Field Notes 11

For the eleventh wee of field work I chose to conduct my observations in a general pattern as I had one the previous week, observing the general patterns of the groups that are at the school at a certain time. This week’s observations took place between 9:00 and 10:00 am on Friday November fourteenth.

As I began my observations the majority of the students had already returned to their classrooms but a few stragglers remained outside but most where on their way to their classes. These stragglers had soon dispersed and where in their classes within a few minutes leaving only a few students studying in various areas around the school. There were no students outside at this point unlike previous sessions in the morning. At this point I believe that this lack of students outside is due to the temperature decrease in the recent weeks as winter weather has become more intense.

This temperature change has also led to the general outfits of the students changing. While outfits near the beginning of the semester usually consisted of shorts and or a t-shirt. Those items seemed to be almost completely gone from the student’s wardrobes. Instead the most common clothing items at this part of the year seemed to be jeans, sweaters and hoodies. I also believe that this is dependent on the weather from day to day and from hour to hour as the change in clothes had not been as apparent during my previous week’s field notes.

Despite this change in temperature the general patterns of the students in the building was the same with several individual students studying in all four of the main buildings, two in the oxygen building, three in the carbon building, one in the hydrogen building, and three in the nitrogen building. There seemed to be a larger amount of students arriving between classes during this observation period than had during previous weeks. These students seemed to be arriving late for classes as they seemed to go to classrooms and the number of students studying did not increase at the same rate as the amount of students arrived.

As the day progressed a group of students began to gather in the cafeteria. This group did not seem to be related to other groups I had observed during the day and grew with other smaller groups breaking off to form their own sub groups. This group was similar to a group I had observed at a similar times during field work in a previous week. Despite being similar to the group that I had previously observed this group seemed to form organically and not because of staff intervention as I had seemed during the previous week that I had observed it.