I have learned more than I thought I would by going through the autoethnographic process. The first thing I noticed about my writing is that i always write about something that i know alot about, enjoy doing, or something that is important to me. Family and dance have been the most common themes that i’ve found in my writing so far. My first essay on vision showed that i value my family heritage and its traditions. The second one on taste showed that i love the beach, and also spending time with my family. My third essay, i haven’t gotten to yet in my autoethnography, but i have a feeling that its going to show that i like to be in a relaxed carefree mood.

On theme that i have not found so far in my writing that kind of surprised me was my friends and boyfriend. If someone were to ask me what in my life is most important to me I would probably say my friends, my boyfriend, and my family. I didn’t really write much about my friends, but i did write about dance. The two are kind of connected though, the people i dance with are my closest friends. That could also be a reason why i enjoy it so much. I only mentioned my boyfriend twice in my writing- once in a blog, where i really didn’t say too much about him, and the other time in my touch essay. I didn’t elaborate on the situation much in the essay but it was obvious i was mad at him because of something he had done. I’m suprised that i didn’t write more positive things about him, we’ve been dating for two years now and he’s a huge part of my life.

Maybe what i’ve written is showing me who really should be the most important people in my life- my family. While i am still a high school student and very involved with my friends and boyfriend, they may not be there forever. In about four months i may never see the my three best friends from high school again, but i’m sure that won’t happen because we’ve made plans to stay close. Anyway my point is friends and boyfriends can come and go but my family is always going to be my family. Through my writing I’ve realized I really do care for them more than how much i’ve showed them.

So far, I think I have a good start on my final paper. I have about five pages written and am almost halfway though my outline. I might end up with more than ten pages, but I’m willing to write as much as it takes to get it all in. I just need to keep going with my outline, because so far, everything is working nicely and going well. At least I think that it is, based on the feedback I’ve recieved from classmates. I still need to go over my smell, touch and hearing essays in my autoethnography. Then i’ll come up with a conclusion about what i learned about myself through my writtings and my English 101 class.

One thing that i know I need to work on in my final paper is the works cited list and the in text citations. i need to make sure that i format the quotes that i’m using from my own essays correctly. i think i’m just going to use a block quote so that it’s set off from the other paragraphs. I need to look up on the internet or in Hacker how to do the works cited list for my own essays. i probably won’t use any other outside sources other than the ones i have already used previously in one of my essays, so those citations will already be formatted correctly.

Introduction

• What is Autoethnography?
• Introduce research question – What is I?
• Thesis statement for What is I?
• Include parts of first blog entry

 Vison-

• Blog on vison/prewritting how I chose my picture and what it means to me- Plato in class reading
• Essay #1- how and why did I come up with my narritave, what does it say about me? discuss significances

Taste-

• Reflect on prewriting/ blog entry on Mocha Frappichios
• in class taste tests and blogs
• Essay #2 Orange Slices- What does this essay say about me? why did i compare orange slices to the beach?

Smell-

• blog entry and prewriting
• in class smell tests
• Essay #3 on Verbena Mint-Why does it seem that smell is the least important scent to me?

Touch-

• Blog on touch/prewriting
• 3 articles shared in class that were used as referances in my paper
• Essay #4 on Touch, discuss significances and why I chose to write a compare and contrast essay.

Hearing-

• Blog entry/prewriting
• touch tests in class and 3 shared articles used in my paper
• Essay #5- Causes and effects of hearing why did I write what I did?

Discuss and interpret what i found out about myself through looking back at my essays and other writings

Conclusion- Answer What is I?

one of the most common themes i saw when looking back at my essays so far is that i write mostly about what i know. i write about things that i’m comfortable and familiar with and am knowledgable about. i think this shows that i like to be sure and confident in what i am writing about. it’s not that i don’t want to take a step out of my comfort zone. when i write about what i know i usually expand my knowledge by finding some other sources i can learn from and include in my writing. so my favorite essay was my touch essay. because i wrote about feeling which is touch in the emotional not phyical sense i think this shows that i am an sensitive maybe even emotional person. i also liked this essay the best because i wrote about something that i love to do and do all the time, which is dancing. it was probably also the easiest essay for me to write because i really knew what i was talking about and was excited to share my emotions about dancing with other people so that they can feel the joy i feel when i was writing.

