Entry 17: Oral History

Describe the process of creating your oral history. How did you go about it, what was your subject's response like, what did you learn, both about your subject and about yourself? If you had more time to work on an oral history project, how would you improve upon the process? Who might you choose as a subject? Why? Describe how you feel about the value of oral histories as a source of information.

• The main process for creating my oral history presentation and essay is to ask questions. We need, of course, to know who is the influential person of the interviewed person, what is the influence or the impact, and how the influence manifests itself. The subject's response is mostly informative. I learned about the subject his past, and why he has his present behavior. I learned about myself that I am actually good at creating a story with only a few details given to me. If I had more time to work and develop my oral history project or presentation, I would improve the process by adding more pictures to the presentation slides, and also by giving the background a more informative picture. I believe that I should have also included the reaction of the subject. If I were given the chance of choosing my own subject for my interview, I would choose someone who is a close friend of mine. The reason is mainly because I even though we know each other already and understand each other quite well, it would be better if I understood my friends even more. I believe that the oral histories are valuable most of the time. However, we must always consider the fact that they may be biased depending on the subject.