So far, my MA project and my campaign has been largely fueled by my personal experience. Of course, I’ve conducted thorough research to back up my statements. But the fact that I’m looking to solve a problem I personally experienced forms a bias for me to favor my position.
Although it’s not easy to disconnect myself from my project and campaign, it must be done in order to address my arguments from an objective perspective, which was recommended by David and is something I agree I must do. In my final evaluation paper, I will cut back on parts that directly refer to my personal story and make room for analyzing compromising and opposing views to my points.
Furthermore, I need to address who I depend on in my project. As it’s my MA project, I feel like I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to stick to a certain timeline, so whenever I didn’t meet a certain deadline I had put for myself I would become stressed and overwhelmed. However, since my project is a campaign, one that I want to run successfully and ensure that everything is done correctly in order to achieve my goal of legalizing freelancing on a student visa, I’ve realized that I can’t rush things, especially since I often rely on experts to help me move to the next step.
I had also felt I’ve had delays as I had to contact various international students and ask them to share their experiences with me. I’ve had a lot of casual conversations with such students and they are always helpful, but I’ve struggled to put their testimonies and data in a presentable way as I find the topic to often be sensitive for various reasons. One may be that struggles of wanting to freelance or make money on the side are linked to needed money while studying, which goes against a visa requirement, one that asks visa applicants to prove they have the necessary funds to support themselves during their studies. This, I believe, creates a big financial barrier to many who wish to study in the UK but don’t have the funds necessary and builds a community of international students with similar socio-economic backgrounds, or at least the expectation of it from the government and universities.
I also found that it could be easier to avoid freelancing if you are under a certain age, where you’ve perhaps never professionally freelanced before. But I have met international students who are older than 30-35, an age group for international students that I found out gets often ignored, who have had professional careers for 10+ years, some of them freelancing in their home countries and facing a big career pause when studying abroad in the UK.
This is all information I seek to share, but, as mentioned, it discloses sensitive information about international students I do not wish to share without their permission.
For now then, I’ve considered making the advertisement-like video solely based on data I’ve found, and have international students’ stories shared once the campaign has gained enough credibility for students to trust their testimonies being shared.