After we figured out all of our questions and started researching, we had to find someone to interview. This process was very hard for me because I kept finding people to interview, but they never responded to me! The first person I contacted was a Professor of Neurology, Mark Nan Wu. He would have been a perfect person for me to interview, but he never responded to my email! Then I called two sleep doctors separately to see if they would respond. They didn’t! Then finally I found another sleep specialist and I emailed her and she replied in half an hour. This just shows that you have to keep trying and never give up!

The person’s name who agreed to let me interview her is Dr. Shelby Harris. She is a sleep specialist. I chose to interview her because my Capstone topic is sleep, and she is a sleep specialist so she knows a lot about sleep. She has a website. If you want to check it out, here’s a link to it:

https://www.drshelbyharris.com/

The process for setting up the interview was very long. I of course had to first find someone to interview, but then I had to do many other things. My interviewee and I had a lot of back and forth emails about what date/time my interview would be, and how we would do it. We couldn’t do it in person for obvious reasons, so at first, we thought he could do a phone conversation where I ask her the questions and she responds through the phone. But then we couldn’t find a date and time that worked for us both, so we ended up doing the interview like this: I sent her the questions through an email, and she responded through another email. Here are the questions that I asked her:

1. Why did you want to become a sleep specialist?
2. What did you have to do in order to become a sleep specialist?
3. What are the most common types of sleep disorders?
4. What are some signs that someone might have a sleep disorder?
5. How many hours of sleep should a kid get? Teen? Adults?
6. What do you like the most about your job?
7. What do you like the least about your job?
8. Which stage of sleep is the most important? Why?
9. What are the rarest types of sleep disorders?
10. Are sleep disorders able to be cured completely? If so, which ones?
11. What happens if someone is very sleep-deprived?
12. What age groups have more sleep disorders or are more sleep-deprived, kids, teens, or adults?
13. What happens in each stage of sleep?

The most interesting thing that I learned as a result of the interview is that some sleep disorders can be cured, but not all. For example, some sleepwalking and sleeptalking issues can be solved by just making sure you get enough sleep and are practicing proper hygiene, and insomnia and sleep apnea can only sometimes be cured.

Throughout the interview process, there were many challenges such as it was very hard to find someone to interview and figuring out how we were actually going to do the interview. But, I think that coming up with questions was fairly easy. Overall, the interview process was very successful for me!