Field Notes on Public Ambiguity

"The difference between doing fieldwork and just "hanging out" is the writing. Without writing, the sharp, incisive details about people, places and cultures are lost to us." - Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater, 2002, p. 56

I am tempted to start collecting vintage field note-books

For my qualitative class I have several assignments I need to turn in, one of which is a write-up of an observation I did. My professor for the class is an ethnographer, and stresses the importance of observing and taking notes, and more precisely, how to take notes. Not being familiar with ethnography myself, I find this whole process captivating. My tendency to add flourishes to my descriptive writing is not really welcome in some stages of my observation notes. Here is where the descriptive becomes somewhat dry and analytical. This is also one of the more objective moments of qualitative research, where writing down "his mouth turned down and his eyes became wet" is preferred to "he was crying." Once I have all of these descriptive parts down, then I can go back in and ask questions about my observation - scribbles called memos can address, "I think he was crying, why?" then look more closely at my field notes to gather more evidence of what was going on.

I wish I could express how fascinating I find this whole process. It is completely outside of my realm of experience, and sometimes comfort. In the last 7 years or so, I have become much more analytical and I don't have the same temperament I once did for what I refer to as "public ambiguity." I am fine with my personal ambiguity - of having internal questions and privately working through things that may not make sense. Qualitative research makes those parts of my life much more public and it's quite hard for me. I have to document this ambiguity instead of just sitting quietly and privately with myself. I have to then interact with this ambiguity in front of others, then re-write about it. The integration of my system of beliefs upon the subject matter that I am studying is both a welcome practice and also absolutely unnerving. However the difficulty I have doing this type of research is what makes me want to do it even more, to understand interpretations of culture and to learn the difference between a twitch and a wink (Geertz, 1973).

- And yes, I did put a citation into my blog post. I know it makes it "academic" but I had to. Forgive me.

Kicks

My new kicks found color inspiration from
the Golden Girls' home in Miami

I decided over the weekend to pay a visit to an athletic store and buy some new jogging shoes. I have a certain way that I buy jogging shoes. It consists of me brining in my current pair, showing them to the salesperson and asking, "Can you please bring me the newest version of this shoe?" I found the perfect shoe for me about 8 years ago, and since then I have purchased several pairs in exactly the same way (bringing in the old pair and asking for the new version). One year, I thought I would mix things up and try a different shoe. That was a terrible idea. After having the new shoe for about three weeks and trying a few different jogs, I had to return them. Thankfully, folks who sell running shoes know that it takes time to figure out if something is going to fit, so the store took them back. I returned them with my old pair and said, "Just give me the new version of this" and was once again, happy as a clam. So yesterday I went for a little jog to try out my new shoes and, of course, they were perfect. Why change something that works?

Notebook Gems

Last month, when I went to Chicago to visit some old friends, I may have mentioned that one of them has two kids, two little girls to be specific. The oldest is about two years old, and really just wanted to play with me the entire time I was visiting with her parents. I indulged her at some points during my dinner visit, but not completely. She did, however, find my small canvas bag that I used to carry my summer class readings and other work. Once she found this bag, she took out one of my notebooks and then without me knowing proceeded to draw and color inside of it. Fortunately, this was a newish notebook, one I was going to use for a project I am working on this summer. I say fortunately because she had many many blank pages to add her little flourishes to. No one realized until the middle of dinner that she had been scribbling away and putting stickers inside my notebook, and once we did I found it so humorous that I insisted she continue her work. I also imagined me taking notes inside of this notebook and, possibly, during a meeting with faculty or whatever, me flipping open to a new page and revealing that the page was full of stickers. I'll add here that I decided to use this notebook instead for a class, and not for a public project. I can also guess that as I fill this notebook up, the little gems of stickers and color crayon drawings will delight me every time I stumble upon a page filled with them. Like the delight I had this morning when I found all of these panda stickers.

Impulsive Dolphin

If you can believe it, I started jogging again. I haven't been a jogger since I was, well, I don't really remember. Maybe high school? There were a few times in college I would go. But not really like I am now. I've gone for a run almost every day for the last 6 weeks. It's weird. Something just kind of took hold of me and I started running. Of course, this was not without a slow build up, but now I can run a few miles and still feel great. It all started when I downloaded a little app* on my phone to keep track of how much I move. I always thought people with step counters were kind of weird, but, well, I guess I'm one of those people now. It basically comes down to this: my app gives me a step goal every day and when I reach that goal it gives me a digital confetti parade. I LIVE for this confetti parade. The app also gives me little encouraging messages throughout the day. So, basically, it gives me two things that grad school never will - it helps me get outside with warm encouraging messages, and gives me a confetti parade. After a couple of weeks, I figured I might as well start running for reals.

So, with this momentum, I decided to put an end goal on it. That's right, half-marathon end goal. I'm blogging about this because if I don't do it, then I'll have to blog about not doing it. And if I DO run a half-marathon, then I can blog about that. And we all know which one I'd rather blog about. The race is pretty far away (October) but I think I can continue with this routine of running. Now is the perfect time of year, considering the weather is awesome and I am not completely swamped with school. I also know a couple of people in my cohort who are also runners (one who said he would be doing the full marathon in October, so we can encourage one another) so it will be helpful when I don't think I have time to jog to lean on them for motivation. There you have it. My short little legs are running at least 5 times a week. Weird.

*The app is called Breeze. It also gives you a spirit animal! I am an Impulsive Dolphin.

I couldn't help but include these motivational running quotes.
They don't help me. Only my confetti parade works.

Small Town Wildlife

Little tired bird tucked his head
in, then eventually fluttered into
a nearby tree.

