For my project thus far, I have done three interviews with Carleton students and have plans for a good number more. Other people have mentioned it already, but something I have very much struggled with is feeling like I am inconveniencing people or being a burden as I attempt to schedule these interviews. Life is hard right now and I don’t want to be the person adding one more thing to people’s already overwhelming lives. The “How Museums Will Eventually Tell the Story of Covid-19” reading quoted Lexi Lord who said, “The last thing we want to do right now is say, ‘There’s a shortage of ventilators; put one aside for us. ”And honestly, that’s kind of how I feel at the moment. Obviously I’m not asking for life saving ventilators, but I am asking for time and energy that people may need to put toward continuing to function. I know my personal amounts of both are severely limited. The article went on to say basically the same thing saying that “many curators are being careful not to demand too much space in people’s brains right now” so this is definitely a problem that many people are grappling with right now. And part of me says that it can’t hurt to ask and if people don’t want to or can’t handle it they will say no, but I unfortunately know enough people (and frankly am that person) who would agree to an interview even if they don’t have the time or energy to give that I still worry. So I’m struggling with that while at the same time knowing just how valuable this kind of work is and how worthwhile it is to compile all these stories. My group has tried to remedy this somewhat by keeping the interviews as short as possible, but by doing that we sacrifice how in depth we can go with each person.
I have so far been interviewing friends of mine which poses additional challenges as well. I think this was most apparent in the first interview I did with one of my best friends, Max Bremer. We had been talking casually over Facetime all day as we did homework together and then we switched to zoom to do the interview. As soon as we both logged into the zoom meeting and knew we were being recorded though, we instantly became different people that were stiffer, less open, and less comfortable than we had been not half an hour before. And this was an interview between two people who are 100% comfortable with one another. If not even we can be our authentic selves while being recorded, I’m just not sure it’s possible. Then there also came the issue I was not anticipating which is how hard it is to go through these kinds of questions with someone you care about that much. In answer to one of my questions Max started talking about how hard it was to not know when he would see any of his friends again being that everyone but me is a senior. This is something we as a group have been doing a good job of not talking about and to hear the very thing I myself am afraid of and have to stay in interview mode was difficult. This also leads into a more general issue too though, which is that we are asking some very personal questions. This can be difficult for both the interviewer and the interviewee. On one hand I want to record as much as possible, but on the other I don’t want to make people talk about things that are too personal or things that are painful to talk about. It’s a fine line to walk.
To widen the demographic of who we are interviewing, my group recently reached out to all the class Facebook groups. We very quickly got a large number of responses which was very encouraging to me. Seventeen people have gone out of their way to fill out our form and volunteer their time to do these interviews with us. A couple were history majors (nothing wrong with that, every voice is valuable and the last thing I would want to do is perpetually leave the recorders themselves out of the record) but there were also a lot of people I don’t know in the slightest who are volunteering their time because they understand the importance of what we are doing. Based on how much I’ve been grappling with not wanting to burden people, this was incredibly encouraging.
