Final Progress

Now that the semester is coming to an end, I am wrapping up all of my work for the semester and working towards completing my final ehtnography project. I have done my secondary research, interview, and observations and now I am putting it all together. I have finished my paper by rearranging, cutting out, and adding important information. Now the hard part is putting it all together on my website. I am almost finished, I just need to type up my introduction and add a few more things to complete my layout. I am confident on how it is turning out and cannnot wait to show my final piece. Then all that is left to do is prepare for my final presentation. I hope all of my hard work pays off and you enjoy my final project/portfolio.

A Better Look at Observation

Observing is a way to describe the atmosphere to your audience. It provides in-depth details that will paint a picture for the reader and will help them imagine the place the person is describing. In Chantelle's Lay of the Land essay, she separated her observations in chronological order from when she first arrived to when she was leaving. She first described the outside view of the daycare along with her path throughout. She mentioned how big it was from the outside and the beautiful the winding staircase was, adding some of her own opinions for example she stated, it must be for wealthy children because it looks even better than in the movies. Next she moved on to describe in unbelievable detail the people in the daycare. She expressed the appearance of the strawberry blonde teacher with a raspberry long sleeved turtleneck. I can see her picture in my head while reading this description. She describes the daycare room she is observing from the small, plastic blue chairs to the bright yellow walls, again adding in her assumptions and opinions when necessary. Finally she observes and describes the behavior of the children attending the preschool, how they learn, act and get along with one another, again illustrating with many different features. In observing, she got a second outlook and broke her stereotype of young children. She ended up learning new things from the reactions and responses of the children.

Constructing a Successful Interview

In the reading, it discussed the correct strategies of asking and responding to an interview in order to get as much out of it as possible. The reading referred to this as learning to ask and learning to listen during an interview. It explained the importance of structuralism and flexibly, the process of having predetermined questions before the interview and the ability to be flexible and follow your informant's lead. You always need to be aware and expect the unexpected.

There are two different kinds of questions to be asked during interviews, open and closed. Open questions are more conversational and let the informant know your interested in what they are saying which ultimately makes them more comfortable. Closed questions are questions that require a little research to be done allowing you to ask the right questions in the interview. The reading also talked about how to listen intently during an interview. Using body language (eye contact, no fiddling) and not interrupting while the informant is talking lets them know you are encouraging and acknowledging their responses and interested in what they are saying.

The reading also displayed a few examples of good interview questions and answers and how to change them to essay format, also known as oral histories. It explained how to balance the informants voice and the interviewer's descriptions. You want to use many details and keep yourself in the background, doing this will allow the informant to tell their story.

Interview

In the interview of the Hanover Bowladrome by Nicole Williams, she made it more than just an interview on a piece of paper, she created a story using the form of interviewing. She provided much useful information about her site but also incorporated other background information about her topic that may be interesting for the readers to begin her paper. She also found a way of balancing out the different people she chose to talk to. She separated it by groups almost, for example she talked to someone in the woman's league, a person from the men's league, the owner of the bowling alley, and a visitor just simply bowling for fun. This gave different views and perspectives of the bowling alley and added contrast to her paper. She applied much detail in her descriptions of the people she observed and talked to and she used direct quotes from her interview in her paper. She talked about the different leagues within the alley, how some play for fun and others for competition, how long they have been interested in the aspect of bowling, and how for some,it is a fun tradition that runs in the family. This paper portrayed a perfect example of how to create a good paper based on interviewing and will be very helpful in the writing of my future interview ethnography.


