About the Process

            Our assignment this semester was to choose a Hollins alum who was involved in activism work that related to an issue that we were personally interested in. I chose Syreeta Cannday Combs because of the activism work that she did with children at a women’s center in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. I am really excited about children and so I was really interested to see how she was involved in helping them.

            Before we began the interview process, I was unsure of what to expect. Since Syreeta lives in Pennsylvania, I had to conduct my first interview with her over the phone. I was really unsure of myself before I began the phone interview because I had to use a special recording device made for cell phones. After a few tries, I got the device working and conducted the first interview. It felt really strange asking a woman that I didn’t know personal questions about her life, the questions that I asked her were pretty general about her family and work that she was involved in. She was really open with her answers and everything went smoothly.

For our second interview, I drove to Bloomsburg to interview Syreeta at her home. Interviewing Syreeta in person was a lot easier for me, and lasted a lot longer than the first phone interview.  Although I had already interviewed Syreeta once, it was still difficult for me to ask her personal questions. Again, she was really open and didn’t mind reminiscing about her past. Another difficult part about our second interview was that Syreetas’ husband had to work during our interview, so she had to take care of her one- year-old daughter during the interview. Because of this, we had to stop the recorder a few times, which hindered the flow of the interview. It also made it harder when I had to transcribe the interview because there were side conversations going on during the interview.

Overall, the interview process went relatively smoothly. Connecting with Syreeta before I began interviewing her was pretty easy compared to some of the other students in my class. If I could go back and do it again, I would have tried to make my questions in the interview transition more smoothly. I feel like I was abrupt with my questioning and it made the interview sound slightly strange.

 I think the hardest part about the process by far was transcribing the interview. Transcribing takes a really long time and sometimes it was hard for me to hear parts of our interviews. It was also really hard

Overall, I really enjoyed doing the interviews and getting to know Syreeta. It was a new experience for me, and I’m really glad that I got to start with someone who was as open and friendly as she was. When we weren’t recording, we had a really good time talking and hanging out. And although I wasn’t the smoothest interviewer, I had to start somewhere. I learned so much in this class about the interview process and how to interpret self narratives. Interpreting the things that people say and the words that they to choose to use is the most useful thing I’ve taken away from this class.

 Home

...