Week 15- Post 15

My writing has definitely improved after taking this course. One difference I’ve noticed between this class and most of the other English classes I’ve taken is this class allows us to turn in rough drafts and then final drafts. It’s been extremely helpful to know how to improve my writing instead of having to constantly guess on my own. In my previous classes I would usually write down a rough draft and not bother to look most of it over, and then turn it in as my final draft. Turning in a rough draft allows me to see what other readers think and get their opinions on how I can make my writing more enjoyable to read. Overall I though all the assignments were good and don’t need to be reworked. The only assignment that was somewhat difficult to do was the literature review, mainly because I’ve never written one before so it came across as new and somewhat difficult. I think it would have been nice to have a conference that goes over our mini-ethnography’s. I would have liked to get some verbal feedback about that paper. Otherwise, I think we had a good amount of conferences and each of them were beneficial.

Week 14- Post 14

My favorite data source for my mini-ethnography was the interviews that I conducted. I think that I gathered the most information for my fieldsite through these interviews. Also, it was nicer to get the personal opinions from people in the subculture at my actual fieldsite. I wasn’t able to find any academic research about the employees of Whispering Hills Golf Course, therefore the interviews were extremely helpful. I feel that the best piece of writing that I’ve done in this class was the Research Proposal. One of the main reasons for this was because I write better when the paper is divided up into sections. I don’t have to worry about transitions and when writing about a specific topic I can get much more information down. Along with this, the research proposal w/Literature Review was extremely helpful in writing my mini-ethnography. Most of the work that I put down in the mini-ethnography came directly from the lit review. The Research Proposal was probably the paper that I worked the hardest on, therefore I like to think of it as my best piece of writing of this class.

Week 2- Post 2

The subculture that I’ve chosen to study and observe is golf course employees. The main fieldsite that I would like to observe is Whispering Hills Golf Course in Indianapolis. I chose this site because this golf course is where I have worked as an employee for the past five years; therefore I have been there numerous times. The course and the club house are usually quiet, except of course for the select few loud individuals. However, down at the maintenance barn, which is the considered the central meeting point for the employees of the course, is usually loud from both workers talking and from the equipment (mowers, tools, etc.). I’m hoping to learn more about the members of my subculture than what I already know as an insider. I know most of the facts and opinions of these employees but there are still a few things that I’m not fully familiar with; for example, what my male co-workers think about the job that they hold and how they are affected by ‘false’ stereotypes. I would also like to find out why they chose to work at Whispering Hills, what they do on a day-to-day basis, and how are they different or even similar to people that are not a part of their working community.

Week 13- Post 13

It was a hot, humid day and the sun was beating down on my face. The only relief I could get from it was the roof of the golf cart, assuming the cart was at the right angle to the sun. I had my friend/co-worker Travis sitting next to me driving the cart. He had told me numerous times that when I was in the cart with him that he preferred to drive. I suppose it made him feel a little less manly if he had a girl driving him around the course, so I went along with it. We sped around the winding corners on the first hole and finally came to a stop next to the green. He got out and walked over to the pole that marked where the hole was. He pulled out a pocket knife and cut off a glow-in-the-dark stick from the top of the pole. When he came back to the cart he said that he meant to get those off earlier in the day but forgot. Apparently, the night before, Travis, my boss Mike and his family, and a group called Demolay had gotten together and played some night golf. Night golf has been a yearly tradition at Whispering Hills; not something I’ve personally witnessed but have heard a lot about. It seemed like a very interesting practice. Travis and I sped around to every hole to get the rest of the glow sticks. I could tell from the used fireworks and beer cans lying around the course that the boys had a pretty good time.

Week 12- Post 12

When I think of the word “rhetoric,” I think of it as the use of language as a means to persuade. Rhetoric, to me, is the way a person’s voice is presented to others, along with that person’s appearance, the things he or she says, and the way he or she acts. A person who acts mature and dresses nicely will probably be thought more highly of by others as opposed to a person who acts immature and dresses trashy. Rhetoric is commonly used in the media, which has brought it closer to people’s daily lives. I think for the most part that it is used in a positive way. Rhetoric can be found in my subculture through the movies that are made to satirized golf course employees. The movies persuade their audience to believe that members of my subculture look and act a certain way. I would like to use rhetoric in my mini-ethnography to persuade people not to believe the stereotypes that are directed at golf course employees. I can use my research and interviews as a way of persuasion as well.

Week 11- Post 11

So far I’ve noticed that my writing style has improved quite a bit since last semester. However most of that has come from elaborating even more on writing styles that I learned in English 103. The assignment that has given me the most trouble this semester was probably the literature review. I’ve never written a lit review before so it came across as difficult to me. Surprisingly, the assignment that I found to be one of the easiest was the annotated bibliography. Last semester I had a teacher that was really strict about the formatting and content of the paper, so her teaching style sort of carried over to this semester. I was able to remember almost every rule that she taught us on how to write annotated bibliographies, so it made the assignment much easier to do. Outside of the classroom I don’t write too much mainly because I don’t like it. However there are those certain occasions where I do write out of boredom. I usually write about an important event that has happened in my life recently. I use the writing as a memory chip because I know that I’ll easily forget it if I don’t write it down. I’m sure that I’ll have to do some type of writing with my future career, which is why I try to take in as much knowledge as I can right now about writing styles; it can only benefit me.

Week 10- Post 10

For my mini-ethnography I plan to structure it based on themes. I want to start the paper out discussing the visits I took to my site. Along with this theme I will include my observations and first impressions of my site through my study. I would like to discuss the differences I see in the site when studying it as opposed to when I’m there doing my job. After this theme I want to talk about the interviews I conducted, with both co-workers and golfers. From there I would like to include some of my own experiences that I’ve had at the golf course. I would add in how those experiences have caused me to develop certain biases towards my study. Finally to end my paper, I want to add in any final observations that I noticed while I was at my site, and put down my overall thoughts and opinions about the course. I will probably change up this order a little bit when I actually start writing the mini-ethnography, but for now this is the basic structure that I plan to use.