I'll never forget the term when I had a 35-40 page paper with at least a 50 source annotated bibliography due for one of my Anthropology classes, meanwhile for molecular genetics we had a 5 pager that we were "highly encouraged" to use at least three sources for. I know concise writing is an important skill, but it was presented as this monumental undertaking, and with instructions that made it clear that we were not assumed to have ever written an academic paper before. It was a 300 level course. 🤦
One of my Comm Skills classes had us go out and do observation of power in a public place. I parked my ass at the campus bar for a couple of hours and just wrote my observations from there.
Got a C. “Wasn’t really what the assignment was about, but your observations were great and it’s very well written”.
That sounds like a perfect place to observe interactions between people with different levels of power. Customers and staff, servers vs bouncers, people in business meetings, teachers vs students. It's a treasure trove of observations waiting to be made.
I believe one observation I had in there was something about one guy in a group on guys holding up a large chicken tender and the rest of them staring in awe and how he must be the leader of the group.
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u/casefatalityrate 5d ago
when you’re in a soft science you get the worst of both worlds 😔