Portfolio Link

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Final Post

So, I guess this will be my last Blog post for this semester now that my first year of college is wrapping up. School, will end and I will go back to work until September, all the while probably wishing I was still in school so I didn't have to be at work. But while I am there, crushed by wave after wave of tourists rabid for seafood, I'll think about what I learned from doing my ethnography. I'll think about people and sub-cultures we can see everyday and never realize that we are looking at a culture. I am 15 pages deep in my final paper now. I wrote about the gym here at BSU, the one I force myself to go to a few times a week. The purpose of this project was because I wanted to see why people pushed themselves to work their bodies, to sweat and drain themselves even when on the surface they already looked healthy and trim. This essay was pretty easy for me because the gym is an easy place to observe without being totally obvious about it. People were friendly, and some of the interviews I got were really interesting as well. To wrap this up, I am glad the spot I chose worked out so well.

Nickle and Dimed

The readings this week that stuck out to me most were called:  Nickled and Dimed and The Working Mind. Nickled and Dimed which is a story about a woman trying to learn how some families surive on only minimum wage jobs. Truth is, they hardly do. It's nearly impossible for a family to solely live comfortably off of only minimum wage jobs. As the daughter of a fisheman and paraprofessional I can understand how people worry about living when it comes to saving money. My parents both work seasonal jobs, for three months in the summer my mother can't bring home a paycheck and in the winter my father can't fish, lobster or captain the whale watching boats. Our winter salary depends heavily on his job plowing the highways for the state, and so it depends on the snow falling enough for him to get some hours in. Living on a minimum wage sucks. I work hard all summer for it, plus great tips at Woods Seafood and even at 19 I know that no matter how good the pay seems now, I can never survive off of it. I've always lived a comfortable life, but that is because both my parents, hard working individuals with no college degree which brings me to The Working Mind. My father works very hard, can repair anything, read the weather patterns and has some degree of electrical wiring knowledge. He spent one semester at college and was a struggling student all his life for he suffered from dyslexia. My mother also did not even attend college but works to help several students daily in grade K-5. So both these readings I could easily connect to and understand.

Interviews

Reading Nicole Williams essay on her interview process at the bowling alley was done in a very interesting way. Instead of reading about a typical Q&A process the author uses a different approach in her writing where she merely puts down the conversations between herself and women in the bowling leagues without making it seem like I was reading an interview. Through one woman talking who is an experienced member of the bowling alley we are given a much broader view of the establishment as a whole and other members that take part regularly in the bowling alley. Interviews are a great was to get to the nitty gritty details of a place because more often then not people who've been there for years will probably have no problem telling you their pros and cons of a certain place. A great example of a casual but informative interview is from Hank Green a member of the Youtube famous duo the Nerd Fighters or VlogBrothers. Below is a video of Hank interviewing his local mayor:

Julius Caesar bowled?

       I never realized before reading Nicole Williams paper on her interviewing experience at her local bowling alley, the popularity of bowling in America, nor the ancient routes of the sport I once only associated with old men in matching powder blue shirts. As an avid reader of both Egyptian and Roman history never once have I some across any textual or pictorial evidence of the pharaohs or Caesars  bowling. According to Discovery, stone ball remains were unearthed 57 miles away from Cairo, capital of both present and ancient Egypt.

       In addition to the ancient forms of bowling balls the discovery of pre-disco bowling lanes were unearthed as well. Almost the same size length and width wise as the modern bowler would be faced with today. The Egyptians however used two balls of different sizes (today in case you are unaware, we use two balls of the same size but the weights vary.) I found it very interesting that this sport could trace its beginnings back so far to two great and famous civilizations. Makes the sport feel a lot more cultural to me than ever before.

Link to the unearthing details: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/07/25/game_arc.html?category=archaeology

Website Post

Link to my midyear portfolio for English 102

http://m1oreilly.weebly.com/

A Writer's Notebook

                                                                
The reading for this week in my English class talked of a writer and her connection to her notebook. It was a crucial tool like the log books were for the truckers in Friday Night at Iowa 80, and just as important to their professions. As an English major I've taken several creative writing courses before, but I've never taken a notepad with me, though if inspiration strikes and I have my laptop available I will type a few ideas before I can lose them if I come across a thought that seems important. I've never done research on an environment before, and especially not on a culture of any sort. This essay made me realize how crucial it is going to be to have to carry some sort of way to accurately record what I feel, hear, see, smell etc while I am observing my area of study. Writing for creative and fictional purposes never posed this challenge for me because you only need to remember small pieces of information and then your imagination is to be trusted to do the other 90% of the work for you. This can't be the case when doing this project because this isn't a place for imagination, but accurate observation has to be the main goal. Notes are key.

The Bowling Alley

I found this reading of the bowling alley interesting because it highlighted on several different aspects of the place in great detail. The author introduces readers to social groups active in the alley at the particular time of day she went which included the employees and the bowling leagues she had been curious about in previous writings. 

It is explained how the lanes and teams are divided up and how the actual scoring system works. The author goes on to observe the prices of items such as; price to bowl, price of shoe rental etc....

In my essay on the BSU I plan on asking individuals who I know personally there about their work out routines included; how many days they come to the gym and whether or not they are consistent, what machines they typically use and how long they spend at each one. There is also a snack station at the gym that I have never before used so I will be curious to see what exactly a fitness place sells for snacks and drinks. Is it the typical sports event snack stand or is it protein packed and healthy?

BSU Gym

      What do I know about the gym at Bridgewater State University? It's a cold, downhill walk from hilltop Shea-Durgin freshmen dorms. The first time I went there was when I was still feverishly fighting my parents over whether or not I would be going to this place for the next four years. It was big, much bigger than the gym at my high school, and cleaner too. The exercise equipment was new, and there was a lot of it. Now that I actually go here I've been a few times with friends when the guilt of eating was too much to ignore. The routine would be the same; plug in my iPod and go on my machine and never make eye contact. With anyone.
      Questions I have about this place are pretty simplistic; why do people come here? For sports? To lose weight? Health reasons? The cute boy in the weight room? I want to know what compels certain individuals to work out several hours each and every day. How do they keep going? Or not get bored? I just want to know why people can just go on for hours without stopping.

Memoirs

      This week for English the assigned reading was about memoirs, the act of writing about one's life. I've always personally found these types of writings interesting because I can both read about the lives of people I admire or laugh over the humor inspired lives of comedians that seem to be filled with misadventures. This reading talked not only about entertaining one's audience but about personal responsibility as the author of such work. In a memoir the author is trusted to write about their past, and in doing so has to relive their lives, perhaps reliving things they would rather forget.
     I have always found memoirs to be tremendous works of courage for authors. This is because they are opening their past, their memories and their feelings to the public. Not only is this scary in itself but also the author must first think; 'Is my life important enough for people to even CARE about?'. It's facing that question and being able to actually answer it is what I find courageous about memoirs and why I find them so enjoyable to read.

Friday Night at Iowa 80

      The closest research I have ever done on truckers is listening to the background noise of advertisements for Ice Road Truckers until I read  Friday Night at Iowa 80. With low expectations on how strongly this required reading was going to hold my attention, I was surprised to find myself not only intrigued but even enjoying the paper as well. I found it to be an interesting twist on how truck stops are viewed by the truckers themselves.

      The whole idea of the log book being such a central object for the truckers, a symbol of both profit and loss for the truckers was what I found particularly interesting. How the men and women need to cheat the system in order to survive and how their paper logbooks are slowly but surely being outdated by computerized models made me feel worried for their ability to cheat and ensure at least enough profit to get by.