Carlos Bautista

Expository Composition.
Period 6
December 7, 2022

My Community Interview Reflection

Oral history is the form of gathering information from a person by listening to what they
say and recording this. An example of this would be an interview. It is important because in this
way, you can know the other person's opinions, thoughts, and experiences about a specific topic
you ask, and also you have evidence of what the interview was about, using the audio of the
interview. I had an opportunity to interview one member of my family, my brother Miguel. I
specifically chose him because compared to the other members of my family, we have lived
apart from each other since an early age. We grew up in different places , so it seemed like a
good idea to interview him and try to get to know him more than I know.
For me the most significant moment in the interview was him explaining the biggest
challenge he has faced. “The biggest challenge that I faced was when I came back to the United
States”. These words of him explaining what he did and his past stood out to me, because I am
living the same experience like him. Coming to a country where you know Anything. I felt
identified with his answer since I am currently still adapting to this new form of life.
Another part of the interview that stood out to me was him answering the question, What
memory from your past would you not forget about? This is because the answer that I was
expecting was from some event that happened to him in the past, but in reality, he told me about
a big part in his life, his childhood. “From my past, I wouldn't really forget about my childhood”.
In these moments in his life he learned something that he is still doing currently, sports. This
stood out to me because I believe that in those moments in life, is where you get defined as
what type of person you are going to be in the future and that's why his answer impressed me.
In this interview I would say that my strength was the confidence that I had asking this
person the questions, but, this was because I was a little bit familiar with this person. On the
other hand I felt that my weakness was that I didn't really ask good questions and also some of
the questions that I wrote were repeated, but luckily the person answered differently in all the
questions. I think that I can improve on this by trying to review what I'm going to do before I start
since I noticed this when I was doing the interview.
I actually liked doing this interview since I feel that I was able to connect more with my
brother. Our relationship is not the best, but it helped me somewhat. I also feel that this activity
helped me to develop my confidence since I was wondering if my questions were bad or too
obvious to answer. My goals for the next semester will be to keep trying to maintain an A to
pass all my classes and do my best in them. Try to participate more in class and work more as a
team. I plan to give myself a mental break this winter break so I can reorganize myself and
come back better next year.