Last Blog

My writing skills and researching methods have improved during the 15 weeks.  I have learned how to more successfully research specific topics and have learned how to get answers to my questions.  I still struggle with organizational issues and procrastination.  Sometimes I don't know where to begin and therefore, put everything off until the last minute.  I would suggest that we don't stick on the same topic the entire semester.  I often got tired of writing about the same topic the entire semester.  I also didn't like writing the blogs.  I often found them pointless.  The same with the readings.  I didn't find them helpful most of the time.

Annotated Bibliography- Week 6 posting

Cameron Ackroyd "Study: Jobs come before school work." Independent Florida Alligator 18 April 2002. LexisNexis Academic. 24 February 2009

This source is exploring how college students balance their work and school responsibilities.  One of the main reasons students work is because of the rising costs to attend college.  For this reason, they feel like they are forced to spend more time working than studying.  This has caused students to notice that if they spend 25 or more hours per week working, their grades drop.  One person said that working is not an option, but a necessity for him.  He has made sacrifices in his life such as having to study on weekends and sleep few hours.  Out of the people studied, 63 percent of them said that college would not be an option if they weren't working.  Another student stated that she didn't think working affected her studies.  She says it's all about balancing your workloads.

I will be able to use this in my mini-ethnography because it discusses the pros and cons of working and some of the reasons students work.  Students are now working for more than just extra spending money; they are working to stay in college.

Michael Borunda. "Working Cal State-Fresno students struggle to find balance." The Collegian 11 May 2006. LexisNexis Academic. 23 February 2009

This document talks about different reasons more students are working now.  About 57 percents of full-time college students are working full or part-time jobs so they will be able to stay in college.  Some reasons this is happening could be that financial aid has become harder to get and college tuition rates have risen five times faster than the average family income since 1981.  There are also less people receiving grants and financial aid.  One student said that she works because  she has to support not only herself but her child as well.  Another simply works so she doesn't have to ask her parents for money.

I will be able to use this piece in my mini-ethnography because it describes the reasons some students work and has facts and statistics to support the information.

Portfolio reflection

One of the strategies I developed to analyze my data for my mini-ethnography was to begin with my interviews.  I looked at my interviews and reread them to refresh my memory.  Then, I looked at my research for quotes from people they had interviewed.  By doing this, I was able to get a first hand perspective of my subculture.  After that, I went back and read my notes I had taken from the articles I read.  I compared the information I had collected with the information I got from my sources.

Cut-up

As you walk into the Cardinal B at 6:45 all you see is fifty or so girls crowded around one another talking about the past week events. The environment was one that was loud and intense. It started with us playing three games the first day and one game the second day. The fact that they are eight hours ahead of our time zone made it very difficult to get a time when we could all speak, so I chose the easiest route and sent an e-mail. I kept my distance, being unsure of whom the group of people was. Not to my surprise, but maybe to the surprise of others, it was nothing like that. After the show, I talked to some of the people involved in the show and asked them how they thought the show went.

Brief description

One of the field-sites I observed was the Out of Bounds market in the bottom of Lafollette.  My friend works in there so I went to observe him during one of his shifts.  Out of Bounds is usually very busy and this was no exception.  It was a Friday evening around 6 p.m.  There were so many people in there at one point that the line to check out was wrapped around the entire store.  The smells were overwhelming when I first walked in.  I am no stranger to this eating place but for some reason the smell was amplified this particular evening.  Out of Bounds serves hot food and prepackaged cold food.  A lot of the hot food consists of fried foods like fried chicken, curly fries, popcorn chicken etc.  They also serve hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled cheese among many other choices.  The stench of the hot dogs and the water they were in is what hit me first.  It has an overwhelming smell and just fills the store.  It was so loud in the store that I could barely hear myself think.  People that were waiting in line almost had to shout to be heard.  Out of Bounds is a fairly cramped store to begin with so when you get that many people in there, it makes it almost impossible to move.  People waiting for their order to come up have practically no place to stand out of the way.  They are constantly having to move so that other people can get what they came for.  There are the people that know exactly what they want and waste no time getting it.  They know the layout of the store like the back of their hand.  They go in, get what they want, and get out.  Then there are the people that know the optimal order to get their food so something doesn't get cold when it's supposed to be hot or visa versa.  They go up and order their food from the grille, the proceed to get any prepackaged food they want.  Lastly, they get their drinks or anything frozen.  And lastly, there are the people that have no idea what they want.  They wander the isles contemplating what they are really hungry for.  These people tend to clog up the isles because they just walk around, getting in pretty much everyone's way.  I watched one person go down a single isle four times.  I think they were getting more and more desperate each time.

