Week 3

Some interview questions I may use include basic facts like "How long have you worked at Fossil?" and "How old are you?" I feel like these sort of factual questions will help me be more objective in my research. Even though I've been to my cultural site many times, I have yet to visit it for this specific assignment. I'm going to visit it for this assignment next weekend. I hope that since I'll be visiting the site with a research purpose, I'll find different things than what I've noticed before. These new observations will also help me further construct my interview questions.

After reading different definitions of "academic" I definitely think that there's a difference between academic research and non academic research. Academic research deals primarily with things learned from books or teachers. Non academic research is more about getting out there and learning things as they are first hand.

In Class Writing

Why should anyone be interested in their chosen subculture anyway? People should be interested in this subculture just because it exists and since it exists it affects a number of other subcultures. People belong to multiple subcultures and every one of them influences the person, which in turn influences the other subcultures that the person belongs to.

Why do they feel their subculture is important? This subculture is important because it's unique and offers insight into individuals' lives.

What do you want outsiders to know about the subculture? Basically I just want outsiders to know that the subculture is there. I want to show how unique the subculture is compared to similar subcultures.

In Class Writing

I'm visiting my cultural site next weekend. During that time I'll also be able to conduct interviews. Ideally, I would like to interview all employees at the Fossil store in Greenwood Park Mall since there are only 12 of them(11 not including myself). Being that the store is an hour and a half away and I'm only there for one day once a month, that's probably not going to happen. Instead I should be able to get at least 6 interviews. If I really feel like I would benefit more from having more interview, I can always later conduct them via phone. The best time to meet with the employees is going to be during actual work hours. I'm planning on starting on my library and outside research before actually visiting the cultural site. I'll probably just spend a couple hours on that beforehand just to get prepared and develop interview questions that will be most helpful.  

Box 8 in Class Writing

What surprised me? I was surprised by the importance of taking a closer look at things. What at first appeared to be nothing more than a book with letters on the front, turned out to be a persons notebook. There were pages torn out and writing on only one page. This stirred up many questions like, "why are the pages torn out?" and "why was this single written on page left in the notebook?" 

What intrigued me? I was intrigued by the relationship between many of the items. The majority of the artifacts tended to be music related. Were these items specific to the subculture or to the individual?

What disturbed me? Some of the artifacts stood out from the others and made associating them with eachother more difficult. Everything seemed to do with music in some way or another except for the necklace and the book. Is the book used for inspiration in music writing? That would be assuming that the culture was about music writing and not just listening to music. How does the necklace fit into all of it?

Subculture

The subculture I've decided to examine is the Fossil store at the Greenwood Park Mall. Upon entering the store one notices that the store is much cooler in temperature than the rest of the store. The store also smells like scented plug-ins. The store is smaller in size than many other ones in the mall. Placed around the store are a variety of clothes, watches, purses, jewelry, socks, and other like items. There are usually three members of the subculture in the store at all times. This number, however, does vary depending on the time of day and time of year. The members are dressed in a trendy, yet professional way. I'm already in insider in this culture, so it's kind of difficult to think of something new I hope to discover. I guess one thing I could examine more is how the members of the subculture interact outside of the main meeting place. I could also examine members' behaviors when not associating with anyone in the subculture. That would prove to be very difficult, however, since I'm part of the subculture. 

Box 11 In Class Writing

Within the past few minutes, I've already changed my plan on the subculture I would like to research. I'm now planning on researching the Fossil store in the Greenwood Park Mall. I chose this subculture because it's one that I'm a part of, making it easily accessible to me. This could also be a negative because I already have an opinion on the subculture. Some fixed positions that may affect my research are my age and my gender. A subjective position I'll carry with me is that I've been part of the subculture for two and a half years. All of these things can have both positive and negative affects on my research when studying this subculture.

In Class Writing

As of now I'm planning on describing the subculture of political science majors. I'll most likely focus on doing interviews with professors of political science classes and actual students with the major. I'll also find books and websites with information on careers based in political science. I think the interviews will be most useful for me. Since I'm capable of direct contact with members in the subculture I think 'hearing it straight from the horses mouth' is the best strategy. I expect to find members in the subculture to be very opinionated and well informed on current events in the political arena. I really want to conduct surveys for my subculture, however, I think that may be difficult.

Making the Familiar New

Once every month I travel an hour and a half south, using up a quarter of a tank of gas. Once reaching my destination(which looks a lot like the place I was at before) I paint my face and attach spikes to my feet. This sort of attire is applied in preparation for the place I spend most of my time. I go into this crazed building full of loud people and different smells. I quickly walk down a hall of this zoo-like place until I reach a room of comfort. I spend eight hours of my life in this room. I mostly just stand and wait, sometimes one of the people from the hall venture into the room and give me green sqares of paper when I give them cloth or metal to wear around their wrists. Once my time is done in the room, I'm rewarded with some of the green squares of paper.

In Class Writing

Subcultures:

Fossil: employee, change batteries, dress nicely, movie nights, work during mall hours or after if we have inventory or a floor set, know clothing/bag/watch names, show up to work on time, have a monthly IPC average above the store average

College student: lots of studying, not a lot of money, late nights, go to class, on a college campus, language(credit hours, major, minor, etc.) 

Piercings: has piercings, goes to piercing parlors, knows different piercings (dermal anchors, conch, etc.)

Tattoos: has tattoos, goes to tattoo parlors, vocabulary (tattoo gun, ink, etc.)

The "Fossil Family" at the Greenwood Park Mall is one of the subcultures I belong to. To stay in the subculture and avoid being fired one must show up to work on time and have a monthly IPC average above the store average. One must always come to work dressed nicely and appropriately. It's also important to know the store lingo. Every style of shirt, pants, and dress has a different name. The bags and the watches also have different names depending on their style. This subculture rarely completely comes together unless there's a store meeting or some sort of outing like a movie night or a party. 

Past Writing

When first thinking about the topic for this blog, I wanted to write about my writing process when the final product was something worthwhile. After I thought back on my past writing experiences I realize that I haven’t really liked anything I’ve written or enjoyed writing anything since sixth grade.  The last paper I wrote in sixth grade was for my social studies class and was about the Northwest Passage.  I completely messed up all the facts and confused two different time periods, but my teacher still gave me an A because it was so creative. When writing that paper I was sitting in the piano room at my parents’ house using the piano bench as a desk like I always did. I was listening to music, most likely Kansas or Don McLean (there was only a record player in the piano room and those where the two records I enjoyed then).  Before starting the actual essay, I did prewriting in the form of a sort of bubbled web. I then wrote the essay and transferred the product to a nicer paper. The only difference between the “first draft” and the “final draft” was some simple editing. I fixed the spelling and grammar and that was it. Had I made more massive changes, such as with organization and word choice, and actually revised the first draft instead of just editing it, I think the final product would’ve been even more successful.