I Caught an ORCA Thiiiis Big!

Did you ever have that one thing, or things, that you really wanted to do, and you felt like if you did it, then you've "made it" in some way? At BYU, I had a list of things that I felt would really "make" my university experience, and if I did those things, then I succeeded. That was really not the best way to approach things, necessarily, but it did drive me to get out of my comfort zone and keep being ambitious.

One of those things I planned to do was a study abroad of some sort, and I did it—I went to Ecuador! The path to get there was a rocky one for sure; I really struggled with the decision to go because of the high opportunity costs I was considering at the time, but I'm glad I went!

(Check out more stories from the study abroad at dianastudyabroad.blogspot.com!)

Anyway, one of the most valuable things I gained from that experience was further opportunities to get even more of my BYU-bucket-list items! BYU has an organization called the Office of Research and Creative Activities, or ORCA. They're most well-known for giving $1,500 grants for mentored student research, and I got one (on my second try)!

I'm not sure exactly what the competitive statistics are; I think I heard once that about 1/3 of ORCA grant proposals are accepted. My ORCA grant proposal (there's a more digestible version here which gives some more quick facts about my project) was two pages of text that earned me $1,500! (With a promise to also, you know, do the research project.)

Our project is a "video dictionary" documenting a part of the language, Quechua, that I went to Ecuador to study. You can see the final (for now) product at quechuarealwords.byu.edu . Not too shabby for a linguistics major, I'd say! I worked on it with my professor(s) as well as a couple other linguistic students; I was primarily responsible for the design and implementation of the website, including almost all the coding and user experience testing.

Our home page!

Try searching for "hyaw." That's one of our more, ah, complete pages.

I worked on that project for the better part of last year and recently submitted my final report, which will be published in BYU's Journal of Undergraduate Research — fulfilling yet another of my BYU dreams, getting myself published! (Unfortunately it's under my maiden name, Diana Sun, so it's already outdated!)

Even more cool things happened as a result of my Ecuador study abroad, like accompanying a research group to the Linguistics Society of America conference in January. That's a post for another day, though.

The latest news on this project is that the BYU college of Humanities selected a few ORCA projects from its college to be showcased at a symposium, and mine was one of the six chosen! I'll be presenting my work at the ORCA Symposium later this month. Wish me luck! Now excuse me, I've got a PowerPoint to work on ...