week 3...post 3

I have not started any of my research yet, but at the same time I have. I am somewhat of an insider, so I know a lot of the insider phrases and most of the ins and outs of smoking. When I do start to do my interviews, I am going to ask questions like: How old are you?, When did you start to smoke?, How much do you smoke a day?, Why do you think you smoke?, etc. I have already visited two of my cultural sites, I have smoked cigarettes at the one quite often, and have a pretty good feel for the environment there. The most interesting thing I have witnessed, is when it was warmer outside, there would be 5 groups or so sitting around hookahs, just hanging out and smoking tobacco. I have not done any academic research yet. I think the main difference between academic and non academic, would be that academic research is written by a person with a masters or some sort of graduate degree in the field. I also believe to be academic it should be a published work. Non-academic would be me going and doing field research, non formal interviews, and other things like that.

My subculture is going to be Smokers. My field sites will be the designated smoking areas around the Ball State campus, with the majority of my time being spent at the smoking area next to the Lafollette complex. I have been there a few times, and there are some benches out there, and there is also a pick nick table out there as well. I am somewhat of an insider, seeing as I smoke on occasion, so what I hope to learn is why the people smoke, why and when they started, any plans of quitting, do they know the health hazards, and other questions of that nature. I really want to take a look at the psychological reasons as to why college kids smoke. Is it the cool thing to do? Is it a stress reliever? Or is there other reasons as to why they do it?

Sites and postions of my subculture

The sites of my research will be the designated smoking areas at Ball State University. My topic for the paper will be smokers. My fixed positions I believe will not have any affect on my paper, but my subjective positions might. I am a non-traditional smoker as I call it. I do not smoke everyday on a regular basis, but I do enjoy having a cigarette every couple of days when I feel like it. This may have an impact on how my paper is written, cause I do not really have a negative view on smoking.

Subculture...Jan 20

I am planning on doing my paper on smokers of any kind. Hopefully my main source of information will be collected using informal interviews, and field observations. I will go to designated smoking areas around campus and take notes and do interviews. I will suppliment this information with books and internet research. I think that the most beneficial source of data will be the interviews and field notes that I take. The most difficult thing will be to get people to open up to the idea of an interview and to answer my questions. One of the good things about my topic is the abundance of subjects and informants.

Box 2...Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

If I were to describe to someone, the events and procedures of a baseball game, and they had no knowledge about baseball, it would probably seem difficult to understand. To get ready for a baseball game, first of all you have to put your uniform on. This would include clothing items such as baseball socks, and sliding shorts, which go under your baseball pants, and are meant to help protect from gettin scratched up while sliding. Then you also have you uniform top which is usually just a t-shirt of some sort. Baseball spikes are also required, and they are just shoes with metal spikes that help you get footing in the dirt. To go along with these items, baseball players also usually have a baseball bat, batting helmet to protect you from the ball while you are up to bat, and batting gloves, to help grip the bat, and protect from blisters on your hands. These are all of the things that you would need to get ready for a baseball game.

Box 1

Criminal Justice Major
1.What classes are you taking?
2.What your focus is.
3.What you want to do for your senrior internship.
4.What you want to do after college.

3rd Floor Clevenger
1.C3
2.Knowing who to hang with, and what people like to do.
3. Knowing what James (our R.A.), will let you do and not do, a.k.a. his pet peeves.


On the third floor of Clevenger live some of the coolest kids here at Ball State. We are always out and about, being socially interactive, and communicating with everyone on our floor. Lil' Wayne once said in one of his songs "C3", this has became almost like our calling card for our floor. The "C" standing for clevenger, and the "3" for the third floor. If you were out and about on campus and seen two members of C3, you would witness a pretty special spectacle. We have our own "gang" sign for C3 (although as a floor we strongly discourage gangs and their activites), and the yelling of C3 fairly loud. We are a pretty tight knit group on the third floor of Clevenger, everybody knows what people like to do, when they have classes, and when people like to eat. We tend to pretty much go as a floor at night to eat. Every day there are footballs games, you will not see anybody out and about on the floor, everybody is watching their favorite team, whether it be on tv, or through streaming video, and or radio on the web. Most of the noise is when people yell and root for their team of choice, mine personally is the Detroit Lions since I was born in Detroit.

Week 1...Post 1

The paper I am going to write about, is a paper I wrote last semester. It was a paper designed to help me figure out information about my major of Criminal Justice. I already knew quite a bit of information about my major, but part of this paper was to have an interview with a counselor from the Criminal Justice department. Along with the interview I also had to use the library website to find information like salary, job openings, and other things of that nature. I wrote this paper two nights before it was due, partly because I procrastinated, and also because of the interviews I had to wait until I had all of my data collected. I really like to listen to music while I am writing, because writing in silence makes it really hard to concentrate, and I find myself staring at the wall or something. I think that the main difference between editing and revising, is that revising is just looking over your paper for simple grammar mistakes, and possible misspellings. Editing though, would be going through your paper and changing the mistakes, and making parts of the paper flow better and changing parts around to make a better paper. In other words editing is the work you do after revising.