept going on and on about how it's just was too hard and like if we could just help her reduce the questions, that would be really helpful. And so then I chimed in because by this point I was just irritated. You know, like you said, you had a problem, two people offered you solutions, but you're still saying how difficult it is. So part of me was frustrated because I was like, oh, it must be nice to be a leader of a meeting in to have the privilege to be able to say how this is too much work and your, you don't want to work that much and you don't want to do your job. That must be nice on one hand. But that was a petty part of me. The second part of me was like, don't say that out loud. You just try to be helpful in this meeting. And so I, I said, well, it sounds like to me that the questions aren't so much the issue as it is your process for analysis. It's seeming to be the issue and the timing of it. So I said, you know, I'm wondering, one, is there a rush? Like did you, because she was saying how it took, um, like the event is an August and she was saying that ideally, you know, they would do the analysis right after the event, but the first six weeks of school was very busy and so they were not able to get to it until winter break and she wasn't able to get the report out, um, until maybe April and May. And that was too much.

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