This project, immigration, is not bad. At least no research and writing work. Mostly, your research comes from the interview you conduct with an immigrant. After conducting the interview, you have to make an adobe spark video. I find this fun, but probably not as fun as Rube Goldberg. I think that this project is still interesting, just not the first part, where you have to research. I learned some cool things about how life was back then for my mom. I especially liked the pictures of my mother when she was a kid.

We just had to list 10-15 questions on a document. It wasn’t that hard, I felt like I had everything planned out in my head already. Almost like I already knew everything I was going to ask. Every. Single. Question. I still had to get some inspiration, so I looked at the “Sample Interview Questions and Interview” PDF. There were some good questions I found there. I finished 20 questions pretty quickly, from what I call. I mostly wrote questions like “How did moving feel” and “Explain your thoughts” and things like that(not exact questions). I tried my best to not write closed questions. It actually wasn’t that hard, you just had to add words like explain, describe, tell me, why or why not, those kinds of words. I tried to consider making my questions interesting or at least making them have interesting answers. I did sort of succeed. I did get some answers I expected, and some I didn’t. 

I mostly just sat there, on my parent’s bed(that isn’t the most convenient place, I know) with my mom, listening to what my mom had to say. Sometimes, my mom misheard me(I didn’t notice), and then she would go on talking about things that didn’t match the questions. I got confused easily but didn’t interrupt until I found the chance. I wanted this interview to be a proper one, even though there were some not-so-proper parts. I stayed there, listening to mom’s story, and nodding in agreement when necessary. I expected it to be shorter, just about 15 minutes would be enough, but it turned out I needed about 20 minutes instead. My mom had a lot more to say about each question than what I expected, I expected to hear a straight answer and explanation. I personally had never conducted an interview. I found out if you wanted a proper interview, you have to be quiet, nod in agreement(only when necessary), sit tall, don’t slump, keep a smile(to make the person you’re interviewing feel warm), and don’t be forcing. Somehow, I learned these things without consequence, it just happened that I knew what to do and what not to do. I had a prediction of what will happen if I did these things. What answer surprised me most was what thing, in particular, made moving extra hard. I expected to hear something like Oh, leaving all my friends and family was so, so hard. or Oh yes, the feeling of leaving permanently was so hard to conquer. et cetra, et cetera. But in fact, something I didn’t expect, my mom said, “Oh, extra hard… Hm… I think, the food. The food of the culture is so different from the food I’m used to. I still didn’t know how to cook back then, it was very hard.”  That sure was a surprise, I didn’t know the food was hard for her.

In conclusion, I like this unit so far. It’s not that bad, but not super-duper fun. I consider it “okay”. I like some things about the unit, for example, interviewing, Adobe Spark video, and some more. But something I don’t like is the research at the beginning. I understand that it may be strange that I really do hate research, but it’s just something I don’t enjoy. I just can’t handle boring, computer, note-taking research. I don’t think this unit is bad or good so far, but I bet the Adobe Spark video will make this unit even more fun. I’m okay with this unit, no particular feeling. At least this is better than some of the other units we did.