Blog 4

Blog 4:

Part 1:

Summer camp is an example of ethnography because it discusses a group of people attending a summer camp.  They talk about how they cant wait for camp.  They love it so much.  This podcast shows the activities at camp, like camping out in the woods and how they survive in a different type of civilization compared to having shelter and food on hand. It shows the group of peoples willingness to survive. It explains how groups of people love singing, and how they have their own unique songs. It even talks about how certain groups of people at the camp, particularly younger campers, believe in the ghost stories. Even a group of boys at camp all decided to get mohawks and create a Mohawk song.  Some people even say it changes them, in a good way.  “I wouldn’t be who I am it if wasn’t for camp. People base their lives around camp.” This is what David, a counselor of the camp, said.  A song by a group of girls was even made about him because they love him so much. I think the so what of the summer camp podcast is that people are different when I around a group theyre comfortable with. For example, people say they cant wait for camp because they are probably way more comfortable with who they are around because they are all there for the same reason: camp activities and friendships that have lasted a long time through this camp. The batman podcast is an example of a profile because they did tests on 2 certain groups of rats. One of the groups was smart rats and the other group was dumb rats.  Turns out, after studies, “it was not even close. It was so dramatically. The smart rats did 2 times better than the dumb rats, except they were all the same rats. Not dumb and smart.” But it is really a profile because it talks about this blind guys life and how he gets around and lives his life. he can do a bunch of things blind people cant do, but he just learned how to do it on his own. “daniels eyes had to be removed when he was young due to cancer, yet hes the one leading me through this trail on the forest.” The so what of this podcast is to show that even with a disability, you can fend for yourself and become maybe even more equipped, for example, like the tongue clicking in the woods so he knows what is in front of him. We hear from the journalists about how amazing it is that Daniel overcomes his disability and uses it to his advantage.  To Daniel, its normal and no big deal. For the summer camp podcast, the journalist was interested in how the group of people feed off each other and how the interact. The people in the podcast just acted about their normal routine of having fun with their fellow summer campers. The ideas from the podcast that stuck with me is that there are people out there that have it way worse than I do and they would do anything to be in my position yet fight harder than I do to be normal.  I also took from the podcast is recognize the position youre in and be grateful. Be grateful for life and the friends you have and the family you grew up with because you wouldn’t be the amazing person you are today without all those things.

Part 2:

I could do an ethnography on how different people, whether it is race, ethnicity, religion, culture, etc., and how they interact differently under certain circumstances like partying.  I could also do an interview or profile on one of my family friends that played basketball here at the university of Nebraska-lincoln. I choose him because he probably has faced 10 times more pressures than I ever have because rules were way different back then than it is now. i would like to choose a different sports team, like the mens basketball team and the mens football team on the weekends and see the difference of avoidance of pressures or the avoidance of partying. All of these things would shed light on my critical question because they all have different perspectives on how they make their decisions.  For example, the basketball team has less  players than the football team so the football team is harder to regulate for the coaches than the basketball team, so maybe they aren’t worried about the consequences of their actions as much. Beau Reid, the person I want to interview, has been through all this before and I would like to know what the rules were for both the team expectations and the ncaa rules back then.  I could use all this information to determine how many of temptations and pressures over the years have evolved and maybe have become more strict….. or maybe not.  Also, looking up the ncaa rules could help me too because nobody that is a student athlete wants to get in trouble with the ncaa so it could affect their decisions they make, or maybe they don’t care about the rules.