JOURNAL # 13
Read “On Interviewing” p. 64-67. Journal #13: What’s interesting/curious/helpful about these 3 pages. 200 words, can be bullet points.
Read “On Interviewing” p. 64-67. Journal #13: What’s interesting/curious/helpful about these 3 pages. 200 words, can be bullet points.
12 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 13”
Interviews are used to understand others. Your first interview will feel clumsy and awkward but then will later gain experience. All interviews should be planned ahead of time with questions but do not over prepare because then the conversation will be awkward and no longer sound like a conversation.
-Chose a time and place
-Draft questions
-Bring things you will need: computer, paper and pencil
-If the person is stumped ask them whether you should rephrase the question
-Don’t be embarrassed to ask more questions
-Listen to what the interviewee says and how they say it
-Your interview should feel like a conversation
What I thought was important was that it gave pointers and it also told you what you should do to prepare for the interview.
Another thing that I thought was important was they had ways to help while during your interview and it gives you pointers as to what and what not to do during the interview.
I think that these pages help when creating an interview and to help if you get stuck when your interviewee is having trouble to understand
I think the main goal for an interview is to help get the facts across and to help get a personal insight as to what the topic of the interview is.
I also think that an interview needs to have emotions and have natural pauses rather than having a robot conversation, which is a back and fourth conversation the person asks a question they answer and so on and so on
I thought it was interesting that the first rule of an interview is “be curious”
I think that it is good for in interview that they make sure before hand to make sure that certain questions are okay for them to ask
I think to be a good interviewer they need to be able to stray from what they has scripted
10-16-18
Journal #13
What is life like in the mind of another
I found this interesting because in everyday life we don’t take a step back and think about what other people are going through. As in interviewer though you have to be able to take that step back and go into the mind of another. Earlier in the paragraph we read about Capote and how he had to get inside the heads of cold- blooded killers. He knew what they had done and who they had killed but he didn’t know why. So he had to take a step back from his point of view and look at it from their perspective to get the actual scoop of the story.
Generate Questions that you background information cant answer
I found this helpful because normally we create questions based on the information we do know. We take that information then from there we from questions. Now thinking a different way why use the information we already know when we can ask questions that can get us answers we don’t know yet. That was an interviewer does to get the real answers that may be buried somewhere else.
You may only get one shot. Make it count
In life you really don’t have unlimited chances. Sometimes you only have one chance to talk to someone. It may be a spur of the moment or you may have time. Either way you need to make sure that you don’t mess it up because if you do the person may not want to talk again or can find someone else who can do it better. This i found interesting because it can relate to life in so many ways. We always think we have so many chances to do something but in reality we can only have one shot and if we don’t take that then we don’t get another and that’s an opportunity missed that could have been the greatest story.
The book says the first rule of interviewing is to be curious about the person you’re interviewing. I found it interesting that the book says in order to become better at interviewing you must practice it and once you get used to it coming up with questions and feeling more comfortable saying things that may be uncomfortable for the person to answer. I also found it interesting that a certain location affects the outcome of the interview. I never thought the location was an important factor because I always assumed an interview is done in an office or on the road, depending on the type of interview. Realizing that there is a lot of thought in picking the right place to interview is interesting.
If I ever need to interview someone in the near future, the book lists the idea of being able to ask questions that weren’t listed prior to going into the interview. If the conversation leads into a different direction then you must be able to think quick and come up with new things to ask the person. The final thing the book says is you only get one chance so in order for it to go right it must be taken seriously the first time.
The first thing that really widened my eyes and surprised me was learning the setting of the interview makes a difference, which now that I think about it makes sense. Picking a comfortable setting could relax the interviewee and make them feel more comfortable, which would allow them to really talk more and get into it and answer the questions truthfully. Another thing I learned was, don’t think twice about having reactions to the interviewee’s response and you can ask follow up questions based on their answers, questions that you already haven’t thought of and written. I also found it interesting to learn how to try to not make the interview awkward, and have their being any moment of silence, for example rephrasing a question if the interviewee seems confused or an answer is taking too long to come out.
Journal 13
Doing the reading what I found interesting was when the book talks about how time and place plays a big factor into having good interview it could put the interviewee at ease.
If the interviewee is at ease there is a better chance of having a good interview.
What I found helpful was that when you interview a person it should not feel like an interrogation it should feel more like a conversation. Which means you should be able to go outside of the topic and be able to connect with the interviewee and still be able to get back on topic.
When interviewing somebody they should feel as though this is a chance to let people know who they are.
Also when doing an interview you have to make it count because it may only be your own shot at interviewing them.
However what I am curious about is that should you have remember what you want to ask the interviewee instead of having note cards or some sort as a reminder, just seems more professional to me if you didn’t have notes.