6 word stories

Who needs to work? Ask mom!

 

Music calms the mind and soul

What is rhetoric?

I first learned about the term rhetoric in english 103 last semester.  I remember talking about ethos, logos, and pathos.  Rhetoric means to me when you write or speak to persuade something or someone.  I think rhetoric is used in everyday speech, even in speaking.  I think that whenever you talk to someone, most of the time you are trying to persuade them to do something or think a certain way, whether the person believes it or not.  Rhetoric can be both positive and negative.

Writing quotes

Why feel relieved and relaxed the night before when you can feel stressed and rushed the day it's due?!

Procrastination is like trying to not eat a piece of chocolate cake, you tell yourself that NEXT time you won't eat it, but you end up eating it anyway...

Reflecting

I don't think my writing process has changed a whole lot since the first week of this semester.  I have been forced to put a little more thought into the parts of my paper since we are generally writing it in steps.  I do like this better though.  I like not having to pull a 12-15 page paper out of no where all at once.  I will have papers to look back on and refer to when that time comes.  None of the assignments really gave me trouble, but this last assignment was easier than I thought it was going to be.  At first, I felt overwhelmed because it seemed like a really long process, but once I got started, it went really fast.  I write because it expands my abilities.  It forces me to think about topics or subjects that I may not have put any thought into otherwise.

Weird Family Stories

Well I have several weird relatives but the couple that stick out in my head are my Uncle Jerry and my ex-cousin Narissa.  I'll start off with my Uncle Jerry.  Everyone in my house dreads when he calls.  He can talk your ear off about anything and everything.  And as if that isn't enough, he clears his throat after every third word it seems.  Unfortunately most of the time I end up answering the phone when he calls and I get stuck talking to him for half an hour.  He doesn't even know me that well.  I'm also not brave enough to cut him off and give him to my mom.  He's one of my mom's brothers.  She is the youngest of 7 kids with her oldest sibling being 21 years older than her.  Jerry is the second oldest in her family so he is about 68 or 69.  He has three grown daughters, two of which are twins.  Talking to him is certainly a unique experience every time.  Sometimes before I even hand the phone to my mom, she knows it's him just by the expression on my face as I'm talking to him.  Once he talks to her, it could be 2 hours before she's done.

My other relative, Narissa, is a piece of work to say the least.  We are very glad she is not a part of our family anymore.  I always tend to think of her and what she did around the holidays b/c we get together with her family.  Narissa married my cousin Paul on a whim.  She claims she was pregnant so they decided to get married, but conveniently miscarried soon after they decided to marry.  They got married anyway and 9 months later my little cousin Aaron was born.  He was born in September and that next Christmas gathering, which happen to be in January that year, she sat on my couch and starting crying at the fact that she was pregnant again.  She has a son from a previous relationship so this would make child number 3 for her.  I didn't like her to begin with so this made me mad.  After Nathan was born, I would babysit for them occasionally.  Most of the time I would go to their house and then stay the night since they came back late.  One time, she wrote me a check for $25 and when I went to cash it, it bounced b/c she had cleaned out their checking account.  This charged my account the $25 plus the $7 bouncing fee.  I was beyond livid.  Long story short, a couple years later, she was caught for stealing chemicals to make meth from a farm near by.  She was making this with her neighbor who had two daughters of his own.  She got 6 months in jail and my cousin Paul divorced her while she was in there.  Coincidentally, the day she was arrested, she was supposed to sign off parental rights to her first son.  I'm not sure if she ever did that or not.  Once she was out of jail, she was living in a Woman's Shelter and not long after she became pregnant again, this time with a daughter.  Last I knew, she had moved back to Utah, leaving her daughter behind as well as my two cousins.

