I need 12 more people to take my school survey and I’m low-key panicking
I’m sitting in the sticky booth of my campus coffee shop right now, blueberry muffin crumbs stuck in the trackpad of my 5 year old laptop, and the barista just knocked my iced latte an inch to the left while wiping the next table over. Didn’t spill, thank god, because one more spill would definitely kill this laptop and then I’d be even more screwed. I’ve been refreshing the survey dashboard for 45 minutes straight, and the response count just won’t move. I’m at 38. I need 50 to pass this assignment. So 12 left.
It’s for my intro sociology gen ed, for anyone who cares. Professor made us do a tiny independent research project, 50 responses minimum, or we have to write a 5 page extra analysis paper instead of just turning in our survey data. This is 100% my fault, by the way. I had two whole months to get this done. I just kept putting it off because midterms ate my life, then I went to that indie concert in the city last month, then I caught that cough that’s been going around that makes you sound like a 90 year old smoker for two weeks, and suddenly it’s due next Monday.
Here’s the dumb mistake that got me into this mess: early on, I forgot to add a screening question to lock the survey to only college students 18 to 22, which is my whole sample. My mom saw my Instagram story begging for responses, offered to send it to her book club. I said sure, why not, extra responses are extra responses, right? Turned out 18 of my first 30 responses were from retired women in Florida who love my mom and wanted to help out her kid. They’re lovely, I’m sure, but I can’t use any of them. That’s how I ended up 18 responses down from where I thought I was. Oops.
I’ve tried everything already, I swear. I posted my survey link to my Instagram story three times, pinned it to the top of my feed. I asked everyone on my dorm floor, even the guy who lives down the hall who never talks to anyone and blasts death metal at 2am. I asked everyone in my stats recitation, and one guy just blinked at me and said “no” and turned right back to his laptop. Which was fair, I guess, but I stood there for like three whole seconds too long before I walked away, and my face was so hot I thought I was gonna pass out. I even posted it to the comment section of that random university meme page, when someone made a thread for people to drop their school surveys. Got three responses from that, which was cool, but the thread died after an hour and no one new clicked through.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this today, actually. I always thought getting survey responses would be so easy. How hard can it be to get 50 people to click a link and answer 10 questions? And then I realized I do the exact same thing when someone posts a survey on their story. I think “oh that’s nice, I’ll do it later” and then I scroll to the next thing and forget completely. Or if a random person comes up to me in the library to ask, I cross my arms and pretend I’m super busy even if I’m just re-watching The Office for the seventh time. I get it. No one owes me anything. This is my problem, not yours. I’m not here to guilt trip anyone.
For what it’s worth, the survey doesn’t suck. It’s on how rent hikes over the last year changed how college students budget for groceries. 10 mandatory multiple choice questions, two optional open-ended ones if you want to rant about how much your landlord raised your rent, which a lot of people have. It’s actually been way more interesting than I thought it would be when I picked the topic. I’ve gotten responses from people who cut out all fresh produce to afford their textbooks, one guy said he steals Gatorade from the campus market every other day because he can’t afford to buy it and he needs it for soccer practice. It’s wild, and kind of depressing, but it’s made the project actually feel worth doing, not just another stupid gen ed assignment.
I can only afford to give one $10 Starbucks gift card to a random person who takes it, for the record. I spent all my extra spending money on that concert I went to last month, and I still haven’t paid my phone bill, so that’s the best I can do. It’s not much, I know, $10 barely buys a vanilla latte and a pastry these days anyway. But it’s something.
It’s weird, right? How even the smallest stupid assignment can feel like the end of the world when you’re this close to the deadline. I’m a biology major, I’ll never do sociology research again after this semester. I don’t even care that much about the project, honestly. But if I don’t get 50 responses, I get a lower grade, and that pulls my GPA down, and I need a 3.5 to keep my partial scholarship, which is the only reason I can afford to go to school here at all. So it’s stupid, it’s small, but it’s also kind of a big deal for me right now.
If you’re a college student between 18 and 22, any college, anywhere, I’d be so grateful if you took two minutes to fill it out. It’s totally anonymous, I don’t ask for your name or anything identifiable, you only have to put your email if you want to enter the gift card drawing, which is completely optional. The link is at the bottom of this post.
Even if you don’t take it, I get it. I really do. I’d probably scroll past this too if I saw it on my feed. I just had to get this out, because I’ve been refreshing this stupid dashboard all afternoon and it’s starting to make me crazy.
Wait, hold on. I just got a push notification. Someone new just took it. Okay, 11 left now. See? Slow progress is still progress.
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