Final Portfolio

For my final project I observed a sorority here on campus. While studying the sorority, my goal was to find out what they really were like. Do they show the stereotype of a drinking, partying, unintelligent sorority? Or, is this sorority full of kind hearted girls who love each other and love to help out their community?

Before starting this project, I was extremely overwhelmed and did not really understand what I was supposed to do. But, in time I picked my topic, started observing and interviewing and finally got the hang of it. I really liked this project because it allowed me to see into a world that I was not a part of and I got to learn the stories of people I normally would not talk to.

Constructing my final paper was a little bit of a challenge for me only because I could not decide what information to cut out and what information I should keep. I ended up cutting out more information than I thought I would need to, but overall I am happy with the outcome.

When creating my website for my final portfolio, I had minimal problems and decided to devote 8 hours straight of my time to finishing it. I felt the motivation, so I took advantage of it while it lasted. I only had to move around a few things and add some things to fix the organization of the website. After rereading and perfecting it, I am proud of my final ethnography paper and my website.

Final Portfolio Link

Here is the link to my Final Portfolio Website:

http://j5kelley.weebly.com/index.html

Drafting & Revising

I learned a lot of useful information about drafting and revising. When you are writing a first draft, it needs to be explanitory becasue that will help you when you revise later one. Howver, drafting and freewriting are different but sometimes can be confused. Freewriting helps your writing flow better and is a way to get all your thoughts out quickly. Drafting is frees all information about a research topic you have in your brain.

When reading about revising, I found a few notes to be very helpful to me. When revising, you should not look at the bad things in your work, but focus on the strengths and make them stronger. start revising at the end and only add background information in when it is really necessary for the reader to know. I found the note, "write for yourself, then your reader" to be particularly helpful. For me, this will make my writing much easier. Instead of focusing on what others will think of my writing, I should just write for myself and it will tur out better. Wehn revising my own work, I use the note of writing and editing out loud. It helps me catch a lot of my mistakes when I hear them. Also, by hearing myself, I can make sure that my words flow better and make sense.

Interviewing & How to Listen

After reading serveal pages from my textbook, I learned valubable information about how I should conduct an interview. The first section discusses how to ask questions when conducting an interview. There are two tyes of interview questions: closed questions and open questions.

The book describes closed questions as "like those we answer on application forms or in magazines." These kind of questions do have the setbacks of being easily answered using single phrases and can halt further conversation.

Open questions are questions that are open ended and required more than just single phrased answeres. When asking these kind of questions, an interview should be actively listening and engaged in the informant's answere becasue the answere to these question can spark future questions.

The second sections describe how to be a good listener when interviewing. Good listeners actively pay attention to what their informant is saying. They also do not interrupt their informant and they encourage their informant with verbal acknowledgments to keep the conversation flowing.

The final sections give great examples of how to listen and what a succesful interview looks like usuing helpful techniques like balancing the writer's voice and the informants vioce when documenting and writing about the interview. The examples also show to let the informant remain in the forground telling their story as the main focus.

I founf this reading to be really helpful in guiding me in the right direction in conducting my interview and I will definitely use the techniques stated.

Bowling Interview

This essay was a lot different than the pervious one. In this essay there was not a lot of descriptive details of the surrounding or people. However, this essay was still full of interesting facts. The first paragraph was full of interesting facts about bowling; from fun facts like that bowling is the most widely played sport (I did not even know bowling was considered a sport!) to the history of bowling. I thought it was really sweet that mothers and their children played together. The author obtained good information from the people she was interviewing, like how old they were when they started bowling and how long they have been doing it. even though there was not too much descriptive detail, I still felt like I was there. For example, I got the vibe of how the people were just from how they answered question and talked. The subtitles were helpful becasue I could already have an idea about what was in that section before I read it. It also helped break the paper up. However, the conclusion seemed to be glued onto the last paragraph and did not really fit. I think a longer conclusion in a seperate paragraph would have been a better choice. Other than that, I thought that the essay was pretty good!

Powerpoint Group Progress

Although today was the first day of our powerpoint presentation assignment, my group made a lot of progress. Our topic is about incorporating visuals in documents. So far, we have found useful information and have divided it up into specific topics that we find to be the most important. Instead of working on each topic individually, my group is going to work together. Today we took notes on the information we collected and figured out how to organize it. We also came up with a plan for next class on how we are going to create our powerpoint and what we need to accomplish. My group already knows valuable information about public speaking and presenting so I believe that this project will be a success.

