Accessing, Waiting, Plunging in, Wondering, and Writing: Retrospective Sense-Making of Fieldwork

This article presents five personal narratives about a field-worker's experience during an eighteen-month study of a residential college. The narratives focus on five distinct aspects of fieldwork: gaining access, waiting for action, establishing relationships, respondents' perceptions of the field-worker, and writing up fieldwork accounts. These stories illuminate the unanticipated struggles associated with fieldwork.