Presentations and Research Briefs

The last month with the Human Trafficking Research Lab have been a busy one. I’ve been sitting in on a lot of meetings and taking notes and have been working on finalizing an updated research brief which we will present at the next Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force (CIHTTF) meeting in May. 

One particular meeting I want to talk about was last month when Dr. Dean and I presented our adjudication data to the Illinois Bar Association. So, firstly I want to talk about just how cool it was to be in a Zoom meeting with a bunch of people who work in the field I hope to get into. It was pretty neat to get to meet various lawyers and law professors. Now the actual presentation is a completely different story. To everyone who was in the meeting, the presentation seemingly went off without a hitch. For me, my screen went completely black right before I was to present so I had to wing it. Firstly, I was muted and couldn’t click on the screen to unmute myself, but luckily remembered the feature of holding down the space bar to speak. So that solved that issue. I had my notes of what I needed to say typed out on my phone, so basically, it all came down to my timing on everything and making sure I didn’t fly through everything before Dr. Dean could change the slides. Naturally, as soon as I concluded my portion of the presentation my computer suddenly decided to work again and my screen turned back on like there was never an issue. So, that was a pretty interesting time, and I honestly kind of impressed myself with my ability to readjust and get the presentation done. 

I have also worked to put together a rough draft of sorts for another research brief which the lab publishes every now and then on research or various data we are gathering related to the CIHTTF. We had a research brief with all the numbers from 2019 so I updated it with data from 2020 and 2021. The data covered were training sessions, who received the training, who administered the training, and where the training occurred. I really enjoy the work I do because it makes me feel like I’m really contributing to something, and it’s oddly enjoyable to do. 

Rhys Deiter

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