Structure of mini-ethnography

I will begin my mini-ethnography by discussing how I related to my topic at the beginning of the project.  I think I will separate paragraphs by different observations and information.  I think it will be most effective this way.  I will also talk about how my opinions or views of the subculture changed throughout the process.  I will conclude by giving my final opinion on the subculture and prove the stereotypes wrong.  I think this will work best because it covers all the information in a logical, sensical way.  It makes sense and will help the reader move along while reading the piece.

Glossary

There aren't a lot of general words that my subculture uses.  They are all specific to the type of job the person does.  People that work at the front desk will use terms like "buzz people in" or "do mail".  "Doing mail" consists of going through the mail that has come in for that day and checking each one to make sure that that person still lives at the dorm the mail was sent to.  This also includes checking in packages for people.  Checking in packages is a lot more work than checking mail.  When they do packages they have to write a number on the package and then fill out on a sheet of paper when the package arrived, the number, and the person who checked it in.  Then the person that received the package has to bring their package notice down and sign the paper and date it when they pick it up.  Other jobs, such as those that work in the library cafe, have many many terms that mainly they only know what means.  

American Tongues

Question #1: I'm not sure I would do anything differently.  I really liked how they have it set up and put together.  I liked how they asked people in the different regions about the words they use that no one else uses.  I also like how they compared the regions.  They asked people what they thought of other regions and how their region was better or worse.  They addressed a lot of stereotypes.  I also liked that because it brought that to other people's attention.

Question #2: I think that maybe the midwest (IN, OH, IL) was a little underrepresented.  I think they addressed the south and the east coast a lot more than the midwest and the west coast.  They are the more stereotyped people but I think it would've been interesting to hear what people think of the region I live in.

Question #3: I think language tells a lot about people before you even get to know them.  I think generally people from the south get pegged as "hillbillies" or "red necks" because of the way they talk.  They could be the most intelligent person but as soon as they start speaking in a southern accent, people tend to automatically think less of them.  They also pointed out that when you travel to different parts of the country, you should change the way you talk so people don't make assumptions.

Week 9

I think the hardest thing so far has been the research aspect.  I haven't had any trouble finding people to interview.  That has definitely been the easiest.  If I could start over, I would've decided on this topic from the beginning.  I had a hard time getting started with this project because my topic was too specific at the beginning.  If I had broadened it to what it is now, it wouldn't have been so hard.  Keeping a blog has kept my information fresh in my memory from week to week and has at some points helped me figure out different aspects of my project.  I will be able to look back and see what I had said earlier about different parts and it will remind me of things I had thought of earlier and possibly forgotten.

Mini ethnography

I think my readers will care about this issue because they may be in the same situation at some point during their college years.  By reading this, they may find out that working while going to school is a lot harder than they thought.  Students that are already working may find ways to organize their life differently than they currently are.  My readers may want to know what the best way to go about working is.  Some may find it easier to work on campus, and others may need more money and working on campus may not get enough for them.  There are regulations for the amount of hours a student can work on campus so some students go off campus so they can earn more money.  My readers will most likely already know the reasons behind most working college students.  Some work because they want extra money while others work simply so they can afford another semester.  Then there are those in between that want to help out their parents or begin saving or repaying loans so they don't have to deal with as much of it later in life.  I want my readers to learn the best way to combine working, school, and their social life.  Just because they decide to work, doesn't mean they have to give up their social life entirely.  They may have to make adjustments but it can be done.  They also need to know how to get their work done for school.  Some students choose to take an extra shift at work instead of going to class and this can hurt you in the long run.  The students that are doing that are most likely doing it so they can afford another semester of school, but if they flunk out of college all together, they won't have to worry about paying for another semester.  I think my readers will be fairly easily persuaded.  There are many pros and cons but none are terrible.  They will just have to find out what works best for them and go with that.  Some students can handle working a full-time job and going to school full-time.  Others won't be able to, some won't even be able to handle working all together.  It's just a matter or preference and how much you are willing to dedicate to it.

Observing

One theme i've seen is that working while in college either forces students to be more organized or becomes a bigger problem than it's worth.  Some students said that when they started working they noticed that their grades slipped a little bit.  Some of them figured out how to plan out their days so that they would be able to get everything done.  For those that didn't figure this out, they were forced to stop working because they would've continued getting bad grades and would've had the possibility of failing out of school.  I am still an outsider because I don't work while in school but I now know more about how to properly plan my day if I were to start working.  Nothing has changed about my position in the 8 weeks I have been doing this.  I have considered working somewhere off campus a couple times but I don't have a car here so I would have to rely on the MITS bus system and sometimes they aren't reliable.

