Ethnography Fieldwork

Earlier today my group and I met up outside the classroom for some fieldwork we have to complete for our Ethnography project. For a few minutes, we had absolutely no idea where to start. But then, we figured out how we were going to do this fieldwork. We knew that we had to go to certain places on campus to gather the data required. So, we planned the easiest route and headed of to the first destination.

The first place we headed was inside the building where our college's campus is held (I'm not placing the name here to keep the identity of the college a secret. A clue though is that there is a piece of architecture outside that lights up at night and half of it is in another language and it is also right next to the building we have our English class in.). More specifically, we headed to the downstairs lobby where I already have very fond memories involving literacy underlife that has to deal with music.

The reason why we couldn't head into the room where our school's anime club is held is because there was a class going on and anime club is later in the week and later in the day. In fact, most of what we knew as underlife involving music happens when it's warmer and later in the day. Though there was the anime opening and closing sing-a-longs and the music or music videos being shown on youtube in the lobby as well as the name-that-anime-tune contest.

We then visited the large tower where people are free to speak their minds (*cough* Crazy Preacher *cough*). There we saw nothing, nobody's crazy enough to stay outside too long in this weather, but on other days there are public music displays, people playing their guitar and such.

However, there was one thing that we thought up of that we haven't really discussed before for our musical topic: the ("robin") building where concerts are located. Yet, we couldn't get in since you need special access to the building at this time... for some reason. So we kind of people-watched to see who was going inside. I've seen a lot of musicians go inside and since class already started it was only the stragglers that rushed into the building.

Finally, we headed over to the S. Union where random people can play on the piano there. I've already had a lot happen there and I know it is a hotspot. The S. Union was crowded as always and I can remember the songs I've heard being played on that beautiful instrument which echos all over the building.

Those are the main locations on campus where music happens. We've noticed how people react to music at different times in the day, and with the weather. I also noticed there was a lot of people listening to their ipods and such on the way to class. One of my favorite past times, personally. This information will really help us once we get rolling with this project.

Reflective Blog Post On Literacy Narrative - Final

I have to say that this was probably the most difficult paper I've had in a very long time.

For the past few years, I had reached what I thought was a vertical wall in my potential as a writer whenever I had English school assignments. Now I know that this is not the case. The wall was just really steep. Took me a while to notice this too.

Everything was going fine for my rough draft. I was used to it - this was a process that's almost automatic for me now. Write a complete draft for the first due date and make sure the essay has only the grammatical errors that I missed. You see, I was taught for 5 years to get rid of as many mistakes as possible before the rough draft is even finished. Now, after that amount of time, I do a lot of this in my head. Again, the first due date was easy for me: automatic.

Then I was thrown for a loop. At first, I had no idea what our teacher was talking about when she gave us our revision homework. As a matter of fact, I didn't even touch on that at all. I edited my rough draft. The reason? I, for a while and still sometimes, consider revision and editing to be the same thing.

I did both revision and editing at the same time and also mainly in my head... before I even wrote it down on the rough draft. I always thought they were the one and the same. Hence, the very confused student in the 2nd row for 3 days of class.

Finally, I started to understand what I needed to do. So I tried it. I took the most general idea that I had in my narrative and I took another experience I've had with it and wrote my second draft. Yet, I was so unsure that I couldn't even bring myself to finish that draft. Also, I do consider this the first time that I've ever really done this deep of revision. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Therefore, I went back into my comfort zone. My rough draft. After all, if you had the choice of comfort zone or shaky land, wouldn't you choose the same thing? This time I did more revision than I originally did on it.

I then reached another issue. My rough draft was already close to the page limit.

Oh, thank you previous teachers for giving me the experience of rewording sentences so that my paper always fits the page limit. Trust me, I had to do a lot of this and it's always very difficult to figure it out. You have to think one way and then do a complete 180 the next second. It gives you a real headache by the end of the process.

Anyways, I finally got room to add only a small amount of the revision that I wanted to add. But then, I reached the limit again and I couldn't even reword my sentences to get more room. So, all that revision that I finally figured out, I couldn't put a lot of my new material into it. I couldn't add what this identity searching for me was like during high school and what I found to help me through it. I could only add a small amount about my video game experience and then I was out of room! It was a real bummer.

