This afternoon, I had my hand at interview practice with complete strangers. On Saturday I found a man, in his late twenties. He was visiting UW for the Windermere Cup. I chose him because he was alone and din't seem to be in any hurry. We struck up conversation by the book store-- I mentioned that I was studying abroad and had an assignment to complete. I then asked him that if he was me this summer in Berlin, and a Berliner came up and asked what was being done about the current racial issues in the US or that they didn't feel safe because of those issues, especially considering Ferguson and Baltimore, what would you tell them?
At first this guy seemed uncomfortable, especially talking about minorities, in particular blacks. I imagined it was because he was a white male trying to be politically correct. After some initial stumbling, he did respond with some interesting points. He stated that the political and physical unrest should not be something to be worried about-- that this unrest was paving the way for a real dialogue between past and current racial power imbalances for the first time in a very long time. He further added that he could understand why from the outside this would make the US appear to be a very unsafe place for minorities-- but that this was not the case. If anything, that the
I felt slightly uncomfortable about this assignment, mostly because I am not very familiar with the topic itself. While I am aware of the news, I would not call myself an expert on these current issues. I have had plenty of interview experience due to my journalism work. However those interviews were always planed in advance with willing participants. The worst part of this assignment was just finding someone who you think would talk to you. The conversation flowed relatively naturally after that. Fortunately for me, I lucked out on my first time. Overall this was good practice for approaching total strangers and getting them to engage in conversation with you, I imagine this will be much harder in a country where I do not speak the primary language.
At first this guy seemed uncomfortable, especially talking about minorities, in particular blacks. I imagined it was because he was a white male trying to be politically correct. After some initial stumbling, he did respond with some interesting points. He stated that the political and physical unrest should not be something to be worried about-- that this unrest was paving the way for a real dialogue between past and current racial power imbalances for the first time in a very long time. He further added that he could understand why from the outside this would make the US appear to be a very unsafe place for minorities-- but that this was not the case. If anything, that the
I felt slightly uncomfortable about this assignment, mostly because I am not very familiar with the topic itself. While I am aware of the news, I would not call myself an expert on these current issues. I have had plenty of interview experience due to my journalism work. However those interviews were always planed in advance with willing participants. The worst part of this assignment was just finding someone who you think would talk to you. The conversation flowed relatively naturally after that. Fortunately for me, I lucked out on my first time. Overall this was good practice for approaching total strangers and getting them to engage in conversation with you, I imagine this will be much harder in a country where I do not speak the primary language.