Final Project

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My Project

Finally! I am putting all the parts of my project together and I am excited to see how it will turn out. I deciding to take out the titles of each paper and turn all of them into one big essay. The part I am having the most trouble with is transitioning each paper into the next. Otherwise it is turning out well! Having worked on all of these papers over the semester, I am understanding how hard it must be to be a real-life ethnographer. It takes alot of dedication and hard work. Overall, I have enjoyed this project and I hope it is a good representation of the athletic training room!

Revision

The reading in the book talked about revising our ethnography essays. Revision itself is an essential part of any good essay because it allows you to clarify and communicate points that may have been unclear before. Successfull revision means that you should develop the strengths of the paper and not just focus on the weaknesses. It might be helpful to start at the end and work backwards, giving our reader backround material when they need it. All of this is what can help you to revise your current drafts of a paper. You should never just accept the first draft that comes out of the printer, but analyze it and keep revising until you have something that you are proud of.

Interviews

In reading about interviews, I have learned how they can help you to understand more about your subject than just conducting your own research. Asking open ended questions is the key to getting the most out of your subject that you are interviewing. These are questions that require more than a yes or no answer. A good reason for using open ended questions is that they allow you to make the interview more of a conversation and less of a Q and A session. "I Can Read I Can Write" was a good example of how to structure your paper so that it is not just a Q and A format. Her story flowed and seemed more like a conversation than an interview. Also, their answers might lead to more questions that you hadn't thought of before. Before you conduct your interview, be sure to have a list of questions that you are going to ask your subject. This way, you will be sure to remember exactly what you want to ask during the interview. Below is a link to a Charlie Sheen Interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5aSa4tmVNM

Interview Research

The piece I read this week about interviews at a bowladrome were a great way to get me to start to think about the interviews I will be conducting. The interviews done by the author showed how different the people there really were compared to the expectations she had prior to her visit. She talked about how she thought there wouldnt be any middle-aged women there because they would be busy with their kids, but there were plenty of mothers who decided to take their kids with them! Reading on, you find out how the alley is owned by a family but they still employ non-family members. The authors research is well done and it gives a good explanation of the bowling alley and the people in it.

Midterm Portfolio

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Notes

Second Floor of Library: Computer/Printer Area

Everyone at the tables is reading what looks like studying material or reading a book.

The people at the computers are either doing school work or surfing the web.

People keep walking around trying to find an open computer.

There is very little reaction between people and if there is, it is quiet.

Some girl has a bag of laundry.

The woman working the reference desk looks quite bored and doesn’t seem to be very alert.

Most of the adults that come through converse loudly to one another and don’t seem to honor the quiet rule of the library.

Overall, this site was uneventful. The lack of people I think, was due to the fact that I was observing in between classes. Between classes, everyone is moving around and people are scrambling to finish things or print out last minute assignments. Otherwise it was pretty much what I thought the library would be like; everyone working quietly and not really interacting.

Lay of the Land

This essay is full of great detail. If I had never been into a bowling alley before, this essay could perfectly describe what one looks, sounds, and feels like. The depth that this essay goes into really helps the reader to understand and feel a connection to this place and this story. I love how the people are described in great detail as well so that you can fully picture what they look like.
"The final member of the team is a man who is in his late 20’s or early 30’s and is wearing shorts, despite the cold weather outside, a HHH sleeveless shirt and has a gold hoop in his ear. HHH is a professional wrestler, so it is obvious that this man likes to watch wrestling. Wrestling starts at 8 o’clock on Monday nights, so he will probably be leaving in time to get home and watch." This was a great way to introduce the assumption she had about his possible love for wrestling. In this way, you can see how her assumption is backed up by the evidence that he is wearing a wrestling shirt.
Over all, it is a great description of a bowling alley and what you might find if you go to one during a leauge's bowling night.

Here is a link to what you might see if you went to a league or professional bowling match: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KahTSmW703w&feature=related

Things I Know and Questions I Have About My Research Site

My research site is going to be the athletic training room in the Tinsley center. What I know about the people that are involved and work in the trainers room is that they all have a passion for sports. This field of work focuses on sport related injuries and rehablilitation. The trainers have an extremely high knowledge base about the human body and how it works. This knowledge is used when they are trying to asses a particular injury. The athletes themselves are very diverse and come from many different backrounds. They are all from the same community of Bridgewater student-athletes, but yet they are bound to the close families that are their teammates and their sport itself.

While there are many aspects of the athletic training room that seem to be blatenly obvious, I still have many questions. Do the trainers themselves come from a sports related backround? What kinds of medicine (if any) have they been involved in before? Do any of them have families and how does that change the way they work? How do friends who may be teammates during one season and not during another season treat each other? Is there any heirarchy to the training room, meaning, does one team get special preference over another? I think that many more questions will appear as I continue with my research.

Blog Iowa 80

Once I read "Friday Night at Iowa 80," I realized how much I liked that kind of narrative writing. What interested me was that you can really get to know the people that he interviewed because you feel as if you are right there next to the author. Interviewing the men and women who eat sleep and breathe their work is probably the only way to get real, and accurate answers to the questions that you are dying to know the answer to. This was evident in this perticular story because even though the author did not get his questions answered at first, he kept listening and eventually they would let slip what he wanted to know. This story was a good example of ethnography and how one should go about gathering information about their subjects.