Esteban Mendoza

7/16/2020

Write-up 4

Transcript:

Me: Do you ever yo-yo in places you consider comfortable or home?

 

Him: Occasionally. I feel like I yo-yo more when I’m in places where I don’t know the environment as well, which might seem weird because it’s a weird thing to bring out. But it gives me a thing.  I become the yo-yo guy. It gives me a quick marker of who I am.

 

Me: Like an icebreaker of sorts?

 

Him: Yeah! Like an icebreaker. I think that’s good. I think, I mean there are definitely connotations people have with yo-yo’s. I mean they’re nerdy but it does require a bit of skill to use them. They’re unique and flashy but at the same time very lame. They exist in this intersection between cool and lame. I think that’s the same image I try to present. In that way the yo-yo is a, uh, marker of who I am.

 

Me: When you say that’s the vibe you give off what do you mean? Like you try to give off a vibe between cool and lame? Is that how you view yourself?

 

Him: Yeah!

 

Me: What do you mean by that?

 

Him: Like lame being nerdy and perhaps, like, uh geekish is a word I would certainly associate with yo-yoing. But at the same time to be someone who takes a yo-yo places requires a certain level of confidence to put yourself out there and kinda that, uh… I would say confidence isn’t an association one usually has with nerds. To kinda exist in this… I think a yo-yo is similar to a Rubix cube or other nerdy toys. They’re skillful and are like both cool and lame at the same time depending on who’s doing them. And I think that’s weird and unique but it’s also something I see reflected in myself… I’m sorry that didn’t do a great job answering the question.

 

Me: No that makes a lot of sense. Do you find that you have difficulty sometimes trying to show off that intersection of cool and lame?

 

Him: Um, what happens is it depends on what space I’m in. If I’m in a lame or a nerdy space, an academic space, a classroom, I lean into that nerdy side more because that’s what space I’m in. But also, you know it’s jokes or humor that separate me. And also the opposite is true. When I’m in a more casual or social setting it’s the nerdiness that distinguishes me. So it’s both the ability to blend into those spaces but also the parts of my personality that I find myself emphasizing are the ones that don’t mesh.

 

 

 

 

I found Ife’s comments on my interview to be extremely helpful. She helped me see how important my prior relationship to the interviewee was in shaping the content and flow of the interview by noting that I was able to ask him deeply personal questions. Furthermore, she pointed out the fact that I had given my interviewee a “metaphor to work with”. I had not even noticed I had done this when I said, “like an icebreaker”. I think that this technique was actually very helpful and I’ll definitely use it in the future. Finally, Ife also pointed out that when my interviewee didn’t do “a great job at answering the question” I reformulated the question in a way that made it easier to answer. I also hadn’t noticed I had done this and it is a technique that I will carry into future interviews.

One of the things that I think this exercise showed was the importance of rapport in being able to actually get at the heart of your interviewee’s ideas. Because I interviewed my roommate, I was able to ask him questions which I don’t know I would have been comfortable asking normally. Furthermore, I found that because I knew him quite well, I was able to shape my questions based on information I already knew about him. Because he was my friend and I was accustomed to his way of speaking and mannerisms, I also had a better understanding of what he trying to actually say when he was answering my questions. I think that the biggest issue for me during my interview was trying to maintain some air of professionalism. Because we knew each other so well, I think that there was a hard time to maintain the semi-structured nature of the interview. Oftentimes I felt like my interviewee might have been answering my questions in an intentionally humorous or surprising way because we were friends. In the future, I think that there are probably ways to avoid this type of behavior by talking about guidelines and expectations for the interview before it actually begins. Although I did provide him with some background of what I was trying to do, I think that my attempt to keep the interview informal actually proved to backfire.