OHP Reflection

Callista Wilson

24 October 2017

IHSS and ELA

OHP Reflection

The most enjoyable part of the interview process was truly connecting with the interviewees, Larry and Mary Jennings, and treating our interview as if it were a casual, rather than staged, conversation. Although our group had prepared a series of questions, we focused on listening and understanding what the Jennings wanted to say. Also we made sure not to interrupt the Jennings even if the topics they chose to talk about did not directly refer to a question but was still relevant to the interview.  Because the questions asked were open ended the Jennings were not pressured to give a certain answer and were naturally lead to tell stories and express their emotions. At the end of the interview, we invited the Jennings to speak about anything additional which we had not covered. This way, we were assured to receive key information about their experience even if we left out an important question. In addition, asking follow-up questions and listening to their stories made our interview successful as it genuinely demonstrated the Jenning’s personal experience of the devastation and the lessons they particularly learned from Hurricane Harvey.    

For future students assigned with an “Oral History Project,” my advice would be to spend time researching or getting to know the interviewees prior to writing questions. This way, future students can write questions based off of what they know they can receive from the interviewee. Also, they will be able to set up open ended questions which their interviewees can fully answer and elaborate on. In addition, I would advise future students to download a program which allows them to easily pause, fast forward and slow down the speaking in the audio recording when typing the transcript. This will allow them to complete an accurate transcript while being time efficient.