Artifact Exchange

After reading through what Nicole had written about our interview process and all the ideas and observations she took down on my tattoo, it was refreshing to see how appreciative and sentimental she was. It was nice to have someone else really appreciate something so special to me, much as you might feel when someone really enjoys a painting you have made or some sort of art piece you've constructed. Nicole and I have been friends for quite awhile now so I expected our interview to go smoothly in that manner, but never did I realize we could learn that much more about eachother through a simple observation/interview assignment.

I learned a couple things about myself as an interviewer. As an outgoing person with somewhat of a creative mind I like to think that I am a fairly good interviewer. I can be personable or serious, and I always manage to find good details and background information on whatever it is im trying to interview about or discuss with the informant. However, I believe my main weakness that I discovered was my ability to write fast enough to keep a steady interview. I need to work on either a short hand for myself to read, or have a laptop with me when taking notes and asking question simply so I can remain at a good pace during the interview process. One other weakness that I ran into was my preconceptions of tattoos during our interview. Being that I have 2 of my own, it was easy to use my own experiences to make assumptions about Nicoles, which sometimes I hit the head on the nail and other times I missed completely. It's going to be important for me, from now on, to keep a clear mind and open mind in any interviewing circumstance so I'm able to adequately get all of the details of someone else's experience rather then utilizing my own.