BRI THOMAS

Oral History Interview

StoryCorps URL: https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/fys-interview-7/

Student Reflection

A. I learned that there is so much more that goes into this than it originally seems. This takes some thoughtful preparation. What I found the most challenging about conducting this oral history is my anxiety, I am a very awkward person at times and after my interviewee would speak, I tried not to rush into the next question. The part that was most enjoyable was making the question list. I enjoyed coming up with good questions to ask to keep the interview going. I really enjoyed the book we read to help with this too

b. Well, I know that fear is something that everyone is dealing with currently. What I learned from it is how differently it affected people. For Desiree it was fear for her child, it was going to appointments alone, it was isolating from friends and family for some time. We are not all dealing with the same fear or experiences and it’s important that we take into consideration others during this time. It’s a glance at someone else’s feelings. It is interesting and something i think can benefit everyone.

c. For me conducting the interview was scary. Other people made it seem easier than it was for me. I liked the outcome of my interviewee’s answers, however my voice was kind of shaky part of the time and I feel like i had trouble leading the interview. I wasn’t really comfortable with conducting this, so I was nervous the whole time. I loved creating the questions to ask and viewing other oral histories though!

d. I think this assignment meets this for a couple reasons. First, is because of the questions we came up with. Second, we used data we already knew or data we needed to know to make those questions for the interview. We had to evaluate our existing knowledge to come up with the questions to ask.

e. I’m not sure if I have any suggestions for improvement. The only issue i had was with my anxiety, but that is not anything to do with the class. The rest of the class assignments and everything led up well to this. We had a lot of knowledge and things to help us if we needed them. No suggestions here!

f. I would tell them to use all the things provided to help. Throughout the semester we have had several resources we could refer back too that would be useful for the final project. Some showed us how to create the questions, while others helped us conduct the actual interview. If you need help, use these! I would also suggest as a tip, to stay on track with working on it. This can be a fun project, but it can probably be hard to finish last minute and your grade probably will show it.