Week 7

I am not sure of my plan yet to finish my mini-ethnography. I do know however that I need a lot more research in able to finish my paper. I know that I should get more background information on the Ball State lacrosse club team. I want to know how they feel as a team. In order to do this I want to have a few interviews. I also need to spend a lot more time with the team. However, this will not be able to happen until the spring when I start to travel with them. I hope to be able to see inside the game from a different view after this. I am putting a lot of emphasis on this time period for my paper. This is making the early papers hard because I do not have the main part yet.

Box 17

The field that the lacrosse players practice on is the practice football field. The lines that are the same that are found on a regular standard football field. The team usually only uses the field from the fifty yard line on. They use this field to host games too. This is a little condraditary. Football is the most watched game in America. Lacrosse is a sport that there is not a lot of information. Maybe they should look into getting their own field. Maybe the team and games would become more popular so more people would go.

Box 16

I have not started to describe the place that the men practice. However, when I do start to explain the setting around the players I have many ideas of what I want to use. I want to be able to tell my audience the differences of the places that they play to the places that they practice. I know that the team has practice inside the field and sports building on Ball States campus when the weather is not cooperating. When the weather is nicer they work out on the practice football field. While inside, they have late practice after eleven at night. When they get time outside they tend to practice from about 5 until dusk. They go until they can no longer see the ball.

After reading this through I realize that the field and sports building is an insider term for Ball State students. I think that I will describe the gym and the field that they use so that the reader can have a feel of where I am when talking about the play. I also assumed that the reader knew that lacrosse was played with a small white ball instead of explaining it.

Week 6

I can only make a few general conclusions about my community as of right now. I know that they play lacrosse for fun. If they were more serious about it they would play for a NCAA team. However, I know that they love playing the game, and they are pretty good at what they do. I think that any club team would be different on a different campus. They would have to be the same on the outside, but under it all each team has their own uniqueness that contributes to their success or failure on the field. All teams want to win, but some teams are more willing to give up when behind. While other teams, they are fighters until the end. The fighters are usually a group of teammates that gets along off the field. This mentality would change from school to school because the coaches, players, and fans are different. Under it they all play the same game that they love, but the similarities stop there.

Week 5

For my project I have only collected one source. I went to the Bracken Library and checked out four books. I also hope to have an interview after this weekend. However, I would like to have been able to read a little out of the books so that I can have a general knowledge about lacrosse and its rules. I know that most of my sources explain the positioning on the field. I hope that I will be able to read about it. Then I want to use my knowledge to better connect with the players. I hope that this will save me time because then they will not have to answer any questions that I might have about the general game. I am still looking for a magazine article or a newspaper article. I hope that those will give me more insight on the game itself. I have one problem though when I am looking for articles about lacrosse, they are mostly about Duke lacrosse players because of the trouble that they got into awhile back.

Week 4

Academic sources are sources that are written for an academic purpose only. They are for research more than entertainment. Professors demand the use of these sources for many reasons. The main reason is that they want the writer to be sure that the information is valid. Another major reason is that the professor wants to know that none of the articles are more opinion that sounds like fact than a formal article. A non-academic source is a popular one. If we look at the example of magazines we can see that there are popular magazines, like Sports Illustrated, and academic magazines. A writer could use a non-academic source if they wanted opinions on the matter at hand. They can also use them if they need records or general knowledge. If used however, they need to be extremely careful to make sure that all the information that they collect is correct.