These were some general thoughts and reflections I had while
conducting fieldwork and writing up my rough draft of the laboratory
ethnography:
Having worked in a scientific research laboratory before, I would
be lying if I said that I was not pretty skeptical about what I could gain from
observing a laboratory. I think because I went into my previous work
experiences in lab as a biology major/student, I did not necessarily see
anything special or different between any of the labs I’ve worked in. To me,
they were all biology labs with slightly different objectives but all working
towards a common goal of attaining more scientific knowledge. So when I went
into this ethnography assignment, I was not too sure what I would gain and
worried that I would not come out of it with anything interesting (this fear
was probably compounded with the fact that I had never done fieldwork before in
anthropology and am just getting a feel for the wide range of topics and ideas
real life anthropologists could be interested in).
So it was to my surprise that I found so many different sub
topics to potentially explore in the laboratory I eventually decided to do my
fieldwork in. It was pretty eye opening to just sit back and absorb the
laboratory setting, taking in all the surroundings, instead of being the biologist at work. In fact,
when I organized my notes and attempted to compile my thoughts into an ethnography, I had a hard time choosing between the many topics that came up during my
observations because I could not fit my analysis of it all into my paper (and due
to the lack of time to properly observe more in depth at all of the different topics).
This experience made me more reflexive in my own current lab
as well. Although I did not do any official fieldwork in my lab, I have found
myself listening in on conversations and casually observing while working on my
experiments to see if there are any interesting things I see or
commonalities/differences from the lab I observed for my assignment.
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