ExemplarB

So, yeah, today was embarrassing, haha. I stood up in class and said very little of the important stuff I was supposed to say. It's okay though, I guess. It had to be done; should have been done correctly, but, hey. I need to improve on my presentation skills, I guess. Normally it doesn't go that poorly. : (

Hopefully I can make up for my embarrassing ramblings by posting my whole interview with the side-notes to be picked apart as you all like. It's very long, but I won't demand that you guys read the whole thing to comment or anything. : ) ( I think that has been an implicit rule on the our blogs, what do you guys think?) Anyways, please pick apart pieces you find interesting or just skim it over, and if you want, you can read the whole thing! ^.^ Here you guys go :

I have already talked to this girl before, when I started to do my earlier interviews, but I thought since I got such good feedback from the informal interview that I would do a formal one as well. I did two other interviews today…but this one, I think, gave the most results supporting the existence of a Cosmopolitan Canopy. Since we already knew each other, the formal introduction was pretty much dropped, but I did let her know that the confidentiality policy had changed. These are the basic questions that went along with the answers she gave me, since I failed to write down the exact questions, and some of the answers are generalized and not word-for-word, but there are a couple that are verbatim.

“So, what year are you?”
“I’m a sophomore.”

“How long have you been going to school here at UK? Where are you from?”
“I’m actually a transfer student, and this is my first year here at UK. I went to school somewhere else (I forgot where) and then I went and taught kids in Japan and then I came here.”
(Here, I suppose, I could have gone on to ask about what Japanese schools are like for a broader ethnographic study, but I didn’t think about that at the time…)

“Why do you come here?”
“Most of my conversations during the day happen here...” We proceeded to talk about how she was able to always find a friend from ESL or from Japanese class to talk to while she was there, and the fact that as she talked to her friends, she was introduced to friends of her friends…at which point she said something I feel is a very important indicator of the presence of a Cosmopolitan:
“A comment here, which goes everywhere and suddenly you’re connected to something you never imagined.”
In a Cosmopolitan society, the possibilities of discovery about the nature of individuals are endless and even unimaginable at times. And the way to unlocking this unimaginable information is by asking a single question or making a single comment, however small.
My informant is also doing a similar project for a different class.

“It’s really a unique area, and I’m not really sure why.”

“So, when do you hang out here?”
“Well, I come over after class around ten, and if people are here, I stay; if not, I leave. My next class isn’t until 2. So I sit here and listen to people talk and then maybe someone will talk to me.” Usually, she has a class or knows someone who is going to class.
I think that this sentence is of extreme importance for my research. So far I have found my area to be a neutral space. People hang with people they know, and seldom initiate random conversation. Although, I did meet an exception the other day: I sat next to this guy on one of the benches who was reading. He grunted about something he read in the book, and I commented with “What did you read?” He then proceeded to ask me questions and we talked about philosophy and animation. The book was on philosophy. We even became friends on facebook.com, and I talked to him on facebook.com Sunday night (Nov. 16th).

“So, do you and you’re friends ever hang out anywhere else, or make plans to go hang out while you’re here?”
“Well, sometimes we’ll go out to lunch, and recently we had a classmate’s friend’s birthday party.”
It seems like these are more formal outings, and are fewer than the in-building interactions.

“So you feel like you’ve made a lot of friends in your classes here?”
“I can talk to half the class here, but I only have one friend in my lecture class of seventy other students, which isn’t in here.”

“So you come here because of class or the social interaction? Was the international student aspect an appeal? Why did you start coming here at first?”
(Perhaps I should have asked if she would still meet here even if she didn’t have class in this building.)
“It started out that my class was right around the corner…the international student aspect was an attraction.”
(My informant has taught in Japan, and is also in a Japanese class like me, but not the same one. She mentioned that she is able to point out the difference between people from Korea and Japanese speakers when they open their mouths. )
My informant was also very talkative, so she told me that she depended on noise, since she was from a large family; strangely, she referred to herself as an introvert. Her eyes darted around while she spoke as I tried not to stare at her while talking.

“Not interacting is okay, sometimes…” She says, at first with an affirming tone, and then with a tone of condescension.
“That noise, that element of sound…”
“There are people and then there’s talking and there’s laughter…”
She tells me that she always has her television on in her apartment, since she’s from a large family and is used to the noise. Patterson Office Tower is often buzzing with activity as classes end and begin.

My informant tells me she enjoys “People watching.” Another Cosmopolitan trait in a place that seems to be a neutral space with a great opportunity for Cosmopolitan interaction.
“How would you describe the people that meet here, in as many words as you like?”
“It’s a varied collection of people from around the world who love to sit together and laugh. They are fun-loving and come together whether from a lack of understanding about a concept (Though they socialize more than study); warm and friendly, interesting and intelligent.”

She remarks about studying:
“Conversation in itself is study.”

“So why do you sit here instead of in the seating area in the front when you walk in, or in Intermezzo?”
“This place has a more ‘open,’ and ‘relaxed atmosphere.’”
“It’s more fun, hands down.”
She claimed that the other areas seemed “less inviting,” and she mentioned that the chairs faced each other, making it seem less open for mingling. I think she was talking mainly about Intermezzo, but I’m not quite sure. She also said that you had to have someone go with you. (Implying that Intermezzo is an intimate space)
Our area could have been more comfortable physically, she says, but she also notes what she calls the more “natural lighting” of the back of the Patterson Office Tower, which she likes more than the lighting in Intermezzo. Perhaps the long windows are to shed light on the opportunities provided by the back space—the chance to meet many people from different cultures.

“This area’s a thorough fare.”
“What’s a thorough fare?”
“A place of transit, where people are coming and going.”

Indeed, it is. Many people come in or go out the back doors, whether to go smoke outside, or to enter or leave the building. After I completed this interview, I told my informant good-bye and that I would probably be back later. Then I went out to lunch.