The past month has been an intensive foray into ethnographic research methods, based on some very fruitful participant observation notes at a workshop, and also learning the hard way that a one hour interview takes about 4 hours to transcribe properly. Emerson’s guidebook to ethnographic methods has been indispensable, and learning the process of coding, memo writing and analysis is making me very excited about writing the paper for submission next week. Themes are emerging, connections are being made, and the end result will be as much of a ‘surprise’ to me as it will be to my professor upon first read.

Although many of my fall obligations had been fulfilled, I still kept myself busy with frequent visits from friends, participating in events such as their scholarship awards ceremony at the Heliconian Club, and catching up with some of my community obligations. The Alumni Association of the Faculty has a holiday party tomorrow for students, and a deadline coming up for conference grant applications. The Sneak Peak Orchestra has a concert coming up in January that requires some music preparation, and I finally completed their logo design. What can I say, I think variety is a good thing.