Something I also found helpful is that when you have an interview you have to be curious and it may be a little hard at first but as you continue to do more interviews you will get better because practice makes progress.
Alex Smyth:
Habits goes over Capote, who is credited with inventing creative nonfiction, who was able to capture what someone’s mindset in certain situations might be. Capote had written a book on murderers who did an unthinkable crime, which had me wonder how you could understand someone in that mindset. As the would mention, “But finding a way into the murderers’ inner world was a much steeper challenge.” Capote took on a challenge that was going to need time and effort to understand what those men were thinking. He would then begin to interview them for the next three years, which is more then I’ve ever done on anyone. Capote would continuously interview the murderers up until their execution dates. He wouldn’t stop there, next he would begin to interview the murderers family members and the family member of the deceased for more of a outlook on what type of men they were. I found it helpful to include who else he interview so that he uses multiple sources to go into a creative nonfiction as well as the template of the before, during, and after interview so that you can be prepare to interview others on subject matters that can interest you or help you create more understand on a subject that you didn’t or couldn’t find all the answer to from your background research.
Something I found interesting on pg 65 the writer talks about how the first rule to be an interviewer is to be curious because becoming an interviewer takes practice and it may be hard at first trying to really engage but everytime it becomes easier and results get better. By practing you gain experience which will better your interviews in the longrun.
On page 66 the writers talks about how during your interview you needs to ask questions even the ones that are hard to talk about. Also if you get asked a question that is unfamiliar don’t be scared to ask more questions to dig deeper. Listen to what they are saying and how they are saying it and don’t be scared to improvise because your interview should be like a conversation and not like an interrogation.
On page 67 they talk about an interview that went wrong because the questions that someone asked were irrelevant to the conversation and didn’t reveal any information. After this they requested a new interview and made up a whole new set of question but they were lucky getting this interview because not a lot of people will give you another shot.
What I found interesting and also helpful is how they gave us pointers on not only how to prepare for an interview but they also told us how to be prepared as the person that is being interviewed. They give a list or pointers almost such as:
-Chose a time and place
-Draft questions
-Bring things you will need: computer, paper and pencil
-If the person is stumped ask them whether you should rephrase the question
-Don’t be embarrassed to ask more questions
-Listen to what the interviewee says and how they say it
-Your interview should feel like a conversation
One thing that really caught my attention is when Capote said “what life is like in the mind of anothers.” I think this its the main myth that drive journalist to interview others, and grapple curiosity for random people to give tension to interview. And be curious is definaly one key element that a good interviewer required. Its also what new interviewer need to think about.
By the end of the paragraph, author wrote “You may only get on shot. Make it count.” In order to help readers to know more about it. He bring up a case study. It is about a group of student group of student had the chance to interview a local entrepreneur who planed to took down an entire block of local businesses and replace it with a high rise of condos and apartments. When the times come the interviewer messed up, they ask a question which is only matter of concern of their own. It did not only teach me the importance of one shot, but also taught me to stand in the interviewee’s perspective to ask question. Remember the the existence of human natural default is wrong. The world will be a better place with or without me.
While reading about interviews in these pages I found that “A cautionary tale” was the most interesting to me. This talked about a group of students going to get interviewed by a particular builder that they thought was building these apartments or condos for students. In this interview they were conflicted by the man they were interviewing, he had said that he was not building the construction for them or apartments or condos. In this interview they were not ready for that answer. In this interview the students did not use useful questions to help them get answers from this man. When the interview was over they were not satisfied with it at all, so they asked the man for a second interview. They were lucky enough to get that second interview. What I took away from this is that in an interview you always need to be the most prepared that you can be no matter what. Most of the time you will not get a second chance to go and interview someone. In the first interview you want to get the most that you can out of that person and go right to what you are going for. They got lucky enough for the second interview and that put an interview in my head in a much different perspective than usual.
While reading about interviews in these pages I found that “A cautionary tale” was the most interesting to me. This talked about a group of students going to get interviewed by a particular builder that they thought was building these apartments or condos for students. In this interview they were conflicted by the man they were interviewing, he had said that he was not building the construction for them or apartments or condos. In this interview they were not ready for that answer. In this interview the students did not use useful questions to help them get answers from this man. When the interview was over they were not satisfied with it at all, so they asked the man for a second interview. They were lucky enough to get that second interview. What I took away from this is that in an interview you always need to be the most prepared that you can be no matter what. Most of the time you will not get a second chance to go and interview someone. In the first interview you want to get the most that you can out of that person and go right to what you are going for. They got lucky enough for the second interview and that put an interview in my head in a much different perspective than usual.