Portfolio Link

http://moreilly16.weebly.com/

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.