Jonathan Fletcher Fletcher 1

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1103

October 20, 2010

Observations

For this assignment, I decided to go to the Student Union to observe the

people there. Coincidentally, during the time that I was observing people, there was

some kind of karaoke event happening on the main level. There was a lot of noise,

both from people singing and the music blaring, and also from people talking louder

than normal because of the excess noise.

I decided to do my observing between the first and second floors, so that I

could have a view of those above me, and those beneath me. Surprisingly, there was

still quite a bit of reading and writing going on throughout the building.

I saw many people carrying on conversations despite the noise, and I even

observed a couple study groups that were somehow still able to get their work done.

I also saw several dozen people working on their laptops, doing different things,

including Facebooking, reading news articles, and doing math homework. I saw one

person using an iPad (I think he was simply surfing the web) and a few people

attempting to hear their own music on their iPods above the calamity, while doing

an assignment.

I only saw about a half dozen people working on actual paper assignments.

Most of them were alone, but there was one group of two or three working together.

Fletcher 2
I was surprised to find one person was managing to study Biology despite her

surroundings.

I remember one person reading a newspaper, and one person was also

reading a novel. It looked like both were reading recreationally (as in not for an

assignment). I also saw one person using one of the public computers for what

looked like writing a paper.

Overall, I was astounded at the amount of people that were able to do so

much reading and writing in the middle of all of the noise. I know that if I were

trying to read or write I would have had to get up and leave, because I would not

have been able to concentrate on my work. I was even having a hard time paying

attention to simply observing those reading and writing. Although I cannot say for

sure, I do not expect that many people were actually getting much done either, but

they surely pretended they were!