Interview Intervention

When i first started my article, I decided to do a trend piece in which I investigated whether studying abroad has become more of a semester-long vacation, or has stuck to its roots of providing students with a unique cultural and education opportunity. With this in mind, I went into my first interview with all of my questions related to this topic. They included questions such as, "What made you want to go abroad," "What did you hope to accomplish while you were abroad," "How did you spend your time while you were abroad," "What classes did you take abroad," "What is your major," "How was the location/language of your study abroad destination related to your major," etc. As you can see, all of these questions were slanted in a way that I hoped would elicit responses which told me that the student went abroad for enjoyment purposes. As a result, my first interview did not go very well. My interviewee was an Economics major that studied abroad at Oxford University for an entire ear. I learned that his study abroad experience was solely about getting professional internship experience to boost his resume - not for "vacation" purposes whtasoever. I should have done more research beforehand to find out some deeper background information about my interviewee. Even so, I ended up getting a lot of information about the abroad experience as a whole. It also turned out to be beneficial because most of my interviewees revealed that they, too, went abroad for purposes other than leisure and vacation. As a result, I changed the direction of my article into a how-to piece about everything you need to know about the abroad experience. Ultimately what I learned is that it is important to go into an interview with an open mind, and without the intent of soliciting preconceived notions of what you think or want the interviewee to tell you. The remaining of my interviews went much more smoothly, and I got a lot of great feedback!