23/4/08 9:59
Emily entered RI Hall from the entrance on the main green, opening the door by the handle and then holding the push bar as it closed. She walked down the centre of the corridor, and then went up the staircase on the right. She walked up the centre of the staircase, and held the right hand banister with her right hand. She had to move over to the right edge of the steps, and brushed up against the wall to make room for someone coming down. At the top of the stairs, she opened RI Hall 201 by the door handle, and sat in the second row of seats, four in from the left hand side. I asked her if she tended to sit in the same area all the time but she said she didn't usually, and just sat wherever there was room. The chairs are not anchored to the floor which means that they get jostled and moved a lot as the students move through the classroom to sit down and get up. There are therefore not too many wear marks on the carpet as the areas of wear change constantly.
The class was the last of the semester with the filling out of final evaluations and an evaluative discussion of the structure and readings assigned for the class. This was interesting because I had shopped the class at the beginning of the semester, meaning I ended up attending the first and last sessions for this course. As an introductory anthropology course, the students were assigned a variety of ethnographies to read. My 'ethnography' of Emily's experience of the building takes on an interesting aspect in this context because I am turning the lens onto an anthropologist for a short time in a similar way to my treatment of the building as a whole.
In terms of Emily's interaction with the chair, she tended to lean into the back of the chair with her weight resting on one arm on top of the writing desk attached to the chair. When other students in the class were contributing to the discussion, she would twist around in her chair to see them or hear them better. Her bag sat on the floor, leaning against the left side of her chair.
At the end of the class she put her bag on the chair to pack up her things, extricated herself from the maze of chairs and opened the classroom door by the handle. She went down the left hand staircase, not the one she came up, again with her right hand on the banister. She exited the building through the West door, pushing the bar open with her right hand and walking down the steps.
I did not film the session where I sat in on the class, but I returned a week later and re-enacted the route that Emily followed on video.
For a visual complement to this ethnography, see Classroom 201
Syllabus of Emily's class: 
Anthropology 100 syllabus.doc
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