I've learned a lot through this paper, mainly the difference between revision and editing, and it's going to be real helpful for future papers. Still, I did not enjoy how difficult this was. I also was dead set against the revision we had to do before grudgingly accepting it as neutral territory.... Doesn't mean that I ended up liking it. At. All.

I'm willing to bet that there's a fair amount of students out there that have always considered revision and editing as one and the same. This could really hold them back as it did me (it was a total of a week and half for me to finally get it) and really stress them if they didn't have a complete rough draft by the first due date. I think that for my generation, hope I'm right on this theory, we need some more explanation on the differences between revision and editing. Other than that, throw them to the sharks. They'll swim. They might not like it (like me) but they'll get it.

Mapping Campus

Today we were given a homework assignment to find an area on campus that has a lot of objects or areas which literacy underlife events thrive. I chose the building where our school's anime club meet. Specifically, I chose the downstairs floor.

The stairs wind down, once you got used to the weird smell of the building which I have absolutely no idea how to describe, and you're met with the sight of people sitting in an open area which I refer to as a lobby. Chairs are placed everywhere in that small square area. People sit and work on homework, relax, or play strategic card games.

Once you sit down, you notice the vending machines that only come across as one thing: energy. Then you see the art on the walls, the elevators, the classrooms with their doors open, and the Anime Club chilling in the lobby area until a specific classroom opens up.

There is a cafe that people can sit in if they prefer that type of atmosphere with the coffee and the food. A nice area to go to relax at to think and have a great time for a small amount of time when life is busy and hectic.

Reflective Blog Post - Rants

A few days ago, I woke up and struggled to get out of bed for my last day of classes (for the week, at least) at 8:30 am. Since I stayed up late the night before like any foolish student, I was exhausted. My body and mind were so tired that when we were given the chance to rant about anything, I literally did not want to think about it. You would think I would start complaining about waking up early or talk about wanting some more sleep. But, no - I just wanted to sit there in a state of nothingness.

Finally, I decided to rant about the most general idea I could think of in an attempt to stay in the sleepy haze I was in. I chose to rant about ranting. Predictable, yeah? However, that was a bad choice I made. Sometimes the most general topics can be the most thought-out ideas. I found that this was the case with ranting. Thankfully, I only wrote a paragraph so what I've thought about this topic was after 12 o'clock in the afternoon. Happy, happy day.

The first thought I had was about the stereotypes we place on ranting. Mainly, how most people should swallow their issues with something and how ranting is always seen in a negative light. I found, through my own experience, that any issue or complaints I had with something is the most important thing I should keep to myself. If I really, really don't like steak, suck it up - it's for dinner. If I'm throwing up, go to school and don't whine about it. Oh, I passed out again? Don't let the teachers make me go home - it's not worth it.

What I've figured out is that pressure from others to keep our complaints, and especially our rants, to ourselves soon evolves into our own selves telling us to stay quiet. Then I realized something else, I'm grouping rants and complaints as the same thing. This negative light we've placed on rants has actually begun to label a rant as a complaint. Yet, rants are so much longer and unorganized than one-sentenced or one-paragraphed complaints.

I find that real rants are the ones that take minutes to finish. They're the ones that have people throwing their arms all over the place. The energy and time are caused by one emotion: passion. I'm passionate about Harry Potter (it's detailed writing style more than anything else), creative writing, economic features found inside video games and much more. These topics have led me to rant, argue, and debate with someone else over the issue. it takes me ten minutes to really let the topic go.

that is the main difference from a complaint and a rant. A rant you just don't want to let go of while a complaint is easily forgotten. Now that I've finished my rant involving more than just ranting, I want to show you how funny rants can be.

Pachelbel Rant

Midterm Mentor Text Post

                As my group gathered outside of the library, most of us had only a general idea of what type of mentor text we were looking for. All of us knew that the mentor text we chose must involve writing or creativity in some shape or form. Other than that, we were all clueless…. Or at least I was.

                We knew that the mentor text must be in paper form, hence the reason why we had to go to a library of all places. Honestly, is there anywhere else you could think of that would have books, journals, newspapers, and magazines all in one place? Though, we all realized something: we haven’t been in the library enough to know what floor all these were on. This is probably the main reason why librarians are there, to help those clueless enough not to find their way around a 10 floor library.

