What did I notice about myself
During the interview: That I was engaged and comfortable in talking with Natalia, and impressed with how open she was being. That I was sensitive to the importance of what she was revealing and cautious about not invading her privacy. That the most important thing to her in the telling was not the same as what was drawn as most important on her timeline, so there was a surprise on that level as well as on the level of knowing what I hadn’t known. That I wanted to make a complete story with beginning middle and end from what she said, because there was a complete story there.
While transcribing: I hate transcribing. I always have, but in radio I usually didn’t put in every single um and stammer, which is a pain. I noticed that my brain filters out all the ums and stammers unconsciously, and only when I had to put them in did I notice them. Also that the ums and certain words (“well…”) and the pattern Natalia uses them are what makes her speech patterns unique. I could start to hear the “sound” of Natalia when I transcribed fully.
While writing the piece: I was struck by her openness, but hearing a perspective I’d never heard before, and by its being a self-contained and powerful story of intracultural identity struggle.
About interviewing: I haven’t done it for a while and I noticed that, when you’re talking to someone whose experience is different from yours, whom you like and who is open, it’s a real joy. I also noticed how much I follow the thread of conversation rather than any externally imposed order.
About being the interviewee: I don’t like it. I felt boring. I felt filtered and inauthentic. Particularly with the subject of race, which I was the one to initiate, I was so busy trying to contextualize for political correctness that there was no meat to what I said. Only when N asked me an unrelated question — about how I felt about Russians during the cold war — did I get engaged and learn stuff, about her and about me. I got to remember things afresh, without just lecturing about my preselected topic. I got to recall the slumber parties in the fallout shelter.
- What did you learn about myself through being interviewed? (Johari window: what didn’t I talk about? What emerged that surprised me?)
- What did I learn about “learning another person” through the interviewing experience.
- How does my identity manifest in my teaching or my being a student in the classroom.