Contribution

I am not sure what I can give to my subculture.  I could possibly help students make their decisions as to whether or not they want to work during school.  I would be able to give them facts and statistics to back up my recommendation.  I don't think I could help people that are already working.  Maybe I could help them figure out how to balance their work and school responsibilities.  

Survey

Please take this survey:

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=j5mdpbeb74creao550095

Groundwork

When I first moved into my dorm, I had no idea what the people at the front desk did. After we were here for a little while, I started needing information and such and whenever I would ask anyone, they would tell me to go ask the front desk. After a while, I finally went down there and found out that some of the people that live on my floor actually work the front desk. This was the main reason I started going down to the front desk and talking to people. The more time I spent down there, the more I got to know what all went on "behind the scenes". I have become good friends with most of the people that work the desk. This makes it easier for me to get information and have the truth come out about what they really do.

I feel comfortable when I'm down visiting the front desk. There are couches down there that makes it feel more inviting. There are always people down there as well so it makes it feel normal to be down there. When there aren't any people down there and I don't really know the person working the desk, I feel somewhat uncomfortable. When I know the person, I can come up with things to talk about; when I don't know the person that well, I feel like it's tough coming up with topics to talk about.

I am still an outsider because I do not work the desk. Even if I interviewed everyone and attempted to get to know everything there was to do, I still wouldn't have the full experience because I am only observing, not actually having to do the work. They normally have a 3-4 hour work schedule so that means they have to sit down there and, at some times, do absolutely nothing for 4 hours. Even if I stayed down there the entire time someone is working, it still wouldn't be the same. Another aspect of working the front desk is when you have to work from midnight to 7. This is different than the normal working routine because they have to sit out in the lobby area and swipe everyone's card in as they come back from partying or whatnot. This also means that they have to deal with drunk people on a pretty normal basis.

Culture Shock

I haven't been out of Indiana very much but one place that does stick out in my mind is when I went to Phoenix, AZ during winter break of my freshman year of high school.  This trip was a trip of many firsts.  It was the first time I had ridden an airplane and really the first time I had been away from home for an extended period of time.  When we arrived one early morning in December, I remember looking out the window on our ride back to the hotel and thinking that I was definitely not in Indiana any more.  There were a lot more homeless people and just the overall feel of Phoenix was different.

Finishing up

In order to finish my mini ethnography, I need to interview more people.  I have a few done but I need more to make the paper more interesting.  I'm not sure what kind of research I can do for my paper.  There really isn't any information other than interviews and observations that would help me.  I'm a little concerned about using this as my subgroup.  I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to complete all the assignments if I don't have anything to research.  Yet I don't have a back up to write about so...I feel kind of stuck.  I don't know how I'm going to complete the annotated bibliography if there is nothing I can research.

The band room

As I walk into the band room, the all too familiar smell hits me.  I can't quite explain exactly what the smell is, most likely because it is a compilation of many, many smells.  This smell usually appears half way through the season which is July to October.  It is a mixture of dirty socks, moldy notebooks from all the practices out in the rain, old water bottles left behind, among many other things.  The smell never seems to go away no matter how much you spray or attempt to freshen it up.  It just comes in different intensities.  At the beginning of the season it appears to be dormant, but really it's just not a prominent.  Once it has become strong enough to recognize, it doesn't go away until bout mid January after the room has been thoroughly cleaned over winter break.

In addition to the smells of the band room, another thing you would notice almost immediately is what looks like an explosion of clothing all over.  People seem to constantly leave articles of clothing in the band room, never seeming to remember to get them the next day.  They just sit there and gather with the other lost and never found clothes.  This ranges from socks to shirts to nice dress shoes.  I don't understand how people can forget these and not know it, but they never seem to go away and it happens every year.  The piles just move around the room in an attempt to "clean up" the room.

Depending on when you enter the room, the sound can be overwhelming.  When all two-hundred-some students are in the band room, the sound is almost deafening, and this is when they are simply talking and carrying on conversations.  When we all start playing, the sound is amplified by at least one hundred percent.  It is not possible to carry on any form of conversation while the band is playing, you must simply wait until we are done.