PORTFOLIO

Here is the link to my English 102 Portfolio website:

http://www.j5kelley.weebly.com/

15 Minutes of Observing ECC

February 16, 2011

12:04pm

ECC

·         Big brightly lit room with a kitchen at the furthest part of the room.

·         A giant grayish curtain covers half of the kitchen entrance from ceiling to floor.

·         Pale yellow angular walls, half white and windows from the floor to the ceiling. Transparent white blinds that let a lot of sun in.

·         14 flying saucer shaped lights scattered along the ceiling in no particular pattern

·         Big silver clock in the center of the yellow wall will roman numerals, difficult for me to read.

·         Many round yellow tables with gray chairs. Hard to navigate through to find a seat. Kind of like a maze.

·         Smells like a mixture of all kinds of food; ketchup, fries, grilled cheese, veggies, fruit, coffee and many other foods. The smell makes me feel sick. It’s disgusting.

·         Not crowded.

·         Fuzzy radio playing some oldies station is background noise.

·         One red haired, freckled girl with a pink shirt and black pants is on her cell phone complaining about her geometry class and how she did not do well on a quiz. She wants to drop the class. People stare at her because she is talking very loud.

·         Two girls sit to the left of me. One with dark brown hair and a white winter jacket with fur hood. The other girl is blonde and has a red BSU sweatshirt on…she must be freezing. They are talking about a girl named Beth and how Beth doesn’t answer their text messages, “that’s just Beth for you” says the girl with the dark brown hair while the other girl texts on her cell phone.

·         A crowd of what looks like sports girls walked in. They all have their hair in high ponytails. They are very loud and laughing, but I can’t pick up on what they are saying.

·         A boy in a green shirt with black curly hair and a girl with a plaid, gray shirt and boots sit at a table near me. The boy stands there awkwardly waiting for the girl to take her coat off before they go up to get food. I can’t tell if they are dating…I don’t think so.

·         The girls to the left of me are now talking about how some boy name John has a new girlfriend until the dark haired girl yells “LEAH!” at a short girl in a green jacket and a backpack that is twice the size of her. That must hurt her back really badly.

·         A boy in a blue and black plaid shirt explains to his friend, who is sporting a dark leather jacket and dark wash jeans, that the line to get food was “a long ass line”

I found observing to be surprisingly difficult. I was definitely self conscious while observing people because they would stare at me weird, most likely becasue I was starring at them weird! We're all guilty of people watching sometimes but I found this challenging because I actually had to record my thoughts and observations. In a way I found this excercise to be kind of fun because it gave me a reason eavesdrop on people's conversations. After observing, I thought about how weird it would be if I was being observed and I never would know! Overall, I founf this helpful for me to get a good sense about what I will have to do for my project when my observations are critical to the outcome of my paper.

This is a link to BSU's website and gives some information about ECC http://www.bridgew.edu/Tour/ecc.cfm

Slide, Roll, Slam

After reading Slide, Roll, Slam, I was really impressed with all the descriptive details used; not only of the building, but of the people and what they were wearing. I could picture what the bowling alley looked like in my head. I also liked how the writer's feelings and thoughts were incorporated into the piece. I was surprised to learn how there were many other types of bowling leagues besides women and men. Theres kids under 5 years old and over five years old, couples leagues, handicap and special needs leagues. I liked how there was also background information, like how there were hourly specials for kids on school vacation, what foods and snacks were on the menu, and even what was on the television at the time. Also, the team names were really funny! I was slightly concerned whether this essay would be interesting or not because it was about a bowling alley, but I found myself able to picture myself in the alley! Overall, I enjoyed reading this essay.

PC

I plan on doing my project on the Program Committee at Bridgewater State University. I know that the mission of PC is to provide events and activities on campus. PC organizes events like bingo, karaoke, Open Mic Night, Homecoming, Springfest, trips off campus, events to educate about culture, and basically all the other social activities on campus. I know that PC is divided up into smaller subcommittees that focus on each of the different kinds of events on campus.

What I want to know about PC is what are all the different subcommittees? What does each subcommittee consist of? After knowing this information I can focus on the specific subcommittee that I want to do my project on.

Iowa 80

I really enjoyed reading Iowa 80. I was surprised by how awesome a truck stop could be. Never in my life would I ever think that a truck stop would be equipped with a mall, restaurants and a food store. After reading this I actually visited the truck stop's website and found out that they carry over 50,000 items in their store and serve 5,000 customers per day! I was also surprised reading about the many stories told by the truck drivers and employees of Iowa 80 becasue every person that was interviewed had a unique story to tell. My idea of a typical truck stop was diminished after reading Iowa 80 and I think it would be fun to visit there someday.

Link to Iowa 80's Website!