Short Autoethnography

• Pheasant Hunting Autoethnography by Julia Barnett
  

          For people who are not accustomed to hunting culture, the normality of hunting may be out of their comfort zone. However, the nature of hunting, especially pheasants, in South Dakota has been present for generations. South Dakota is one state which extensively promotes the killing and consumption of an official state bird according to observations from “The History of Pheasants in South Dakota” (as cited in Errington, F., & Gewertz, D. 2015, p 404). In text, it appears to be paradox, and the question is why would South Dakotans take part in killing the bird that represents their state? It can be answered in familiar terms of hunting relationalities according to South Dakota Historical Society (as cited in Errington, F., & Gewertz, D. 2015, p 404):

          The opening weekend of the hunting season is filled with good food, good dogs, and good tales of previous hunts. It’s the story of how enduring friendships are built upon common interests, and how the tradition of hunting still serves as an important rite of passage into adulthood. It’s passing down from one generation to the next the essential values of good sportsmanships: respect for nature and sharing abundance. [Thus] the immigrant bird has made good in a big way. (p 404)

          It is truly a tradition passed on from parents to children and then their children, which as a tradition embodies a multidimensional experience and may even go as far to evoke “alternative forms of human-nature relations” according to Ghassan Hage (as cited in Errington, F., & Gewertz, D. 2015, p 406). Ever since I was young, going to the hunt was always something my immediate family looked forward to. It is an opportunity to see our family who we don’t see on the daily basis because we don’t live near each other. When speaking to my relative, Martin, who was raised and still lives in South Dakota, he feels that, “ it really does bring people closer together.” Martin’s dad owns the land which we all hunt on, so he has been to almost all of the annual hunts.

          My dad would go pheasant hunting when he was younger and at the time it was just his brothers and his dad. Now, years later, the family has grown significantly and usually we get to see my dads brothers and their wives, their children, and their children's children. As we have grown up, it’s fun to see the younger children entertaining themselves in the same way we did when we were their age. Martin has a daughter who he has been taking to the hunt since she was three and another relative, Rebecca who is also from the state mentioned her experience with Martin’s six year old daughter for the hunt this past year. “So many of the things she was doing, I have memories of doing that exact same thing. We were walking through the field and she had a dead pheasant in her arm, and she would say, “oh this is the prettiest little thing! I just love it! Oh it’s so pretty! It’s the best turkey I have ever seen!” she was petting it like it was her doll, and I thought oh my gosh that is totally what I did!” For many people this would be absurd, but for us, it is certainly not unusual.

  
  
  
• Transfer Students at DU Halloween
  

  Transfer Students: Autoethnography

  By Katherine Davis

  August 2015: move-in day at Pennsylvania State University. Standing outside of Pinchot Hall in State College, Pennsylvania with a cart full of all my belongings and excitement for a new start. With ten coed floors, I was ready to meet people and live my best life yet. All the stories and preconceived conceptions of what college should be like seemed so close, but that’s not exactly what happened. After a bad roommate situation, continuing feelings of inadequacy, and feeling out of touch with my true self, I finished out my freshman year. With the hope that sophomore year would be different, I returned in the Fall. To my disappointment, sophomore year did not turn out like I had hoped. I lived in an apartment with three crazy roommates who were not good influences for me. Did we have an awesome fall semester? Yes, but I was in a self-detrimental cycle of destruction. Sleeping all day, watching Netflix, and skipping classes; I had zero drive. Just before the end of the semester, I called my mom in hysterics and the next day she picked me up.

  I spent the next year and a half working two jobs, traveling and becoming an EMT. Through my hiatus from college, I found myself, my passion, and motivation. As I got off the plane from traveling throughout Portugal, I opened my email to see confetti falling from the screen and the words “Congratulations on your acceptance into the University of Denver.” That’s when everything fell into place.

  One of the biggest struggles that transfer students face is the concept of “transfer shock.” This theory refers to the academic drop in GPA during the first year of transferring (Hills, 1965, p. 2).  During an observation of transfer students at the University of Denver, a transfer student stated, “I have a D in two of my classes, and it reminds me of what I was like at my old school. I hope I don’t have to transfer again.” This vivid and open statement from a recent transfer student explicitly aides to the argument that transfer students need more help. Transfer students are also at the most risk for transferring again (Dai, Li, 2010, p. 210). Universities need to be more understanding and accommodating to the transfer student community to help keep students from transferring again. Another transfer student, Megan also has a scholarship in which she needs to get a GPA of at least 3.5 or her scholarship will be dropped. Academic stressors can be very taxing to couple with a first-year transfer student. The decision to leave a university is an extremely stressful process. Terms like “drop-out” are often associated with students who leave their university and do not immediately transfer to a new university (Santos, 2007, p. 37).

  Although academic success and social influences are an essential aspect of transfer students’ transitions, the mental health problems that can form pose a major concern. In a study comparing transfer students to native students who sought out therapy, transfer students showed many more symptoms and feelings of sadness, loneliness, stress, and anxiety (Daltry & Mehr, 2016, p. 263). One possible reason for this might be found in answering why students transferred in the first place. Depression and anxiety are some of the most common symptoms felt by students. At the start of 2011, 38 percent of students transferred from their original institution. That is a total of 1,069,243 transfer students (Shapiro et al., 2018). Studies on transfer students’ acclimation to a new university have just recently become a focus for many researchers.

  When deciding to attend DU, and the months leading up to the start of school, familiar feelings emerged: self-doubt, insecurities about “starting over” again and fear of repeating my past mistakes. I remember my mom telling me, “wherever you go, there you are.” She was telling me that a fresh start would be good for me because I would get a second chance to rewrite my story.

