Capstone + Covid + Fried Computer = Stress!

Ashley Roberts, Class year of 2022, completed major in English Linguistics and minor in Speech Language Pathology

At first the idea of the capstone project seemed incredibly intimidating. I didn’t know how to begin, what I wanted to do, or who to ask to be my mentor. Thankfully, I had Professor Hagedorn as my major advisor and she was involved in research related to the field of speech pathology, which is the field that I am pursuing a career in. Through speaking with her things naturally developed, and she agreed to be my mentor. She invited me to work with her on her research with patients who suffered from lingual cancer and had intelligibility difficulties. Things began much smoother than I had anticipated, then Covid happened and everything became a lot more complicated and difficult. I was no longer able to do any hands-on research collecting data as everything became virtual and remote. This was a bit disappointing, as I had been excited to be immersed in the research, but I understood how important and necessary it was to keep everyone safe. Ultimately, it didn’t prevent me from working on my capstone because there was already enough collected data from the patients for me to analyze. After some adjustments, taking short courses to become certified working with research data, and coordinating with Professor Hagedorn, everything was ready for me to begin researching and analyzing the data at the start of my senior year.

That was true until my brand-new laptop ran an update the night before the semester began that literally fried the laptop’s motherboard. This was during the semester that everything was being done virtually, where having access to a computer to do anything college related was vital. What ensued from one small update was what seemed like an unending stream of frustration and delays for all of my course work and capstone research. It took over 2 and a half months to get my computer fixed and functioning correctly. Thankfully I had an old laptop that allowed me by to do my class assignments and watch lectures; however, it wasn’t functional enough to run the advanced programs needed to analyze the data for my capstone. I was forced to put my capstone project on hold for about half of that semester.

Since I was also taking 23 credits, I had to focus on catching up on my backed-up class assignments before I could do any research. I managed to work out with my mentor that I would only focus my literary research and the literary review part of the research paper for the capstone proposal that semester. Things went slowly, because I was still struggling to catch up and I was still working on a computer that barely functioned. I ended up having to use that old laptop the entire semester because the new laptop kept deleting all the files that I was saving to it (which only delayed me further). Thankfully, Professor Hagedorn and Cheryl were more than understanding and patient with me as I did my best to meet the requirements.

In my final semester I finally had my new laptop functioning, and although I was still running into some technical difficulties I was able to successfully complete my research and data analysis. As one might imagine, it was both difficult and stressful to cram all of that into my final semester. However, with hard work and perseverance, and a lot of help and consideration from both Cheryl and my mentor, I was able to write the longest and most in-depth paper I have ever written (over 40 pages)!

Several times I wanted to give up. I cried a lot, and didn’t sleep much towards the end, but I can say without hesitation I am happy I did it. I learned so much from this experience, not only in my field of study but also about time and stress management, problem-solving, learning when to ask for help, and so much more. I learned I could do more than I ever knew I could! Even though it was an incredible challenge and I had to overcome setback after setback, it only strengthened my passion for speech pathology and allowed me to become even more prepared for graduate school.

 I am grateful for this opportunity and for everyone who helped me along the way, without them I could never have done it. I am fully equipped to tackle whatever comes next!