Throughout this semester and class an emphasis was made on observing people through various lenses and communities, being conscious of bias and gaining overall field working skills. Field working involves objectively observing and understanding the perceptions and behaviors of people. Ethnography literally means, writing about people. Every single major writing assignment this semester has helped us and me, gain abilities in fieldworking.
The ethnography essay to me was one of the easier essays to write. The reason being that I had thought it through so much before typing a single letter. It was easy to find an avenue in which to study a community through, because of the fact that I was already a part of said community. Looking through Reddit and Instagram, the comments and posts, it was as if I was doing an everyday task. However as I was searching I had to make sure that I was observing and not partaking, it was somewhat hard. Like taking a lion out of the savannah and asking it to see its fellow lions go hunting and critique their ability. It was a weird experience, but also an eye opening one. There are many things that we see in our everyday lives that we find normal, and the same can be said for any community that people are a part of. There are so many things people from an outsider perspective can find weird about a community, from traditions to even the jargon and terms that are used on a day to day basis, from small to even large interactions. That was just one thing I didn’t think about before. Overall the ethnography essay was my favorite of the entire semester. Being able to go on social media to observe a community was one of the most unique and fun experiences I have ever had in a writing class. Although I feel as though the essay went well, I wish that I had been able to elaborate more on aspects of the community instead of the main things that I had focused on during my essay and field working.
The classmate interview was another very fun experience. Writing about someone else from the lens of an interviewer was a very new experience to me. The person I interviewed was a person I was very familiar with, although I was able to predict a lot of the answers to the questions I asked, I was able to learn more about the why. I was able to learn things that I would have not known, and the things I did know were reassured and or confirmed. It was very cool being able to interview a close friend, and try and write a paper on the interview as if a complete stranger might stumble upon it and be interested in the interview of my friend. While conducting the interview it was very smooth, looking back, perhaps having a partner that I did not know as well might have added a new element to the overall interview. However I also think it allowed me to focus on other aspects of the interview, more than just it being awkward etc. I was able to focus on things like the background, setting and body language of my interviewee more because I knew her better than most other people in the class. I think the experience overall was very great and writing the interview out was fun.
The personal artifact essay was the most personal writing I have probably ever done for a class. It made me pick an object that is very meaningful to my family and explain how it was/is so. It made me have an appreciation for that object more than ever before. I had never realized how unique and special the object I personally chose for my essay was, until I wrote it. I was very happy to talk about my family, the context of the famous tree, and the overall meaning and comfort it brings me.
From the beginning of the course to now I can say, I have become way more comfortable in my writing and can also say it has improved a lot. Not only was I able to write in a new light, I was also allowed to have creative control of what I was writing about. This was a very good and enjoyable aspect to the class. I was able to write through different perspectives, put my biases aside when talking about my own community, position myself and see the perspectives I carry with myself everyday, create connections from text to life. Peer reviewing was also a very great part of the course, I was able to see how another peer viewed what I had written and was given great suggestions on how to fix mistakes, not only from my peer but also my professor. The draf to final draft process was also something I appreciated very much. Although I was not able to take full advantage of that aspect I do think it was very great to have.
Throughout the semester my writing has grown tremendously, I now have gained a plethora of skills to use in future college writing classes, or on my own writing that I do for fun. I think I was able to meet a lot of the course learning objectives throughout the semester, such as and most importantly writing like a field worker and for that I am proud.
