Coming To An End

   It is the end of the year and it is time to start the final copy of our ethnography. There are different ways we can format our papers. In the beginning of the year we read Iowa 80. Iowa 80 is a truck stop rest stop and it is the largest in the world. The author broke the piece up into different sections by the places he went too. Each place had a subtitle before it, so the reader knew he was talking about the different places. Another one we read was about a bowling alley. The author of this piece had subtitles, but it was not about the different parts of the bowling alley. It was separated by different times she went there and who she interviewed. It is nice too see the different styles so we have different examples to help us with our paper. The format the bowling paper I think would work well with my paper, because the places are similar. Reading this paper was fun because of the titles, such as My Life In Rented Shoes. Titles like this kept me interested in the paper, but also it was about a place many people can relate to.

Interviews

I have conducted and interview before. I have been interviewed and interviewed others. It was informal interviews. It was difficult being interviewed because I was not clear on what I was being asked and also he did not have the questions on had. He forgot what he wanted to ask and had to schedule another interview. In the reading for this week I learned what I have done wrong when interviewing others. When Interviewing people there needs to be some structure yet there needs to be flexibility. The informants may make a comment that you had not anticipated. There are two questions used when conducting an interview, open and closed questions. Closed questions are ones that do not need an explanation. Most of the time an interviewer will start out with these type of questions. Open questions are more in-depth. Open question start a conversation form. Deciding what questions are need helps, but unless you know how to listen then the questions are useless. A good listener has eye contact, does not fiddle with objects, and does not check the time. The interviewer needs to know when to let the informations stray from the question and when yo get back on topic.