Final Project=Ready

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4/23/10 Final Website Review

I looked over the final portfolio for Meredith McKee, a student from Ball State University. Her website was extremely organized and had a logical flow once I understood how to navigate. Her use of colors, contrasts, and images really enhances her overall impact on the reader and her personable intro really allow for a connection. I do, however, feel that the reader could be better directed around the website; it is well thought-out, but the small font makes it hard to distinguish navigational buttons from those inherent on a webpage. Her different interests are reflected in her writing; coupled with her well-formulated webpage, her writing leaves a lasting impact.

Nickel and Dimed

The author of the ethnographic study 'Nickel and Dimed' does an excellent job in the briefing of describing her paper. Most of the excerpt is based around her own evaluation of the process, and her ability to defend every single course of her study. She fully diagnoses her own standing pre-study against what she wants to learn from the study, leveraging her credibility against her own inner feelings of the ethnographic process. This is to the benefit of her entire audience as well as herself, as she is able to objectively view her own purpose.

However, her scientific analysis come into play at the expense of the personality of her paper. Granted, low-income status is nothing to laugh about, but 'Nickel and Dimed' (from the excerpt) seems to be written with a lack of personality. Her study largely is about the dynamic between poverty-stricken people as well as herself, and I feel this could be somewhat more incorporated into her brief. Her scientific background clearly shows as the briefing of the paper reads more like an abstract of an experiment rather than the largely influential, personable paper it could be.

What's Missing

I feel that overall I have a pretty good grip on my study thus far and feel fairly well-directed as to where I go from here. I need to focus on the big picture moreso than on specific attributes of CF and Paleo; however, the passion I want to relay about Paleo+CF must first be justified with studies proving it. I am having difficulty recording too many observations about the gym- it's pretty business-like except for the five minutes before a workout and ten minutes afterwards. Any observations I gain are squeezed in between my own workout.

I want to start focusing on the overall meaning of the diet and the gym to those who are in this nutrition subsection. It won't be hard to incorporate this because I can feel their passion every time they talk about CFPaleo; it's just a matter of working it into my paper.

Secondary Sources

Any secondary sources associated with my ethnographic study in a pure sense will be interviews. There is hardly any research on the topic that is non-scientific and written for the casual reader. And, to add to that, any reading not in lay terms is likely unhelpful to my topic of Paleo and Crossfit for a group of people.
However, most of my secondary sources will be used in my description of the lifestyle and the potential health benefits it manifests. This section of my final paper will likely be more science based and less perception, and it makes sense to add any secondary sources to this section. To start off the chain of secondary sources describing the health benefits of Paleo and Crossfit, I submit a great article from the New England Journal of Medicine. This gives conclusion based on a study showing the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet. In a two year study, weight loss was followed in patients eating a low carb, Meditteranean, and high fat diet. The results are particularly interesting and support the premonitions of the Crossfit+Paleo group that I am studying.

Post 3.18.2010 Essay resource thoughts

For my third essay, with the relative abstraction of my topic, I will have to look at different areas of thought for background. All of the information that I have so far in my paper is anecdotal and empirical and has no real source of scientific background other than basic draws from scientific studies. I will need to look into journals of kinesiology, biochemistry, and even public health for background on The Paleo Diet and Crossfit. These are really the only sources I can think from which to draw scientific fundamentals for my paper. The psychology of health might also be helpful to research, as Paleo and Crossfit is as much physical as psychological.

MIDTERM PORTFOLIO

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Short Observation

I realized very quickly that the Paleo diet was more than a simple diet. It resembled a true way of life, a way of thinking, a way of eating the things that made people feel the very best they could. Trying to learn more about the diet, I followed Steger to a gym called CrossFit Blacksburg, a small, corner of a building gym with 5 pullup bars, 8 lifting bars, and old, rubber weight plates. It seemed as if the next logical step after Paleo was joining this gym. Or maybe joining the gym was the first step to going Paleo. Either way, the individuals in this gym (Chuck, a rubgy player, Marsha, a 60 some year old lady, and Garrett, an ROTC guy at Radford) all had something figured out. For an hour, they worked out in short spurts of as little as 3 minutes to up to 20 minutes, and on this particular day only did about 15 minutes of solid lifting, the rest of the time spent stretching, doing handstands, doing pullups, pushups, essentially jungle gym activities. A main part of their hour in the gym was the probably 10 minutes or so that they simply fired questions about nutrition to eachother, ranging from topics like fish oil, insulin response, and the lowest sugar fruits.

20 minute observation fieldwork

My 20 minute observation started a little unorthodox in nature, as I was unsure of a concrete, tangible location in which to do actual fieldwork. However, that soon became a non-issue.

As I decided to begin working with the Paleo diet and following its guidelines for health, I knew I was very limited by my simple knowledge base of the whole process. So I decided to bring it up in conversation with a few good friends in a car ride back from Snowshoe, WV, a few select friends who pride themselves on being healthy, but not following Paleo. By speaking with them, I would be able to hear my intial discerning, anti-Paleo thoughts while spreading some of the ideas I had learned about Paleo.

"Where do you get your carbs?"
"You're telling me milk is bad for you?"
"So whole-grain pasta- high in fiber and B vitamins, is a no go?"

And I could only give a few select ideas from what I knew from the reading I had done (thepaleodiet.com, robbwolf.com). I knew I would have to learn more, somehow. I needed to find a veritable Paleo-epicenter, a tangible location to view others while doing my own personal learning. There has to be somewhere where people who are this health-conscious meet and interact, it's too extreme and effective for there not to be a small contingent of Paleo-ers somewhere.

And for my 20 minute-observation, to make it fit with the assignment, I'll give some initial thoughts about my being on the Paleo diet for a week now.

I feel awful. Having no starchy carbs is leaving me with no energy. I can feel my glycogen (energy in my muscles) not being replaced after a long walk up a hill, leaving me sucking wind. My head feels light just before mealtimes, like I'm craving a MilkyWay bar or a Coca-Cola. One of the only things that's keeping me up is coffee, of which the flow is plentiful, and to top it all of my workout routine is really suffering, because I just want to sleep all the time. My stomach hurts with the massive influx of vegetables, fats from olive oils and nuts, and citrusy fruits. You may think this is going wrong, but I am right on schedule. I have been warned that the first week to two weeks of Paleo makes you feel like death, and only when your body can convert from using sugars and starches as the main energy source to using fats and going into ketosis for energy do you realize the full benefits of Paleo. Not here in the blog, but in the Essay will be a dumbed-down scientific reasoning (to the best of my ability) of the process. Here's to hoping it works! Got to plug on through!

Lay of the Land 2.19.10

The Lay of the Land example was an excellent demonstration of how a well-written ethnographic study should fully immerse the reader. By using a sensory imaging of the bowling alley (while able to not pander towards just being sensually effective), it was a great layout of the ethnographic study. More important than its ability to place the reader IN the bowling alley, the Lay of the Land was able to conceptually/intellectually engage the reader by its overall simple structure, yet meaningful conceptual base. It transports the reader into any bowling alley that he or she has ever been to, maintaining its professionalism about this single bowling alley, to which no one has been. Great piece of work, nice basis for Essay 2.

Site Ideas for Ethnography

Math Emporium

Corps of Cadets

Panera Bread

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