Anthropology Ethnographic Self Study

By Daniel Schnebly

     I observed myself and my process in getting a project done and how I procrastinate them. I will be referring to myself as the subject in question since I am being observed whilst passing no judgment or assumptions that could compromise the integrity of this ethnographic observation and remaining completely culturally relativistic towards the subject.

     All great projects are started by the person in question barely paying attention when they are assigned, when it’s due, what they are even supposed to be doing, and all other details that are typically pretty necessary when doing any of these assignments. This continues for weeks, knowing they should be working on something but this human is stubborn and still hasn’t looked up any of the details of the assignment (decide a 6-hour break would be helpful at this point in the assignment). Every 25 minutes of procrastinating and watching tv, the subject remembers that they should be doing something productive and decides to not make progress and be anxious about the project. The subject then tells themself they will actually do something, continues to not work on it or do something minimal like set up the word page.

     Finally, the subject goes to make progress on said assignment (after putting it off for so long that even the narrator ends up worrying as well) and push through any breaks without eating or drinking (as the subject gets up to grab some water). Taking multiple breaks during the working process, the observee gets up to presumably look for food and hopefully eat as they haven’t eaten at all today and their stomach has been rumbling since they woke up (which was at noon, because even though the observer is stressed out by how little the subject is getting done they still decided to sleep in until noon). Note that although the subject is visibly hungry, they do not consume anything on any of the multiple occasions that they have gotten up to look for food. The observee obviously knows that they are being an idiot, however, as the observer I would like to note that I pass no judgment on to them as I decide to trust the individual’s process.

     Eventually, the individual starts to be proud of their work because of the backhanded cheekiness that they have thrown into the assignment and has a sort of Ralphie from A Christmas Story moment, as they envision the professor reading this piece of crap wrapped in a dress (the subjects words not mine) and hope that the writing was presented in a way to make the grader laugh their way straight into giving the author an immediate A (I wonder how well that ever works out for them).

     It is at this point the individual begins to lose steam in their writing process and comes to the reality that this one assignment is the only thing that they will be completing tonight and finally decides to do it. At least they prioritized correctly between the 40-point assignment they are currently working on, and a 10-point reading assignment that now has a snowballs chance in hell of getting done (I wonder what he could mean with that statement as again the observer passes no judgment onto this individual). When approaching the finale, the subject begins to write as close to gibberish as would be acceptable within the confines of the assignment to bump up the word count. Using prolonged words and phrases such as, for all intents and purposes, literally, I am unable to can, and is essentially and generally running out of any ideas. Anything to continentally inflate the word count to the desired number specified by the professor but as that looks less and less likely the subject looks to settle at a number that they believe will not seem suspicious to the professor. Who, he thinks, is just such a wonderful and amazing person for having to get through this paper with the possibility of giving him an A.

     I would like to note that the subject is aware of the fact that, at this point, the professor is either going to absolutely hate him or love him based only on this piece of work alone and it is basically a crap shoot at this point given that he has yet to actually meet said professor.