Dogtown and Z-boys

I think this is an ethnographic study because they went and interviewed people and researched the past behaviors of them.  They did rely heavily on interviews but there was still some research involved.

The people being interviewed were the people that were part of dogtown.  They were more or less the creators of it.  They moved the story along by telling stories of their experiences in chronological order.  They would tell a story and then progress a few months then tell another story.  They gave us an insider's look into that culture.  This documentary would've been completely different if they hadn't had the first hand accounts of what happened.  It made it more believable hearing it from the people that were there and involved in it.

Most of the people interviewed gave off a sort of "I don't care" attitude at the time.  They did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and they really didn't care what anyone else thought.  At one point, one of the guys said that if they got caught skating in an empty swimming pool, they would go back the next day and figure out how they could get away with it again.  I thought that the fact that no one else was allowed to join them unless everyone agreed on it was interesting.  It shows that they have rules and that no just everyone can join.

The documentary is structured in chronological order.  They were telling a story but incorporating interviews and research into it to make it more interesting.  I thought this helped my understanding of it because, again, having the interviews made it seem more real and true.

Some of my stereotypes about skateboarders held true throughout the movie.  I think that they are more free spirited and live on the edge more than other people.  Some of the things that they talked about reinforced my thinking such as trying to avoid the cops again and not caring what any one else thought.

Assumptions?

There are several general conclusions I have about my subculture right now.  One of them is that they are all older than freshman.  To work at the desk you have to be a sophomore or older.  Another conclusion would be that, with a few exceptions, everyone that works the desk lives in the building.  There are a few people that work there that don't live there anymore but lived there previously.  I think that these few general conclusions would apply to all of the other front desks in the other buildings.  There is criteria the workers have to meet so that would make it nearly the same everywhere.  One thing that could change or differ would the friendliness of the people that work the desk.  Some places may have more friendly people than others.  Another reason they would differ would the that the people hiring them are different.  They all have different personalities so they would want to hire people that work best with their personalities.  this would cause each building to be slightly different.

Privileges

My privileges by my own effort:

• being accepted to a good teaching school thanks to my hard work and good grades during high school
• money to buy things because of working during high school
• good teaching connections because of my persistance and work ethic
• good reccomendations for jobs and scholarships because of my personalilty and reputation
• good friends because of an effort on my part to socialize

Privileges with no effort:

• 19 years old
• born into a financially secure family
• going to a good school system during grade school
• being born an American citizen- all opportunities and rights available to me
• living in the suburbs- neighborhoods and feel safer
• living in a lower middle class family- more opportunties than some but not as much as others
• being a female in the US- much more freedom than in other countries
• not being forced into one religion or the other- ability to make my own decisions

These privileges may effect my fieldwork by letting me understand some of the people I will be observing more. The people I will be observing are about the same age as me, they will be about a year older. This may help me because I have some of the same interests as them and understand some of the things they will talk about.

Summary of Project

I have recently decided to change the subculture I will be exploring.  I had previously thought about writing about my high  school marching band but thought that I was too much of an insider to properly write about it.  I have since decided to write about the people that work at the front desk of my dorm tower.  I have no interviewed anyone yet for this project but I have informally observed some of them.  I plan to ask them what they do at the desk, why they wanted to work there, what kind of activities they do on the weekends or during times they aren't working, and just find out some general background information like what they're interested in, their majors, what year they are, etc.  There isn't really any research I can do on this topic.  The only research I could do would be to find out who the previous workers were and possibly talk to them to widen my study.

Yes, I do think that there is a difference between academic and nonacademic research.  I would consider academic research when you are looking in books or print sources.  This would also include anything done by a "famous" person or expert on the topic.  Nonacademic research would be observing and informal experiments.  It would be like something I would be able to do.

Fieldsite

The topic I'm choosing to write about is my high school marching band.  I was in band for all four years of high school.  The possible field sites I could use is the band field, the band room, and the buses.  Through my many years of being in band, the one thing that stands out in my mind is the smell of the band room.  Over the course of the three months of marching band season, the smell increased exponentially.  During band camp, the smell would start.  People would leave their smelly shoes and socks in their lockers over night and it would smell up the entire band room.  Once competitions started, the smell continued to get worse.  People would forget clothing in the room and it would just sit and fester.  Some of the things I hope to discover would be more about the people in the band and the different interests they have.  I already know that we have a lot of different people. including cheerleaders and homecoming kings and queens, but I know there is going to people involved in things I'm not aware of.  

