Blog #3 Practice Field Notes

Field Notes: (In class practice)

Jottings:
- girls moved first
- small groups
- larger group emerged
- males stayed together
- pairs
-Trish
-Samantha

Headnotes:
- females were the ones who moved first
- the first row to the left stayed seated
- small groups broke out
- there were a few people who stood alone watching- awkwardly
- professor circulated the room, definitely added pressure to the students
- front row finally moved and 2 people were in a cluster, then changed places with each other
- many people did not move a lot the sort of shuffled to the left and right to find people to talk to
- the 2 males in the room tended to stay together
- there was one point where there was a larger amount of people in one area of the room
- conversations seemed to be about what people's majors were (all directed towards the one thing we all have in common)
- I got a complement on my scarf
- just reading people's body language and facial expressions you could tell people were uncomfortable
-  I had no idea what people were wearing,  I think Samantha was wearing a sweatshirt
- I spoke with Samantha and Trish, Trish and I spoke about my junior field.
- the mingling took place in the center isle of the classroom
- I stood primarily in the back of the room where the hooks on the wall were.
- There was one point where I thought Trish was going to hit her head on the hooks
- Samantha said she felt like she was speed dating
- People laughed when they felt awkward
- the conversations became more comfortable when people began talking to each other
- it was quiet at first, but the noise level increased as people got more comfortable

Things I remembered later:
- I didn't remember much after leaving the classroom. The only thing I could say I did not remember was if the professor made any kind of communication with the people in the room. I know that she was circulating around the room and listening, but I don't remember noticing if she made any conversation with anyone in the room.

Observations:
I observed that the girls were the people who engaged in the mingling first. There is a dominant number of females in the classroom so the possible reason for why the males were not too active was because they were out numbered or felt uncomfortable. Reading people's body language was definitely helpful in learning about how people felt during this. Since it was a forced interaction many people smiled and laughed initially, in order to ease the awkward feeling that probably 90% of people were experiencing. I think it is safe to say that people find comfort in finding the common things to talk about out. The number one topic I heard was talking about majors, and the second was talking about how uncomfortable they felt. Now even though these topics were not the most interesting, they led to easy conversations and from there the awkward feeling decreased and people loosened up a little.