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Learning from mistakes
Three months have passed since I first started the ethnography project. During
the three month, I have studied and researched about an aviation fraternity called Alpha
Eta Rho (AHP) and participating aviation students in University of Illinois. The project
opened up an opportunity to meet people whose career field is drastically different from
my own. As I expected, they were not romanticists who want to fly away like some E.T.
character, but determined individuals with strong willpower and firm. At least once in
his or her lifetime, everyone has a dream, whether the dream turns out to be
unachievable or flaccid. In order to achieve the dream, one requires firm determination
that helps to surmount all the obstacles one may face in the process.
I remember with embarrassment, that in the beginning, I was clueless to how I
should approach this project. I was ignorant to the fact that there are two kinds of AHP
meeting: official and unofficial meeting. The official AHP meeting is held every other
Thursday at 7 P.M, and unofficial meeting, called “hang-out day”, is held on Thursdays
that do not have a scheduled meeting. When I attended the AHP official meeting for the
first time, I was confused. Not knowing exactly what I needed to do, I did not know I
needed to take notes even on tedious talks. As a result, I had really hard time writing
the final paper; I had to squeeze out any possible information from my memory and the
tape recorder I brought to the meeting. As it turns out, tape-recording everything at all
was unintentional yet immensely fortunate move. As time passed by, I saw other
students’ field notes, which included every single tiny detail. From this experience, I
learned to know how to take a “good” field note. The field description I had taken
previous to the spring break and after the break shows great improvement in
observations. As the first two pages in the portfolio reveal, I only involved myself in
Hyung Sun Kim
Rhet. 105-S4
Self-reflective Essay
05-02-2006