Three cheers for librarians!

                Amazingly, we only figured out to read the signs about 3 minutes into us just standing next to the information desk. I’m glad it wasn’t longer, that would’ve been embarrassing. So, my group and I made our way up to the 2^nd floor and found ourselves wandering over to the periodicals. Reason? The periodical section seemed like the biggest section on the floor. Ah, the logic of simple-minded teenagers. 

                There we were, skimming through the rows and rows of books, very thick books too, and finding everything from chemistry to geometry. Yet, we couldn’t spot anything involving writing or creativity in any way, shape or form. Did I mention that they were all very thick books, too? Finally, we spotted a pile of magazines stuck in the middle of huge, enormous, GIGANTIC books. I was the first to zoom over to them in the hope that they’ll have something to do with what we need. Please, for the love of whoever’s up there, please be what we need.

I have to say that the top magazine was very misleading when it came to what the pile was about.

                Out of that pile of Quality Progress magazines, we found two articles that could be of use.

                The first one was a bust. Only vaguely, and with great difficulty, could we have linked it back to anything of use. The second one was much, much better. The article was called “Up and Away” in the June 2012 magazine of Quality Progress. In summary, this article talked about how to add more creativity into work. All of us agreed that the audience was definitely employees and bosses of businesses. Still, we learned a lot about the process of group creativity in the workforce that we can add to our jobs-of-the-future.

                Now this is where we sat and crunched down to do our work. The article was jammed tight with information and a short and simple, but quite effective writing style. Thus, it was decided that note taking was required…. Fudgesicle. 

These were just pages 18 to 24 in the magazine.

Don’t be intimidated by how many pages I have for notes. Some say I’m on the verge of becoming OCD.

                After a fair amount of time just taking turns reading the 6 pages (It didn’t seem that long – I swear!), we finally had an understanding not only for the information but for the writing style the author used. This is definitely something we can use in our futures. Anyways, we had to bring up the instructions for our project because, mainly, we forgot what we were supposed to do. Oops. 

                Then, we got down to the nitty-gritty and tried five minutes of writing in the style the author used. When I started, I found that I had a few seconds where I had to actually think about what I wanted to write. Ever get the moment where you’re faced with two things and you can’t choose between them? Yeah, that was me for about 30 wasted seconds. Yet, I got down to it and, man, did time fly! It only seemed like 3 minutes when one of my group members said that the five minutes were up. All I got through was one paragraph!

"There's a test you can take to see if video games are for you? Enter an online game and read the chat. You'll find that words are shortened, there are words you haven't even seen before and discussions that will have you looking on in shock. If you begin to understand some of the words and shortened sentences, the game will be a breeze. However, if everything's flying over your head, retreat. Now.

Only those who have the open...."

And that's how far I got before time ran out :)

                Afterwards, there was that momentary pause before we realized that we did everything we were supposed to do as a group. Thus, we packed up, placed the two magazines back, and headed for the exit as fast as possible! We all had things we had, or wanted to do, and we weren’t going to let one second go to waste!

                Now, what did I learn from all of this? I learned…. Ah, who am I kidding? I don’t want to write my reflection like that!

                The most creative thing one can do is adapt creativity to something you’d never expect it to be found in. I swear creativity’s like bacteria. I mean, how somebody cannot be engulfed by the boredom that an everyday job must have and think outside the box like this is incredible! I bow down in respect…. Repeatedly. This just saved me a lot of time for when I get older.

                I actually enjoyed the reading and writing style. I saw that she/he added a personal approach in the introduction and conclusion by addressing the reader. Then they sat back and let an instructional voice take over to present the information in the middle. Even then, I may have felt like I was sitting in a conference room but I never felt bored. It’s a miracle! Anyways, I found the introduction and conclusion a little similar to some of the writings I’ve done in the past. Though I’ve never taken an instructional voice until my rough draft of the literacy narrative… I think. Maybe I should have someone read it to make sure I’m not thinking of things that might not actually be there. That would be bad. Very bad.

                So, yeah. I plan on keeping those notes I took and even showing them to my parents, they might find them useful as well. Hoorah for notes, they’re much more handy than anyone would ever want them to be.