The first place I found to possibly publish my final paper is a magazine called Teen Ink. They also have a book series and publications on their website. Teen Ink is a national magazine and they don’t have any writers on staff. They depend completely on submissions from teens under the age of 19. There’s nothing specific I would have to write about, they publish pieces about pretty much anything teen related. I think its really cool that Teen Ink is a non-profitable organization and all of their proceeds are donated to charities or used for educational purposes. It sounds like this would be a good place for me to try publish something i’ve written because the submission process doesn’t look difficult at all and they will publish almost anything if its good enough and they like it.

The second place I found that I could publish one of my papers is called World of Writers. It is an online journal that publishes the work of undergaduate students at IUP. They accept submissions in many formats like poetry, artwork, photography, films and of course research and non-fiction papers. There’s a board of reviewers that review the submitted work and decide what to publish. This would be a great place for me to publish because they encourage students in 101 and 202 writing courses to submit their work.

The third place I found to possibly publish is The Collision Literary Magazine. It’s a publication of The University of Pittsburgh’s Honor’s College. They publish undergraduate work that is exclusively creative non-fiction. I don’t have to be a student at Pitt to publish in this magazine, they accept submissions from all over the world. I think its cool that they also release a CD of local artists with this magazine each semester. This would be a good place for me to possibly publish because Pitt is one of the schools that I have been considering attending next fall.

After reading and researching about autoethnography, I found that there is no specific definition. Most expainations I read included something along the lines of evaluating the self and its relation to culture. The autoethnography is written in the first person and in a range of forms including stories, journals, essays, and poetry. The Ethnographic I says, “He defined ethnography as part art and part science, but it is also something all its own… autoethnography overlaps art and science; it is part auto or self and part ethno or culture” (Ellis, 131). The simpliest definition I found was more of a formula, “auto + ethnography = self + culture” (Autoethnography: the study of the awareness of the self within culture).

In order to write an autoethnography, I am the subjet of my own research and I write about the experiences I’ve had through personal narritaves. I have to reflect on my life experiences in relation to my culture, and then explain them. Telling a story can be the most logical way to do this because, “Stories are the way humans make sense of their worlds. Stories are essential to human understanding and are not unique to autoethnography” (Ellis, 133). In order to do this I will have to think about my personal thoughts, observations, beliefs, and feelings when I interact with my social settings.

An autoethnography is sometimes used interchangably with autobiography, but the differance is that an autoenthenography has to take into account one’s own experiences within a culture. In other words, “In additon to describing and looking critically at one’s own experience, and autoethnography is also cultural accounting” (Autoethnography in Social Research). In my last semester sociology class, our final paper was a socioautobiography, and now i’m wondering if there is a difference between this and an autoethnography.

The term autoethnography was first used by an anthropologist named Karl Heider in 1975, but David Hayano is credited with the term. He limited its meaning to studies where the researcher is a native of the group in which he is studying (Ellis, 38).

Works Cited

Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethenography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.

Autoethnography: The study of the Awareness of the Self within Culture. http://www.humboldt.edu/~dck5/autoethnography.html

Autoethnography In Social Context. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. 2008. http://www.reference.com/search?q=autoethnography

This song is electric guitar, drums and vocals. its called what’s my age again by blink 182. this song reminds me of my brother, he plays it on his guitar all the time, and its so fitting for him. when he got his recording system for christmas it was the first thing he recorded.

The first song i listened to was mostly acoustic guitar with lyrics. i really like the song, it was nice and mellow and calming, like something i would listen to if i needed to relax. it probably wouldn’t be my first choice of something to listen to but i did really enjoy it.

