Process Piece: Ethnography

Upon beginning my ethnography for this class, I looked at the requirements involved and almost passed out.  There are many steps included in the final draft alone, not to mention the steps I take as an individual writer.  Before beginning, I automatically knew that this paper would be extremely time consuming. Below I will explain the steps I took to writing a successful ethnography.
Note: For each of the below steps, I also followed certain self-editing steps which I will include at the end.

Step 1: The Observation   

Before diving into the paper aspect of an ethnography, one must indulge in a conquest to observe a subculture or site that they have not particularly paid close attention to before.  For me, I chose the local Starbucks coffee house.  I thoroughly enjoyed this step of the process.  It truly got my brain thinking about certain aspects that people don't ordinarily look at upon visiting the coffee shop. While having my observation reviewed by my peers, they all seemed to enjoy it.  I only had a few critiques from them and they were all format related.  Thinking I was in the clear for my final draft, I turned it in with confidence.  I received an A on it, but got a few critiques from my professor that my peers failed to pick up on.  He told me to consider putting more emphasis on my opinion, rather than what was put in front of me at the coffee shop.  This insight came in handy when preparing my final ethnography.  To view my final observation, click HERE.

Step 2: The Annotated Bibliography 

In my writing career, I had never heard of an annotated bibliography.  I had done simple bibliographies yes, but the format of an annotated bibliography threw me for a loop.  For those of you who do not know, a bibliography is list of books or scholarly works based from a topic chosen to study.  An annotated bibliography is the same thing, but you add a summary of each of the works read.  The meaning behind having one of these was to gather information from our observation, form a thesis, and perform research on it.  The thesis that I chose for my paper was "The effects of caffeine abuse can be detrimental compared to those who drink it in moderate proportion.  When writing my rough draft of this section of my ethnography, I was clueless as to how to format it.  When my peer review group got together, we had realized that none of us had performed this task correctly.  Luckily, our professor cleared up our confusion and we all successfully finished our final drafts.  To view my final annotated bibliography, click HERE. 

Step 3: The Ethnography 

The final product of the above to steps is what is called an "ethnography."  Obviously, you don't just staple your two papers together and voila! You have to collaborate the two and create a certain structure that appeals to your reader, as well as flows nicely.  Surprisingly this portion was the easiest out of both previous steps for me to complete.  Having the observation helped to identify how I came about my thesis statement, and having the annotated bibliography meant that I had to do no further research, and my sites were already cited.  Upon turning in my rough draft to my peer review group, I felt more than confident.  Unfortunately, there were many more flaws in my paper than I had hoped for.  Although it was said that my thesis was clear, I was advised to rearrange my paragraphs in order to have better flow.  Also, I was told to try and put more of my own opinion in, rather than strictly the researchers in which I included in my bibliography.  To view my ethnography rough draft click HERE.  

Self-Steps

For each step listed above, I took certain steps that applied to each of them.

Step 1 

Before each step, I followed the link on my professor's Moodle page to show me what requirements were needed to successfully write the paper at hand. 

Step 2

Writing my rough draft came second. 

Step 3

After writing my rough draft, I brought them to my peer review group, which consisted of four classmates.  This was my favorite step. 

Step 4

After receiving critiques from both my peers and my professor, I applied the changes I found necessary to my rough draft and also included more length to my paper. 

Step 5

This step would include me self revising my final draft, adding diverse vocabulary, checking for appropriate formatting, and making sure that my paper was appealing to the reader. 

Step 6

My final step would include turning my final product into Moodle, and praying that I received an A!