The RLA podcast I finished last night is perhaps the RLA unit I'm proudest of. I've never done anything like this before, and creating my very own podcast from scratch following advice from a professional was simply fantastic.
I'm proud of many things I've done in this unit, but I think I'm the proudest of my improvement as an interviewer. I started my first interview with my friend Vainavi, and due to my lack of experience, it wasn't a good interview. I didn't have any rapport-building, didn't have good scripted questions or follow-up questions, and didn't make the interview like a conversation. However, after two more interviews, I've improved, and with consent from Mrs. McKinnon, I reconducted my interview with Vainavi. That one definitely had a drastic difference. First, I was less monotonous and made it sound more like a conversation. Second, I had better questions that deepened my understanding of both the topic and my interviewee's view on the issue, as well as better follow-up questions (like "How has [CWW's impacts] carried on into your school life afterward?"). I've improved on many other things, too, like referencing other things I've learned and asking her opinion on it (like "Mrs. Gach said that CWW impacted relationships between peers and teachers. Do you think that this is true?"). This gives me new perspectives on the same point. All in all, my second interview with Vainavi was completely different (in a good way) than my first.
Despite all my proud accomplishments, I still faced some challenges that I had to overcome. The biggest one was probably finding a good question to research. I knew I wanted to do something about CWW, but there were still a lot of things I could pursue on this topic. I had to brainstorm a lot of ideas and carefully go over each to narrow down my top choices. In the end, I finally settled on the question "How does CWW impact students on student life?" After that, I still stumbled across other difficulties, but with a clear question in mind, I was able to efficiently overcome them.
Unfortunately, I do wish that I had given more thought on my question. Yes, I did eliminate other questions about CWW, like "How does CWW impact students' personalities?", I wish that I had taken some more time and specified exactly what kind of student life. Was it peer relationships? Academic learning? Core values? Focus in class? My broad question made me keep having to dive deep into different details, but if I had time to refine my question to be much more specific, I think my overall project would have better, more specific details rather than ones that are more generalized.
The interviews went quite well, though. As I've said before, after lots of trying and learning through my failures, I think my last conversation with Vainavi was great. To build rapport, I maintained a conversational tone. Whenever I wanted to ask for a different opinion or disagree, I tried to make it sound like I was on her side, for example, at 4:13, I said, "But just for argument’s sake, why might the difference be different for different people? How might they have different views?" The use of "just for argument's sake" gave the feel that I was agreeing with my interviewee while gently asking about another perspective.
I think the same improvement goes for asking follow-up questions too. I feel like my first follow-up questions I made on the spot were stiff, as they were phrased strangely or weren't too relevant. However, by the time I got to retrying Vainavi's interview, I had grown considerably at unscripted questions. When I planned that interview, I knew that I was going to ask lots of follow-ups and follow new directions depending on what my responses from my interviewee will be. I think the reason behind the new-found confidence and readiness was because of my better preparation beforehand. I understood the topic, so when I made up questions on the spot with Vainavi, my responses were informational and dived deep in the subject. For example, at 0:40, I asked "So, how were you impacted by CWW? Were you impacted by the same things or different things?" The previous scripted question was "How would CWW impact students on student life at school?" and that didn't give me the information I really wanted, so I followed it up with an unscripted question, hoping the response would give me a better insight on CWW's impacts (it worked pretty well.)
All in all, I absolutely loved this unique RLA unit. I've definitely learned a lot and improved a lot, especially in my interviewing skills. Everything was a fun experience, and I really enjoyed it.
Interview Excerpt:
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