Just minutes ago as i was coming home from the mall with my mom, and out of the corner of my eye i saw something white move to the left of the road. When i turned my head to look i saw deer running full speed right into the lane of traffic we were traveling. I gasped so hard my lungs couldn’t take in another molecule of air. I tried so hard just to utter the word ’deer’ but it seemed burried at the depths of my vocal chords.  In any other situation saying one simple word is so easy it barely needs a thought. Why now can’t i just spit out a one syllable, four letter word? With not even a split second left to spare my mouth, brain and vocal chords teamed up and uttered the warning for me. It wasn’t loud like it should have been, more like a faint syllable as i exhaled. It was loud enough though, thank god hearing is instantaneous or i probably wouldn’t be sitting here typing right now.

Here’s what happened that allowed my mom to hear me say ‘deer’ and react by slamming on the breaks. First, her outer ear acted as a funnel by collecting the sound waves and sending them to her middle ear. Her bone called the stapes caused the oval window separating the middle and inner ear to vibrate. The vibrating sound waves cause the fluid in the inner ear to ripple. This bends the nerve endings called cilia to send impulses through the auditory nerve to the brain. My mom’s brain then translated the sounds into a recognizable word (The “How?” of Hearing).

It would be so unfortunate to be deprived of the sense of hearing. As i grow older, my sense of hearing will naturally decrease in effectiveness. Some people are born deaf, or loose their hearing due to illness. Another way i could lose my hearing or have poor hearing is from consistantly listening to extremely loud noises. I’m suprised my brother isn’t deaf already from how excrutiatingly loud he listens to music. When he plays his guitar in the basement the sounds given life by his fingers against the strings seep to the highest nook or cranny in the house before it finally fades to nothing. My uncle worked in the Harley Davidson factory in York, PA for most of his life. By the time he was in his early thirties he was in desperate need of hearing aids. His loss of hearing was caused by the incessant literally deafening roar of motorcycle engines. Natural News suggests folic acid to help prevent hearing loss saying, “Folic acid – a B vitamin also known as folate – helps the body create new cells. Earlier studies have found that people with low intake of folic acid tend to have poor hearing” (Natural News).

I know that my ears are critical to help me keep my sense of balance, but i’ve never understood why. There are calnals in my ears that are full of liquid that moves as i move my head. The liquid pushes against nerve endings which send messages to my brain and tell it how my body is moving (Your sense of hearing). So i guess this liquid has something to do with why I feel dizzy when I stop spinning around or suddenly stand up after laying down for a long period of time. I never really thought about how important this is, but without it i wouldn’t even be able to walk, let alone dance, something i enjoy so much.

 Works Cited

Union Square Hearing, Inc. The Bay Area Hearing Center. The “How?” of Hearing. San Francisco Hearing Services. 2007.  www.bayareahearingcenter.com/TheHowofHearing.htm

Natural News. Folic acid may help pervent hearing loss in old age, studies show. Truth Publishing International. 2008.  www.naturalnews.com/021410.html

Think Quest Junior. Your Sense of Hearing. www.library.thinkquest.org/3750/hear/hear.htm

MLA-

The scent of verbena mint has been known to move writers to poetry and prose in an effort to describe is essence, which is both crisp and relaxing at the same time (“Mountain Rose Herbs”).

Lemon Vervena Mint Herb Profile. Mountain Rose Herbs, Inc. 2008. http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/learn/Lemon_verbena.php

Diane Ackerman says that, “We call our emotions feelings, and we care most deeply when something ‘touches’ us” (70).

Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage Books. 1990.

APA-

New Scientist Tech ( 2007) magazine says that people who have good gut instincts for what other people are feeling have a condition called “Mirror-touch-synaesthesia, it shows they are also especially sensitive to other people’s emotions” (p. 14).

Sense of Touch is Crucial for Empathy. (2007, June 23). New Scientist Tech, 2609.

Liebert (2005) found that massage therapy was effective intervention for pain and sleep disorders, and it helps to bring about relaxation and reduces anxiety (p. 902).

Liebert, MA. (2005). Massage Therapy Should not be Overlooked. [Letter to the Editor]. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 8.