Attached is a link I found on tips for writing a good interview essay. I felt it had good points and would help in the beginning process of the interview ethnography.
http://www.customwritten.com/Writing/interview-essay.html

Group Presentation

For my presentation, my group's desired topic is design principle/document design. Although we just started working on it in class today, I feel we made good progress towards beginning the presentation. In class, we researched in the books offered and also found some websites online with very useful information for our specific topic. After doing a little research, we decided we would divide up the topic so we could do our own further research at home. After doing so, we would bring back our own results and put the entire power point together as a group in class on Friday.
The more narrow topic I chose inside of my broader topic is the Do's and Don'ts in document design. I collected and copied down helpful notes for my part of the presentation so I am prepared to put the final power point together with my group. All we need to do now is figure out what other element we can do for our presentation to add to the power point. So far, I feel confident in the work of my group and myself for this presentation and I think we will be right on task for our group presentation on design principle/document design this coming Monday.

Attached is a link for one of the useful websites we found on our topic.
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/designprinciples/Principles_of_Design.htm

Midterm Portfolio

http://shaelynsengl-102portfolio.weebly.com/index.html

Bear's Den

Notes:
-Wednesday, 1:30pm, busy lunch hour (everyone just got out of class or has a break)
-loud, a lot of talking and interacting between students and staff
-long lines, frustrated students (hungry)& staff because it is so busy
-all booths are taken (as usual)
-smells of pizza and tacos
-couple in Mexican food line. blonde curly hair, coach purse, black Ugg boots, north face jacket. Her boyfriend messy brown hair, gray Bridgewater sweat pants, black sweat shrit
-older lady in front of them (looked like she may work at the school) wearing business clothing, very indecisive
- employees, young man (student?) nice seemed to be people person smiling, brown hair & beard, older woman blonde & glasses (looked crabby) not friendly, can't wait to leave work.
- older women-careless, doesn't care how her food is executed just wants to get it done
-guy, food made to your liking



As I enter the commuter café also known as Bear's Den, around 1:30 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, I am flustered with the amount of people crowding the lines and enjoying their afternoon meal. My stomach had been growling since English class as I was craving the very popular, mouth watering chicken quesadilla prepared in the Mexican section of the dining hall. Unfortunately once I arrived, the line had at least 10 people in it, all frustrated by the long wait. As I waited anxiously for my turn to order, I happened to notice a couple holding hands in front of me. The girl seemed to be very well dressed to impress, with curly golden locks, a couch purse, black Ugg boots with a matching black North face jacket. Her boyfriend seemed less concerned with his appearance. He had messy brown hair as if he had just rolled out of bed, gray sweatpants with the words Bridgewater State University embroided down the side and a black sweatshirt. In front of the couple, there was a rather middle aged woman wearing heels and dressed in a gray business casual ensemble who looked like she was having a little trouble figuring out what she wanted to order. Her constant head bobs, looking up and down at the menu and at the workers, made it obvious she was narrowing down her decision. As I grew closer to the front of the line, I started to examine how each worker made each order.

As I was observing, it became more clear who was the better quesadilla maker. An older, somewhat disturbed women with black glasses and short, blonde hair worked at the station and barely had enough energy to greet anyone with a "Hello". To her right, a younger man with brown hair and a beard, I think a student here at the college, always gave a wholehearted "Hi, What can I get for you?". I observed how each worker constructed their orders, I noticed the older woman sloppily place one scoop of chicken (not even enough to fill out the entire wrap) right in the middle leaving no chicken for the end pieces. While placing a small hand full of cheese directly on top of the chicken and a tiny amount jalapeño sauce to top off the order the way a one star restaurant would serve it. The younger man however perfectly executed the art of a quesadilla and actually completed the task with a smile on his face, almost as if he was proud of the accomplishment each time he made something. He had added the perfect amount of chicken spread it out over the entire wrap so every bite would have a piece of chicken as well as cheese and jalapeño sauce. It was clear who I wanted to make my quesadilla, but luck was not on my side that day. As I approached the station, the older woman let out a meek cry, "What do you want?" and with disappointment, I responded with my order. About 5 minutes later, a terribly cut, burnt quesadilla found its way to me while the person in front of me received a perfectly browned chicken quesadilla. All I could do was stare in jealousy as I was forced to accept and eat the horrible work of the old, bothered woman.