Observation: hour 1

During the first hour of observation, I noticed that students were gathered around the flag pole most of the time. However, the amount of students present changed throughout the first hour. The number of students decreased during class time, and it increased during the time in between class change. A wide range of groups were seen, which included of larger groups to people smoking by themselves. At the beginning there were only a few students there. The groups were smaller, including of two or three students, and a few students that were smoking by themselves. One group included of three students. Two of them were standing while the other one, a female, was sitting down. Also, there were two other girls standing away from the flag pole on the grassy area smoking and talking to each other. One male was sitting on the floor leaning against the flag pole, and another one was just standing off to the side and smoking by himself. He seemed busy reading a newspaper.

Later on more people started coming in and suddenly there was this huge group of students gathered around the flag pole to smoke. In addition to the one large group, there were other smaller groups off to the side. However, they were all talking to each other. The most interesting thing that I noticed was the fact that the few smokers that chose to smoke by themselves stepped away from the flag pole. In totality, most of the students gathered around the flag pole were busy talking to one another. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves. The more crowded it was, the more obvious it became that they had formed groups and were socializing with each other. It seemed as if they had all formed a community of some sort.