A New Experience

During all my time as an intern, I have never been involved in the actual selection of stories for a project. This is actually going to be the first year I've worked on the any part of the production aspect of a project. And so far, the selection of stories has been really fun. Before, I don't think I had a proper idea of the scope of an oral history project. Even though I had worked on gathering interviewees and conducting the actual interviews, I have never really seen the project start to come together in the way I am seeing it come together now.

It is incredible to me that despite the fact that we interview such a wide range of people, there are still many common themes that can be found, tying together the various interviews. It really goes to show how much we all have in common as human beings. For example, whenever talking about what makes a marriage work, almost all the interviewees (whether a part of same-sex or interracial marriage) talk about the importance of things like communication and openness. The fact that so many people, independently of each other, gave the same advice, is evidence to the fact that, even though we are all unique, there are a lot of traits and characteristics we share as humans.