Role Reversal: On the Other Foot

Reflection #2: On the Other Foot: Oral History Student’s as Narrators Sloan’s article talks about the struggles that commonly occur in interview situations and how awareness and sensitivity are often the best methods towards prevention. In a class full of students who are either eager or apprehensive in regards to an oral history, it is often all too easy to forget about the other side of the microphone. But by putting the shoe on the other foot like Sloan does, the recognition of the dilemmas that may occur during such an interview are highlighted in a trial run before the students actually go out and record. The students report a whole spectrum of feelings from these dry runs with one another and realize that how they act, the way they respond, and even the way they are perceived by the interviewee all affect the final product. Eye contact, be it too much or too little, indicates the level of interest that a listener has. The automatic fear of an incorrect response or an incomplete response leading to hesitation on the interviewee’s part may not be recognized by the narrator as nerves or may even be responded to with impatience. With each reaction that the students had in relation to being in the interviewee’s seat, the awareness of conduct as the narrator grew. I think that the role reversal Sloan has the students participate in takes a step in the right direction in ensuring that the narrator can empathize with the position of the interviewee. It is important to know how the interviewee may be feeling or how they might respond, so that the narrator can take the best steps to avoid catastrophe, assuage accidental insult, or rephrase something with appropriate sensitivity to the issue or the person at hand’s experience. By allowing the students to go through a mock interview as the interviewee, Sloan allowed the students to experience first-hand how intimidating a recorded interview can be, even if you know the person. Upon realizing this, the students then understood that their situation with a report on someone they barely knew and who barely knew them made for a whole new kind of pressure. Armed with this new knowledge, Sloan’s students set out to do their actual oral histories with a heightened sense of awareness about their own comportment and the likeliest causes of turbulence for their interviews. I think that Sloan’s ‘shoe on the other foot’ approach really allowed for personal growth and an understanding that reached a deeper, more personal level with the students allowing for a more effective and less controlling atmosphere for the sharing of these people’s oral histories.