Field Notes Paragraph
It is in the afternoon at a bustling coffee house located on a large college campus. The surfaces are very hard and reflective which makes conversations difficult to hear. This situation is made worse by the loud up-tempo music blaring from the shops sound system. Conversations in line waiting to get a cup of coffee are causal and chock full of non sequiturs. Women in line says, “I’m not going to do that…. look popcorn!” Male friend responds, “the American dream.” Most of the indoor space is planned to move people through as quickly as possible. There are some tables each has one person sitting with a laptop or a book. There are four people working behind the counter. None of them make eye contact with anyone else, including their fellow workers. One of them is mumbling to herself as I walk up to the counter. The cashier looks up and asks what I would like to order. I get a flat white, it’s some kind of double espresso with a bunch of steamed milk. After a short wait, I get my drink at the end of the counter and step outside. I find a place to sit. The outside had more conversations. Two women with their legs curled under were talking to each other. Or should I say one was talking and the other was periodically responding. The conversation was personal, “I don’t put anything up that I don’t want my mom to see. That way I can get drunk as hell.” Other woman responds, “uh-huh.” People come an go fairly quickly. Many are working on laptops with their cell phones out and earbuds blocking out most of the environment around them.
Reflection
While writing notes I realized that it is difficult to decide what to pay attention to when several things are happening at once. At first I was basically taking small snapshots before deciding what might be the most interesting aspects to record. I also have an appreciation for anyone who does an active participant observation. My time in line was about 5 minutes and I’m sure that I didn’t notice nor recall everything when recording the event into the field notes.
The process of turning my notes into a narrative description was an exercise in quickly deciding on what aspects of the experience to describe.Creating a narrative description right after the observation was useful because I could fill in some details that I did not have in my notes. Although I did not get everything I wanted into the paragraph within the time constraint, I feel that this is a great exercise that I need to repeat. Hopefully I will become better at quickly writing passages in the future.
The questions my partner asked leads me to believe that I was on the right track of describing an interesting situation or at the very least mildly humorous. Her questions made me realize that there were more conversations and details that I probably should have included in my paragraph. These extra details would make for an overall stronger narrative.
From reading my partner’s description, I learn that I was not alone in not being able to record everything that was happening. She also made choices in what situations she recorded. She had regret that she did not pay more attention to one individual from the beginning. Hearing about her field experience caused me to reflect on what I could have done better myself.