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Jacob Linzenbold
Marlen Harrison
English 101-017
March 31, 2009
Auto ethnography
From the beginning of this class I was always a decent writer, enough to “get by” in high school. I looked at the class workload and did not know how I was going to keep up. When given our first assignment, I knew that this class would hold my interest the entire semester.
At the beginning of the year, we were asked a complex question in “what is I”. After sitting in my chair wondering what kind of question is this it is such a commonly used word I never thought of defining it anymore than it was. Then I sat and thought what I meant to me, and I came up with my definition from my blog as follows:
“What is I?” The word I is often thrown around in everyday conversation but it is actually more than that. It is a term that has a different meaning for every individual. Some look at I as psychical appearance or some shallow meaning such as that. It is up to the user of the word though to determine what the definition of I actually is. In order to understand the true meaning of the word I we must understand there are many different layers to this word. It is composed of everything that the user of the word stands for and has done. It is a word that almost has to used, and is very complex.
Still I, in my opinion, is a collection of many things. It includes every aspect of your life. Every action youve taken, everything youve said and done. So to me I is a collection of everything from past experiences and relationships to actions and thoughts. So, I, is much more than a word and is not easily definable.”
Even though I wrote this entry almost 3 months ago, I agree with it completely. My blog highlighted the fact that I, is a word that stands for everything the user of the word has done, said, felt or thought. That’s not your everyday Merriman-Webster definition and I didn’t intend it to be, most use the word without a second thought, I now know that it is much more than that. Looking at many papers written in high school and college a favorite word of students has to be I. It is so easy to use and can be used many times throughout a paper. The only way to stop yourself from using it is to consciously make an effort to stop.
The definition of I is a complex one as we have already established. Another word that is complex would be auto ethnography. After some research and some personal knowledge on it I came up with my own definition. The best way to describe it from a line from one of my blog entry:
“Autoethnography is the awarness of ones self in a certain culture or setting. It is primarily a definition of “I” through your writing.”
Now that may not be the clearest explanation but it is exactly what I am trying to accomplish by writing this auto ethnography. I am putting in my writings throughout the semester and showing how they are related to my personality and my experiences. After reading this paper, the reader will have a better idea of who I am as a writer and even a person. To do this I will go through all of the sense and essays that we wrote.
Our first sense that we would be writing on would be taste. We were asked to right a few a couple paragraph blog entry. So I titled mine “A Hamburger to Remember” and wrote of my experiences with eating and how important I felt it was too me. I recalled a trip I made to Mexico and how dull life would be without “something to spice it up.” Writing this short blog entry would give me a head start on our essay.
The next way we would use taste would be through an in class assignment. We picked a partner and tasted the food that the other person brought in. I had a hard time identifying the one taste, because it was one I’ve never tasted before. The next test though was easy since ive tasted it before. It was a whopper, showing me that the memory associated with taste is very strong, since I haven’t had one of these in a long time. My partners figured out my snack pretty easily because it was chex mix, a snack that I’m sure most of them have tasted before so they could identify it.
Shortly after the blog entry and taste test, early into the semester we wrote our first essay. It was supposed to introduce our reader to the sense of taste, I did this by using the narrative genre, and I found that it took me a while to produce a quality piece of work. My first time in writing this essay, it was returned to me and Marlen only read a little bit of it due to so many errors. When seeing this I knew that revision would be an important part of this class. After the editing process I received a grade that I was satisfied with, and am glad I was able to.
My first paragraph for this essay really started things out in the right direction; since this was the only thing I got any feedback on I knew it was a quality intro:
“The day started normal enough for Eric he would wake up and get ready for work. Then he’d come home exhausted, eat dinner and repeat. Continually repeating the same task day in and day out is enough for anybody to be looking for change.”
In my personal writing process, if I can get started I usually just crank out the rest of a paper. After fine tuning that paragraph I had a strong base for the rest of the paper. I really enjoyed the entire process of writing this paper, because I turned out in my opinion my best paper that I would write the whole year. Personally, I have an easy time writing narrative essays, and this one was an exception due to the editing process. After this though, I was left with a much better essay than I started with.
Our next in class assignment was to look at a picture that we brought in and some that Marlen provided for us. It was difficult to describe the pictures through words. It became even more difficult when we found that we were writing to two different audiences, a group of kids and a group of old people. Once writing the first one, I realized that when keeping the audience that you are writing to in mind it is easier to write a good essay or paragraph, since you can expect what your reader wants to hear.
One day in class we had an assignment to bring in a picture, and later on we were told that we would be writing about our pictures. My picture was of the Dallas Cowboys, known as “The Triplets”. Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin were the three players pictured. To me this was more than a picture, growing up a Cowboys fan, these were my idols. In the essay, I highlighted each of the member’s stats to some extent. Here is an excerpt from that essay
“Every time I would watch the Cowboys as a young boy I would always look up to the triplets. They were the greatest of their time so of course I had a lot of respect for them. Even though Michael Irvin had a little bit of trouble off the field, I still respected him since he cleaned his act up after many mistakes.”
