Reflective Practice 3 minute interview

This is my reflective blog, the assignment started when I recieved my round which was multicultural issues, I was quite excited about this as I am studying a double degree in Journalism and international studies and I am quite interested in the topic of multiculturalism.

To start my assignment I contacted several organisations asking them about the issues that the multicultural community face; I got three replies with some good information about whom to interview and the several issues that were affecting the multicultural community.

At first glance I was sure I wanted to do the piece on the women only swimming pools and perhaps relate it too "is it hard for immigrant to adapt to the local Canberra society"

After discussion with my tutor Eric Hunter, I decided to focus more on the plight of asylum seekers as it is a nationwide topic and debated over often in parliament for as long as I can remember during power of both liberal and labour governments and comes up as an election debate topic during these election years.

I contacted one of the people that replied to my email which was  Sam Wong from the multicultural centre asking him for an interview, I decided he was a good talent because he works at the Canberra multi cultural centre so I presumed he would have a good knowledge of the plight of asylum seekers, also he was an ex UC council member so I liked the fact that he had some previous experience with the university and founded their multicultural harmony day celebrations.

I met with him and he had a good array of knowledge about the plight of asylum seekers and was quite happy to interview with me and gave me 30 minutes worth of information to use, he also seemed to have a good array of knowledge of the plight of asylum seekers and how the government could perhaps deal with the situation a bit better, also he cleared it up for me that they were technically not illegal they have every right to land in Australia.

After the interview I loaded audacity and began to learn how to use the program, and then I cut down the 30 minutes to 3 using questions that were mostly to do with Canberra.

The Learning curve I experienced during this exercise was that next time I will know to take more control of the interview and not let the interviewee go off topic.

As mentioned before the main difficulties I encountered were lack of control of where the interview was headed, and also getting the courage to actually go and interview Sam as I am extremely shy and nervous when dealing with strangers, I am also self conscious that the questions that I asked would be too bland and general.

After the interview was conducted these difficulties seemed to have subsided, I enjoyed the process of interviewing someone and found what he had to say incredibly informative and interesting.