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As I began reading the interviews for the Croft School in Chile to begin to work on a case study, the only thing that I could picture in my head was myself. Everything that was said in those interviews could have been said by me or said by a friend from my high school. The Croft School emphasizes many of the same ideals that my high school emphasizes. The “pillars” of the Croft School are Academics, Sport, Art, and Service. The idea of the pillars is that those are the things that the Croft School wants to pride itself by. At my high school, a private elite school in Los Angeles, there is an extremely high academic standard. In addition, students have to play at least one sport a year, take an art class for at least three semesters, and while there is no community service requirement, a large majority of the students take part in some form of community service. Among other things, the Croft School also has Shared Values. These are empathy, honesty, humility, integrity, loyalty, compassion and respect. My high school has Core Values that are honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness and compassion. There is clear overlap in what the schools say that they are doing, but there is also overlap in what I actually experienced in Los Angeles and what the students are saying in their interviews. There is a lot of division of social groups, the extremely rare creation of the “renaissance student” that does everything that the school has to offer, and a lack of enthusiasm for what the school stands for.

        All of these connections has led me to a big question. Am I too close? Am I unable to see new trends in this data because I feel like I know what is happening in all of these interviews? Because I feel like I had an extremely similar high school experience at my elite, private school as the Croft School, I might be blind to seeing certain differences between the two schools in the data. My case study is about contradictions, and I feel like I lived those contradictions. But does that make it a lot easier for me to see those contradictions and harder to see anything else? I suppose that if what I am interpreting through these interviews is correct, I would be able to see a lot of details that another person might not be able to see, but the main thing that this has caused me to do is to go back and be a lot more careful when rereading the interviews and data.