Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Man On Fire: An interviewing experience
I wasn't really expecting to have a difficult time coming into contact with a firefighter to interview. To be honest I knew it was the least of my worries. In fact, I had already had Mr. Caracapa in mind since the beginning of the project. So going through the process of setting up an interview was almost irrelevant, although I was still nervous. However, once I finally sat down with him, the questions began to come out easier and easier. Still, the interview did have its difficult parts. Mr. Caracapa had plenty of good information to give me, I must have picked the right questions to ask. But I didn't catch on to some things he explained to me, so I'm sure that required him to go into more detail than he normally would have to. So if I could change some things in time for my next interview, I would definitely not focus on writing things down as much and just listen instead. After all, its generous of the interviewee to take their time to help a kid on his project, the least we can do as an interviewer is listen. I'm happy to have finished my first interview as an overall success. although it had its kinks, I'm sure the next one with go much smoother.
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4 comments:
you know you can record them and then write down the information at home by listening to your recorder that's what i did. i thought it was better for you if you just knew the person alredy who you was going to interview. good job.
When you said that you didn't catch on to some of the things he told you I could relate because it does seem like there are a lot of details that can be used to explain some of the information about firefighting and it was confusing at some points. If you need some more contacts I'd be more than happy to help and I also recommend using an audio recorder and listening to it later. You can use mine if you need to they're very useful.
That's good that you weren't worried about finding someone. That shows that you're really into firefighting. And John's right. its good to use a recorder, because then you wont be worrying about remembering ever thing a person says. I hope you do good. And get a good grade too.
I had the same problem of trying to take a bunch of notes, instead of just listening. Next interview I'm going to try to record the interview so I don't need as many notes, and so I can give my interviewee my full attention. Nice post.
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