Spot Interview Assignment

During my spot interview assignment, I interviewed three different people, all college students, asking them questions pertaining to where they live, whether it be on campus or off campus.

The first student I interviewed was an art major with a concentration in journalism that I interviewed during class. I am withholding names for now. Her answers were clear and concise. This was most likely because she was aware of questions would be asked ahead of time and is used to environment of interviews.

The second student I interviewed was an English major that I have classes with. I interviewed him after class as we walked to our cars. His answers seemed a little laxer in the phrasing. Also, his answers were less clear, and I believe this to be because the questions that were asked were seemingly random to him. He had no time to prepare his answers like my first interviewee.

The third student I interviewed was an electrical engineer major. Again, this interviewee exhibited the same symptoms as the second student, his answers were less clear, and he was less prepared because of lack of preparation time.

One of the biggest challenges I faced during this challenge is the almost impracticality of the entire project. In the field us journalists will need to interview people on the fly. However, these people with most likely be expecting an interview to occur as something newsworthy will most likely have also occurred. When college students are approached by a stranger and asked odd questions about their living habits for a “class project,” they tend to tense up and it just makes everyone a little uncomfortable.

Another difficulty I found was an inability to get good quotes from my interviewees. They gave quick answers that are easily understood. However, no quotes that I received were very quoteworthy, if you will.

All in all, I found this assignment to be good practice for conducting interviews and it has shown me some of the areas that I could use a little work. But also, I found this assignment to be less practical than it seems at first.