Anthropology 1001, Practice field notes 9/19/2012 Before the Observation My observation Location of my observation is the train to Hoboken. Three days a week, I take the train to Hoboken, and then ride PATH to 23rd street. I have wondered during those times, why people choose to seat where they seat? My observation starts when everyone gets his or her seat by him/herself. In another word, my observation starts when a person must have to seat next to someone. I am ignoring variables such as window seats and front/back seats. Also, I am ignoring the look of everyone, since this is only a ethnicity, gender and age observation. What I expect from my observation? I believe that everyone has favor in seating next to another person. Those favors could differ from each person, but generally, it would be same ethnicity, different gender, and younger age. For example, a white male who looks like 30, would seat next to another white female who looks like 20 years old. Purpose of my observation? In choosing a seat, no one will think for long time, and waste their time. The decision will be made very quickly, and the decision will be based on one’s instinct, cultural back ground and what they are familiar with. What I observe can be used in many places. For example, a store which a lot of specific ethnicity go, the owner might be well off to decide to hire a worker who belongs in that ethnicity. That is because customers will be familiar with the surrounding and the staff, which will result in better experience with that store. During the Observation I was only able to pull one only one observation over the long weekend. I didn’t have the chance to ride the train. Also, my observation was mentally exhausting. I was standing on the front of the train and everyone was staring at me. One Jewish man was looking at me for the whole time. He seemed to wonder why I was standing in front of the train, and writing down things. I just smiled back at him, and continued my observation. Observation I coded the people so that I can write it faster. First number is train station starting from 0 at my station. The seats filled up at around 5th station, and most people would start to stand up after the 5th. First word indicates the ethnicity of that person. For example, W is white, B is black, AS is Asian, ASI is Asian Indian, AR is Arab and M is Mexican. I did it so I can identify by just looking at the person. Second digit indicates the age. For example, 20 with arrow up would be 25~29 years old – looking. Since I am observing from the distance, my predictions would be wrong. Second letter indicates the gender. M is Male, W is Female (Woman). The right side of my table is crossed X, because by the time I got on the train, that side was all filled up already. At the end, I was only able to get about 10 samples. I will improve on it as I take trains more times, and write down the observations more. After the Observation Result From the one day observation, I got 9 samples to be exact. From the 9 samples, I am able to find out that, 8 of 9 samples sat next to a person with different gender. However, as far as ethnicity, because the train was filled with mostly white people, I could not find relation to ethnicity. I believe I will improve the statistics as I will get more observations done. Age was also not clearly related to the seating. Since there were certain spots left to seat, I could only observe that people are seating to a seat just because they wanted a seat. Out of 9 samples, 5 of them (more than half) looked 20’s. One out of 9 looked 50 years old. However, people who were already sitting at the seat were mostly 40’s and 30’s. I can find out that only the people who are younger were actually reaching out to the empty seats, which they have to seat next to someone. My response to the observation I find the observation very hard and frustrating, but it’s exciting and fun at the same time. It was hard for me because people were constantly moving, and I had to write down as fast as possible before something changes. For example, I had to write down everyone who was at the station 0, before people started to come in and seat at the empty seats. It also was frustrating, because one, people were staring at me and two, I had to stand up for the whole 1 hour ride in order to observe. At the same time, It was fun and exciting, because I like getting attention, and I felt like I am doing something special.