Share your field experiences with BANDIT!

You are invited to share your field experiences with the BANDIT community via a guest post on the blog. Not only do I want to hear about your research specifically, but I am especially interested in hearing about the process of doing field research, because the obstacles and successes may be broadly relevant to colleagues doing very different kinds of work. I envision posts regarding the following three themes, although this is by no means an exhaustive list: 1) preparing for the research - IRB, IACUC, permits, establishing your itinerary with colleagues and subjects before you get there, etc.; 2) preparing for the trip itself - what to bring, shopping, travel issues, etc.; 3) doing the fieldwork - interpersonal/cultural issues, illness in the field, encountering scientific or procedural problems and devising solutions in the field. Let me know if you're interested. I'd like these dispatches to be separate blog posts rather than filler in the comments section so that they can really stand out. You can email me your idea for a dispatch at ruther4d at uic dot edu.