Week 6: Case Clinic II

How to turn a week of field logs into a case file a marker can assess, using the seminar room and the 13-step stairwell as worked examples.

Thirteen steps down. Sometimes you end up back where you started.

29 March 2027

Open the slides

Outline#

• what a case file has to do that a raw log doesn’t: state a classification and defend it against the log, not just present the log
• worked review of the seminar-room case — what separates a documentation-rigor pass from a fail
• worked review of the 13-step stairwell case, now with a stated edge: the fourteen-step count that breaks the pattern instead of repeating it, and the dimming-lights signal that’s loggable independently of any count at all
• citing a precedent you can’t go verify: Incident SU-6-04, the restricted expedition, as a worked example of documentation rigor that doesn’t depend on access — what a write-up can honestly claim about a case it can only cite, not observe
• what “analytical quality” means here: engagement with the classification scheme from week 2, not just tidy prose

A sample log entry#

A strong log entry from the stairwell case, as the course’s running record keeps it — observer identity redacted for privacy, count and classification left intact for the write-up to work from:

Observer [redacted], buddy-paired, west stairwell, descending. Counted thirteen steps aloud with buddy confirming. Arrived at starting floor. Re-ran ascending: sixteen steps, arrived one floor above starting point as geometry predicts. No disengagement invoked. Provisional classification: responsive.