Somehow I completely missed this blog post assignment, but I did read the articles, and I still wanted to participate in the conversation, so here goes!

I found the first mistake mentioned very relatable. “Don’t overestimate the meaning of your data” would have been great advice for my sophomore self as I stumbled through an ocean of numbers on the job market in Arkansas trying to build a story about vocational education. I went into the project thinking that vocational education was a growing field, hoping that I could find numbers to back that up. There were no data sets that would have told me that directly, so I had to try and cobble job market information together draw some conclusions. Looking back now, I think that I should have at least explained to my readers the limitation of my data sets, and included a note about my processes.