In humanities we did a project called “Who the Heck are You”. In this project we got to interview someone of our choice. After the fact you write a paper on this person. This process is not as easy as it may seem. It consist of five steps….
Step one: Choose five people you want to interview. Then narrow it down to one. The people I had on my list were, Peter , Jeremiah, Rohan, Margret and Van. I chose Van because I talk to him almost every after school when I go to the school basket ball games. So it would be easy to find him after school.
Step two: Once you have narrowed down your person you write them a letter asking for their permission to interview them. I tried to make my letter ask blunt as possible to keep it simple. I pretty much explained the project and then said availible dates. The hard part was not really writing the letter as much it was delivering it. I searched to the ends of the earth for Van but I could not find him anywhere. The one week I needed to interview him, he just vanished. So I finally came to the conclusion that I should just give it to Ilene. I gave it to Ilene who gave it to Mary to give to Tracy, to give to Van.
Step three: After you have done all of this you must come up with questions for your interview. I tried asking broad questions so that I can get big answers and then zoom in on the details and opinions. If I could go back in time I would ask questions with more detail and then zoom out on the bigger picture. It was very hard to think of what I was going to say next because I had to listen very closely to what he was saying. It took a second to form the of the question grammar and what the purpose was going to be.
Step four: Now it’s time for the interview. During the interview its pretty straight forward since you have been preparing for it all of this time. I just asked the questions and then did what I thought about in step three. Which was not just to think about the question but to think about the answer/purpose too.
Step five: The paper for me was the hardest part because it was my natural instinct to have the quotes be the whole interview. Then I realized I need to have my opinions in there too. That’s when I started to run out of ideas. I looked at Gus’s piece (my writing partner) and saw something inspirational. He did not use quotation marks HE JUST REWORDED THE INTERVIEW! That’s when I realized instead of having to weave my words in and out of the quotes I could just make them my own words. That way there wouldn’t be any thought into putting the quotes together. If were to give someone advice when they were just starting their final heck I would say don’t just copy and paste the interview, make them your own words and your opinions too.
I like this but I maybe you could have your final work on there.
Zach- Remember that a digital portfolio post should be an example of your best writing and your best work. Take a look at your very first sentence and check the spelling. Is that the name of the piece on which we worked? Maybe you can make a connection between this and some personal goals of self editing. 🙂
I like your piece because the way you structured it is good. I think you should read your first line out loud.
I think that you should go back over this and check for spelling but I really like the rest of the post.