1st Participant Observation Experience

I used my first preconstruction meeting with UDOT as a public involvement manager for my participant observation experience. (You can check out my expanded notes under the Developmental Notes tab) I wrote up a lot of notes about the experience while I was there, they were more of jottings. It was rather difficult because there was so much to jot down I really struggled knowing what was pertinent information and what was not. As I tried to use a wide angle lens and explicit awareness I noticed a lot more things than I have in construction meetings in the past. But with that broader vision of the experience came more organization and decision about what information to attend to and what not to attend to. I couldn't take notes on every aspect of the experience! The attire of the attendees, the language, who everyone was! There were 34 people, mostly men in the room. The meeting followed an agenda so it was nice to have the structure of the experience laid out for me but because they had it laid out for them too it was read word for word and went really fast so I could take note of all the nuances under every agenda item.

So jottings were a bit difficult. But then there was the expanded notes and interviewing I wanted to do afterward that was just overwhelming. My boss attended the meeting with me and I had kept track of so many vocabulary and jargon I didn't understand that I wanted to ask her but there was so much I lost my drive about 5 minutes down the road and settled to understand these terms at a different time, also we had other things to discuss. But of the little interviewing I did do with her I found out that a lot of the descriptive notes I had written in my notebook while jotting things down had deeper implications into the structure and environment of this specific project. For example: I wrote down that Todd from UDOT conducted the meeting but his name wasn't on the UDOT Representatives list and that Jace (listed as the project manager) did most of the questions. Then another man I recognized named walked in, my boss informed me that he was their boss, but he said very little. I was confused as to how those relationships were supposed to be defined and how one should act as a Project Manager or field engineer. My boss said she'd noticed this too and realized that the UDOT team probably doesn't have their issue resolution chart solid and that we can help them define more clearly their roles on the project at the partnering session.

As I typed up my expanded notes I was overwhelmed again because I had written so many descriptive notes and I really couldn't tell what was supposed to be methodological notes. Did I just not have a good enough grasp on that concept yet? Methodological notes have to do with the collecting of data correct? I'm not sure I can think of any note for that in this experience other than, I listened to the meeting, I introduced myself, I asked my neighbors questions through a whisper, and I jotted notes down on my agenda. What else am I looking for with methodological notes? I re read what we read by Bernard on taking methodological notes but anyone else have other example or ideas about what methodological notes look like as opposed to descriptive or analytical notes?

1st Interview

Our greetings worksheet was intimidating at first but once I found a Ghanaian to talk to and got to interview him I thought it was so awesome! I met up with a Ghanaian that was friends with my friends old roommate, cool huh? We met at my apartment and had a great conversations about nonverbal greetings, dance, his family and just got to know each other.

It was my first interview experience and it was fun and interesting! I had a structure planned for the interview. 1st get to know a bit about him, 2nd ask him the questions listed on the worksheet, finally follow up with any other questions I felt were pertinent or interesting. But that wasn't really how it went down. Step one occurred as planned but then the 2nd and 3rd combined and took their own natural course. It was so cool the way one answer prompted so many other questions I wanted to ask. He was so obliging and a great talker, that made things comfortable and enjoyable for me. Here are a few insights he helped me gain:

• Ghanaian males greet each other with a handshake that is more like a skin slide that ends in snapping on the other person's middle finger before releasing from the touch. (We practiced that a few times.)
• It is disrespectful for youth to look their elders, parents, or other adults in the eye.
• Ete sen = How are you doing. Akwaaba = Welcome. Meda Wase= Thank you. Mepa Wokycw = Please. "ky" is pronounced like "ch"
• Asante people have a lot of pride. They feel they are the chief tribe. His parents are Asante but live outside Accra. He said we could visit them if we like. They work at the MTC and are close to the beach.
  

This was great practice and it made me even more excited to perform interviews and get to know more Ghanaians like this out in the field. I will certainly need to work on some things such as: keeping the topics focused, asking the right questions and using graceful probing, asking permission to write notes and assuring the interviewers confidentiality, I also wish I would have written more greeting descriptions or other answers down verbatim. Interviewing is exciting! I can't wait to do more of it.