  Like many transfers, Megan felt the pressure of transferring to be very stressful. She also mentioned that, “I was nervous to transfer for fear of the same things I experienced at my old school happening to me here at DU.” Megan believes that DU did an excellent job in terms of the transfer process. They were very supportive and made the stressful transition much less taxing than she expected. She mentioned that DU created a place where finding community was easy. She stated that her previous institution did support her mental health: “my professors made sure we were aware of mental health resources.” During the interview, Megan stated that at her previous university, “counselors were required to check in on students weekly” until the student notified the counselor that they no longer needed help. Megan described her mental health at DePaul as a 3, and her mental health here at DU as a 5.

  Like myself, Megan lives in the Transfer Living Community (TLC) on campus. Megan’s experience with the TLC have been “amazing.” At her old institution, Megan lived in a dorm with roommates that lived in the area and frequently left.” She expressed feelings of being “alone” compared to here.  At DU, the TLC has created an environment where she feels like she always has people to talk to and “never feel[s] alone.” Megan is very happy to be here at DU and feels excited to call DU “home.”

  Since the start of my chapter at DU, I finally felt that there was something to look forward too. When I first moved into the Transfer House, I immediately felt at home. Everyone was open and ready to meet new people.  I was finally having conversations with people that were anything but superficial. I remember the first night, everyone in the house played an ice breaker game of “two truths and a lie.” There was not one person that I did not want to get to know better. Living and surrounding myself with all different types of people with the same thing in common allowed me to break down my inhibitions, hesitations and fears of a Penn State repeat. Although I struggled with deciding to return to school, coming to a place where there are no judgements has transformed me into a better version of myself.
• Mixed Media, Mixed Me: Multiethnical Artists Autoethnography by Jessica Hudson
  

  There is a popular saying that art is a forum for change – that as a piece is exposed to the world, it can bring not only social awareness to the issues at hand, but do so in such a way that it is not intimidating to discuss the deeper meanings, rather it is seen as more inviting and beautiful. As the world continues to move forward into a more progressive society, cultural boundaries no longer define what someone is ‘allowed to’ enjoy or what type of media they can consume or where they ‘technically’ belong. In this way, there are various artists throughout all walks of life that recognize there is a common problem many multiethnical people face every day – there is not truly a place where blended individuals are accepted anywhere in the world – and they are trying to create a space for awareness and acceptance of all multiethnical people through the power of art.

  In the social sphere, there seems to be an overwhelming presence of rejection towards mixed-races – whether it be the sentiment that people of mixed origins should identify with one category or the other, or that people feel uncomfortable with the idea of anybody not fitting into those categories. In an interview Lenny Kravitz took part in, he revels how producers in the 80s told Kravitz that his music was not ‘black enough’ to fit one genre or ‘white enough’ to fit another – claiming they would love to sign him but establishing restrictions due to the fact that his music was not what fit the musical realm of what was accepted as already-good music (Chozick, 2013).

  How can a simple box identify an entire grouping of people if the others create a more exclusive category? We become the forgotten ‘few’ that are not a mix of this or that, but rather just non-exclusively one or the other. Our cultures are lost in sea of other ‘two or more races’. There isn’t even an isolation of biracial versus multiracial, which only further blurs the lines of individuality for each person in the box.

  Some artists hope to illuminate this lack of a place by depicting how people of mixed origins may seem to be different and are unable to fit in one category of people, but they are still the same as anybody else. A Netherlands artist, Fiona Tan, explores contemporary Asian-European art in hopes to draw connections between people, their community, and their cultures. Some of her work features changelings – creatures believed to be descendant of fairies, trolls, or any other supernatural creature, that passing as a human. With this direct association, Tan’s work is symbolic of mixed-race children not fitting into a specific category from what is ‘natural or normal’, but still embracing the idea that people of mixed origins are still essentially human and should be accepted as such (Lo, 2014, p. 67).

  Although there are audiences that continue to reject the involvement of topic such as the experiences of living as a mixed-race individual, some artists of various disciplines still desire to bring awareness into society about the multicultural sphere. In the interview about his series of autobiographical albums, Logic reports “I wanted to tell the stories of other people who may not have the voice I do… I felt the necessity to discuss these things, because I am proud to be me, I am proud of where I came from, and at the same time, it’s also bigger than me” further elaborating how the albums – specifically “Everybody” - are a “celebration of diversity, within and around Logic” to discuss the world and how regardless of who a person is or how they identify, they deserve to be accepted and viewed as an equal by others (Horowitz, 2017).

  All people are people. It’s the environment I grew up in, not recognizing how one ethnic or racial group stood out among a crowd of people, but the more I matured, the more I realized that all those faces gradually began to look the same. The minority races are undoubtedly sprinkled around the predominantly Caucasian crowd, but the sparse multiracial faces are drowned out in the crowd. I never really noticed before, because it’s what I had always seen. On television, on YouTube, even on Netflix and Hulu. The scariest part is, it never seemed out of place. Even though I could resonate with the few African American faces, or the couple Asians on the screen, I never had those multiracial people I could look up to and aspire to become. As shocking as it may be, being multiracial had culturally become a concept that even seemed foreign to me.

  White. Black or African American. American Indian or Alaska native. Asian. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Two or more races. They are just boxes after all, so what does it matter if you become lost in the masses of your box. Who knew such a little box could be loaded with so many people. So what box do you check?
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