Immigration

Welcome back to another blog post! Today I will be sharing the experience of interviewing my dad for a school immigration project. I had a great time interviewing my dad, writing a script, and making a short video on adobe creative cloud express, (I know, it’s a long name). The first step of this long process was brainstorming 10-15 really good/open-ended questions, (I brainstormed 15). I thought I had some really good questions that would get a lot of information from the interviewee and would explain a lot about their journey/life coming to America. My questions got A LOT of information so when I make my video explaining his life, I won’t be able to share all the little details and will kind of have to summarize what he is saying; but I will get in as much as I can. Here are 2 of my Questions and Answers:

  1. What were some push factors from India, and Pull factors to America, and how would/did they affect you?

Some of the push factors from India were that they were limited opportunities, and they were not to my liking. He was also trying to design India’s first composite wastewater treatment plant, but because it was expensive, they weren’t willing to build it. Some pull factors were that there were many opportunities, and there were more jobs.

9. When you first got here, what were some of your jobs, how did you get them, and how long did they take; did you have any money problems when you arrived?

At the time, 1 USD was equal to about 55 Rupees, about 77 now. It had a much weaker purchasing power. He didn’t have money for college and had to be careful because all he had budgeted was half of his 1st semester. He paid by getting part-time jobs, a presidential scholarship, was a teaching assistant in his second semester, and continued this through his 3rd and 4th semester.

 

Here is one of my individual slides from the script without the questions:

Most of his struggles were financial issues and he had to ration his food and money. (3-4 seconds) He overcame them by getting scholarships, being an assistant in graduate school, and by getting a summer internship. (5.3 seconds)

 

I learned a lot about my dad and I also learned the things like how to conduct an interview. I also learned a lot about important lessons in life during my dad’s interview. The first step of my process was interviewing my dad, which didn’t take a long time and was probably the easiest part of the process. The next step was writing a narrative and script (basically planning out my video.) This part didn’t help me at all. The next and final part of the process was making the video and narrating it. This took a while but wasn’t as hard as I thought it was.

 

Overall, I learned a lot interviewing my dad and had a great time interviewing/making a video, and think it was a great learning experience. Stay tuned for another blog post. Here is my final video. I hope you enjoy it because I spent a lot of time making this video.

1 Thought.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skip to toolbar