Problems?

There are many stereotypes associated with marching bands. Some of the over used ones are "band geek" and "band nerd" among others. There are also the references to the American Pie movies regarding band camp. Then there are more specific steroetypes within the band itself. For instance, the flute section generally gets a stereotype of whinny, "prissy" girls. If there are any boys in the section, they generally get typed as gay. A problem I'm going to have to work at is being too close to my subject. Since I was in band for four years, I will know a lot more than the average person will. I'm going to have to work at making sure I explain things properly for everyone to understand. I don't think I will have a problem with people being unwilling to talk about their experiences. For the most part, the people that are in band, enjoy being there for one reason or another. It may not be because they specifically enjoy marching band or playing an instrument, it may be because they enjoy the social aspect of it.

Analyzing the band

The subculture I'm thinking about is my high school marching band. Some methods I think will be beneficial to my research are interviews, surveys, and experience. Over the course of the four years I was in marching band, there were about 210 people each year so I will have a wide variety of people to choose from. I also still keep in touch with some people that are still in high school so I will be able to ask them. The people that are and were in there are a wide variety of ages so I will be able to get different aspects and opinions of the same activities. I may also be able to make up surveys to gather a general opinion of some topics. I was in marching band for all four years of high school so I may be also able to use my own experience.

I'm not sure I will be able to use many books and documents for my research because it most likely wouldn't have useful information. Marching band is something you have to experience to fully understand. The only paper sources I may be able to use would be newspaper articles written about my band. This would give another opinion as well about the program and everything that is involved in it.

There are many rituals and behaviors, etc that people in marching band have. They are also very different depending on each person and the musical section they beliong to. Different sections have different rituals and rules they are required to follow. From there that even turns into bigger sections. So the flute section might have a specific rule to follow but the overall woodwind section has rules to follow as well. Then there are the rules of the overall band. Our directors had specific rules for us to follow.

I'm awake...what more do you want?

As I lay in my bed, enjoying the sugar plums dancing in my head, I am rudely interrupted by a sudden loud ringing noise.  It resembles a phone ringing but the sound is all too familiar to me, it's the sound of my alarm going off.  Surely it can't be this early already.  I feel like I just fell asleep, there is no way it's 8 o'clock in the morning already.  I roll over to turn off the alarm and glance at the clock on the microwave, just to make sure my alarm wasn't wrong, secretly hoping it was.  Sure enough it read 8 a.m.  Darn it, this means I have to get up.  I very carefully and somewhat magically climb down from my lofted bed and take one last look at the clock to make sure I hadn't read it incorrectly.  Nope, it's 8:02 now.  I scrounge around in the dark to find my keys and ID, very quietly as to not awaken my much more fortunate roommate who has the privilege of being asleep still.  I find them and unlock and open the door, only to be greeted by a much too bright fluorescent light.  I begin my trek down the long hallway to the bathroom to begin my day, at 8:05 in the morning.

Editing vs. Revising

I was required to write a research paper the last semester of my senior year in high school.  I choose to write about the problems with No Child Left Behind.  I had to research all my information before I could do anything.  I printed off tons of info and highlighted what I thought was important or I could use later.  We had class time to do this but I ended up doing a lot of it at home, especially typing.  While I was at school, we had to sit in the computer lab and work.  I found this distracting because I felt like I couldn't focus with all the other people in there.  When I was at home, I would have music playing quietly in the background.  Once I finished researching, I had to write the paper.  While I was writing the paper, I found I couldn't have any background noise at all.  I would find myself off track or distracted if I tried to listen to music or watch television while writing my paper.  For this reason, I did most of my typing at home where it was quiet.

I think the difference between editing and revising papers is the amount of errors you are looking for.  I think of editing as thoroughly reading the paper and making specific corrections or suggestions like "move this sentence up and talk more about how this happened".  Revising would be more of skimming or quickly reading the paper and making more vague correction suggestions such as "add more information".