As shown above, the best part of my paper would have to be my personal connection with the players I was writing on. I had many memories of watching them play, and I learned a few important things from them. I believe that the Triplets played a big part in my childhood and what direction that I would be taking. Michael Irvin would face many problems in his career, such as injuries and drug abuse. One may see this and think how anyone that used hard drugs could be considered a role model. Michael showed that even when you have enough money and fame, you might make mistakes. This crossed over into my world and I saw a grown man make mistakes and man up for them to accept the consequences. This form of a role model really taught me a thing or two about taking responsibility for my actions.
Watching the triplets win three Super Bowls together made me want to achieve something great in my life. Emmitt Smith set the bar higher for all running backs when he became the all time leading rusher. Also who could forget Troy Aikman, stand up guy and a great team leader. When combining all three of these role models, I couldn’t help but to write about them. I even used Troy Aikman for inspiration in my life when I face a similar problem as him.
“The first thing that came to my mind when I would receive a concussion a few years ago was to look to Troy Aikman. He battled through many things and continued to keep playing through a string of injuries. That to me was very inspirational and just showed how much of a class act and man Troy Aikman is.”
That just goes to show how important a role model, or lack thereof can really help a person through tough times and good times. I believe the same can be said of a father, but sometimes one or the other isn’t enough. Today’s athletes and other role models need to understand that even though they don’t want to be a role model, they usually have not choice in the matter
Our next sense that we would work with would be smell. To start it off we had to write a short paragraph for our blogs. The sentence that stood out to me for this entry was:
“Next time you are reliving some of your best memories try and think how important of a role the sense of smell played. When trying to describe most smells its hard to do unless someone has smelled the same smell you are trying to describe. Smell is a priceless sense. I couldn’t imagine trying to live without it.”
This summarized my attitude for my sense of smell. After writing this entry, I was prepared to start my main essay. I would use what I had figured out on it to help me kick start my essay. For this essay I wrote it in the informative genre and showed some of the facts of smell. I had some interesting paragraphs such as this one:
“Smell is a sense that you can remember forever, but not be able to explain the scent to someone else. A new or different scent shows how complex smell actually is. It can really not be represented by anything; we can only try and explain it. Though most of the time it is a very difficult thing to do.”
This paragraph just shows how different of a sense smell is, it is also a big part of our sense of taste. I realize that it is not a life or death sense, but things would be more difficult without this and things would be much more dull and boring. If you lose your sense of sight, you can use brail and have others describe the events that are transpiring. With smell though, once you lose it, it would be very difficult to have someone explain the complex experiences you are missing.
These papers as a whole really didn’t define who I was or help me find myself, but it did open my eyes to how much I rely on this sense. I use this for the taste of everything, and the scent of the opposite sex. Even though not everything in the world smells pleasant, for a matter of fact most smells quit the opposite. I still almost enjoy smelling something unpleasant; knowing that I need this sense and it makes my life more interesting.
When writing my next essay, I combined a story with a lot of information. Touch was the subject of this paper. I compared touch to the rest of the human senses and made points, such as touch being the only sense that doesn’t decay with age, along with every other sense. My closing paragraph on this essay summed up what I was trying to convey throughout the entire paper:
“Whether you are a fighter or a lover, touch is essential to being able to function properly and enjoy life to its fullest. Not being able to feel your loved ones would be horrible and we should be thankful for having our most basic senses. Eric and his grandpa both live lives that would be very difficult to live. Losing any sense would be devastating, but without touch we are not in “touch” with the world around us.”
To me, this paragraph was very important to my essay and my point as a whole. It just again emphasized my message that was underlying throughout the essay. I came up with the side story of Eric and his grandpa, because my grandpa had a stroke and had to move in with my family. I have seen firsthand some of the difficulties he has face with hearing and sight. I’ve seen how hard of a time he’s had trying to adjust to these changes. I realized that his sense that was as good as it was years ago was touch. I used this personal experience to expand my writing abilities.
The other part of the story about Eric and his blindness was just something that I made up. I sympathize with anyone that faces any type of disability and I just thought that a child without their sense of sight would be getting left out of a very special experience of being able to see things around in daily life. If anything it showed how devastated I would be if I would lose my senses. I don’t take my senses for granted; I use them all to my full ability and am careful of the choices that I make that could change that.
When looking back at my experiences in this class, I have to think that I made a good decision in signing up for this class. Everything from the kind of heavy workload helped me get my grades back on track. It showed me how to get a lot of stuff done in a short period of time. It wasn’t all that difficult either because the class was interesting, and Marlen made the atmosphere of the class pretty laid back and it was that I could type about and subject or talk about any subject without having to worry.
After exploring all of these genres and senses, I have learned more about myself as a writer. I am hoping that my readers also got a small look into my head. Some things that I can take away from writing experience and class as a whole is it has increased my ability to write long, interesting, clear and concise papers. Also I finally understand the meaning of the word “I” and will not take that or any of my senses for granted ever again.