I've been enjoying spending more and more time outside. I tend to forget that I like being outside when so much of my time is spent indoors staring at a book or a computer. Although I still feel slightly stressed out (because I just wouldn't be me if I didn't feel this way, just a little) I am also feeling the benefits of spending time away from work and school. I'm trying to get into the routine of being outside, and taking time apart for myself this summer in hopes that it will stick once things get roaring again in September.

Yesterday we went for an afternoon nature walk (I call our park walks nature walks because they aren't really long enough to be hikes, and walks for me are more like "on a sidewalk"). Anyway, we went to a local park with some grassy paths and listened to birds and looked at the plants. And pointed out all of the poison ivy. As we were returning to the car, I happened to look down on the gravel/grass path and jumped up, grabbed Kevin's arm and backed us away all the while saying "baby bird, oh, oh oh." A small fluffy young bird was sitting in the middle of the path. We looked at it for a while, he winked and closed his eyes, then tucked his head into his shoulders. We walked around looking for a nest, thinking maybe he fell out or took to flying too soon, because he was still a little downy. Finally, we decided to try and put him off to the side, at least closer to the tall grass away from the main path so he wouldn't get trampled. And just as Kevin began to gently nudge him with the palm of his hands, the little bird finally fluttered up to a low branch. Relieved, we walked back to the car.

Trivia Night!

Several years ago when I moved back to Seattle I lived in a neighborhood called Beacon Hill, just south of Capitol Hill. I had never lived south of downtown, and it was quite refreshing - until of course it wasn't anymore because it could sometimes be kind of sketch. Anyway, I used to go to a Monday night trivia night on Capitol Hill with some friends of mine. Then, that trivia night started getting too busy, so we moved ourselves to another trivia night on Wednesdays at a different bar where our winnings also increased (and by winnings I mean prizes like boxes of chalk). A few weeks ago, I was out with some friends here and one mentioned that she goes to trivia night every Tuesday. My eyes grew wide and I was so excited. Trivia Night! I love trivia night and it is such a lovely way to spend a couple of hours. And also a way for me to put to use all of the useless facts I have about pop culture. But don't ask me anything about sports.

A Long Post About Prayer and Qualitative Research

One of my favorite authors is Karen Armstrong. I was introduced to her when I was about 23 years old, after a personal investigation into learning more about the institution of religion prompted me to pick up her book A History of God. A few years later I read her autobiography (and I should clarify, I read her amended autobiography which she wrote as a response to her previous work about her time spent in a convent) and felt that in many ways she I shared a kindredness for exploring the mysteries of spirituality and for comparative religion. I bring her up because as of late I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a prayerful life. This is in part due to the fact that I am so steeped in the academic life that I wonder if these two lives could, in a way, find a place to co-exist. It is also due to the fact that I have been spending much more time outside, and when I am outside, walking, jogging, or riding my bike, I am obviously not directly engaged in my academic thoughts but I am complementing them by moving my body.

Brilliant! Karen Armstrong

Anyway - in her memoir, Karen Armstrong described her life as a writer and researcher as one that connected deeply to her spiritual life, even though it was not a traditional form of religious prayer. She found communion with her interior-life as a researcher, and described academic and non-fiction writing as a form of meditation. This deeply resonated with me (and still does), and her description of this in her memoir has stuck with me since first reading it almost 10 years ago. I include this here because this summer I am taking a qualitative methods research course and am running up against the division between my system of beliefs as an individual who connects with her "interior-life" and also the effort I put into supporting my arguments with evidence. I had to write a letter of introduction about myself for this class, and I took this assignment very seriously as a way to explore what my worldview is and how this informs the way I ask questions and seek understanding. Below are excerpts from that letter:

"...What this article stirred most deeply in me was my own insecurities about my intelligence, thus making me take more notice of the division I maintained between my soul and my mind. I have two distinct ways of living and knowing: what I refer to as my interior-life and the other my mind-life.

The first way of living and knowing is my interior-life, a way where ambiguity resides and knowing and learning are what Dirkx (2008) referred to as a “hard, emotional, messy, uncertain, ambiguous, and ill-structured process” (p. 66). My interior life is often in solitude. It invites a deeper sense of self while working in spaces that are not always comfortable. From this part of my life I have also learned to be very aware of the role that positioning plays in my communal and individual interactions. My interior-life is a listening life...

The second way of living and knowing is my mind-life, where my desire to find an evidence-based reality emerges. Here, my mind works to organize the world into tidy facts and best practices. This way of thinking and knowing for me is in response to my interior-life and the ambiguities it brings. It is also a very conscious attempt to want to discard the role that power plays in knowledge formation because to recognize this correlation, for me, unearths vulnerabilities. Also in this space is a very real attraction I have for a worldview that can show causation and generalizability, all the while knowing it can be potentially harmful, inequitable, and one-dimensional. I am aware of the dangers in this kind of worldview due to my experiences working in the non-profit sector and at the policy and legislative level. Despite this awareness, the clear outline and procedures of this type of post-positivist work both academically and personally help me feel grounded when my questions about the world seem too big. It also symbolizes a position of strength when I fear my interior-life may not be valid."

I am learning more and more how to manage, not so much balance, my life here in Lansing as a student. And since the spring semester ended, I have learned how important it is for me to 1) get outside and MOVE and 2) acknowledge that prayer may take on many different forms in my life. This second point is something I have always known, but how I define prayer (even if at times it is defined as rest) becomes more full and expansive as I explore my own ways of understanding. I expect it will continue to evolve and I am excited to use my qualitative class this summer to approach understanding in a new way.