Essential Question: How can what older generations connected to the LREI community have experienced help younger generations navigate such trying times full of teen angst and growing up in the world?

I have certainly answered some more specific ways of how younger generations can learn from older ones.

My goals changed throughout. At first, I was planning on watching hours of documentaries and taking notes on them, maybe some tv shows with something to do with interviewing, at least two different podcasts, and four books. I didn’t actually think I’d end up reading four books because I’m a super slow reader. I have so far fully read one book and am in the middle of another.

At first, I thought I would have interviewed at least 25 people. I had hoped almost everyone in school had a grandparent I could talk to. I also wished more teachers’ parents could’ve interviewed with me. Thinking back now on that goal, I wouldn’t have gotten through such a packed schedule of interviews back to back to back for days in a row, barely any time to read or write. I’m still a little bummed that I didn’t get to more people including my own grandmother and grandfather. Me missing out on that interview couldn’t be helped. I might even have a long chat with them as though it was an interview (but even less formal) just because I am realizing now how important it is to talk to your family members and learn about their lives. There’s always something you can learn, no matter how detached you may be from them.

I would’ve come up with a better system of note-taking. I also would’ve formulated and noted the questions I asked more thoroughly. The questions I asked changed upon conversation but I generally tried to ask mostly the same questions to everyone.

I found it quite meditative listening to other’s stories without interjecting. There was no pressure for me to find some commonality between me and the interviewee. I just had to make the other feel comfortable enough to share their life with me. Creating an open and accepting environment and honing in on my own empathy and humanity was such a fascinating process to me. I learned a lot about myself and the way I think about how I interact with others. My being quiet while listening to someone else in a more formal setting also helped me clear my head of any interrupting thoughts that took me away from the experience I was a part of in front of me.

The hardest aspect was becoming more comfortable with silence. While silence can make someone incredibly nervous, it can also create a feeling of desperation, I found. It was a desperation to fill the space, think harder on one’s answer, and come up with something more to say. Something they might not have said if I’d just gone on to the next question or started talking about myself. Some small anecdote that could’ve possibly made them trail off a thought. I still am unsure of when to pull someone away from a thought, however. I don’t know if the next thing someone will say will be valuable or not. I also had difficulty coming up with follow-up questions when I wanted to know more about something. I wondered a lot what the conversation would be like if I was just meeting these people on my own, without the structure of an interview. Without them knowing they were supposed to tell me stories of their past.

I want my audience to learn just how important it is to talk to people you wouldn’t normally talk to, especially the older generations that are somehow connected to you. I think it’s wildly important to hear each other’s stories so we can learn to expand our minds, values, goals, and so on. Listening to someone else’s story without interjection is very difficult, especially as humans. We want to relate to someone else by finding commonalities between us. But sometimes just listening and asking the occasional question in order to help someone else recover lost memories or reflect upon important times in their life is something we need to practice.

I will be demonstrating my learning by posting almost everything I do for this project on a google site blog I have created. This includes individual pages for everyone I met along with a favourite recipe and song of theirs, a high school photo,  and their interview. I will also post things I have watched to prepare and learn more about interviewing, as well as the two books I am planning on reading/have read for this project. I have so far read Sharon Stone’s book, a biography in order for me to see the differences and varying degrees between how one tells their story through writing vs. somewhat instantaneous recall/on-the-spot answering of questions about their lives. There will also be a page with all of my reflections and the themes I find after re-watching the interviews. Those themes will have reflections connected to them and in between each, I will have quotes I found to be the most interesting or wise.

In terms of my final presentation, I am still pretty unsure of what I will come up with. I might edit together some videos but only if I have time as the videos are quite long and I’d have a hard time deciding which parts I found most necessary for people to watch. I also don’t want to take someone’s words out of context and I think I’ll have a hard time not doing that.