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
