Interview Narrative: Mrs. Ferrin Interview

As a result, she lacked confidence in her education. She stated, “My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present day affords and which even our common schools now afford. I was never sent to any school; I was always sick.” Even though she did not attend a formal school it did not put her out of reach of a proper education (Peterson, 9).

For the oral history project, I interviewed my grandmother. Her full name is Imelda Laborce, while she is known as “Meldy” to most family members. She was born in a small town called Calapacuan in the Zambales region of the Philippines. She was born in 1955 and is 61 years old. Like me, she was born in the Philippines but eventually moved to America sometime in her life. I believed she was a good candidate because I knew she was one of the earliest members of my family to travel to America. Hence, she must have good stories and have a rich background. I also never really knew anything about her past, so I just thought it would be interesting in general to learn about it. She currently lives in Union, New Jersey and works in a hospital as a nurse.

college. Even though she might have grown up with a hard life, she fought for different ways to

When was the last time you were in the hospital or a loved one was in the hospital, and ever wondered where the nurse is, and they haven 't returned for hours. You finally push the assistance button several times, and they open the door and hurriedly say, “I will be right back”, then you don 't see them for a while again. When they come back to check up on you, you explain to them what you need, and then they send in a less qualified staff member to assist you. At this point, you become very annoyed and frustrated not to mention scared to be admitted in the hospital to begin with. Little do you know, your nurse has ten other patients and other non-nursing tasks that they are responsible taking care of. They have been working a double shift and are extremely exhausted, and a large stack of charts that they will have to do before their shift is over. As a patient, you now become frustrated and are not happy about this; as a nurse, they are just as frustrated as you are, not only because the amount of work they have but more importantly they can 't deliver the appropriate care they long to give. For most hospitals they do not hire enough registered nurses for reasons that are good and bad. This is an issue that needs to be addressed not only locally but nationally and on a constant basis. When there are too many patients for one registered nurse to attend to, nurses become exhausted, mistakes are made, and patients are unsatisfied. A minimum nurse to patient ratio needs to be

The first question I asked her as, “What was the most difficult challenge she faced being an immigrant in America?” She replied it was difficult because she was alone at first and didn’t really get along with the family she was employed for. It was a struggle because she had to learn a new language and was taught by the family themselves. When she was in Los Angeles she took an actual class to teach her more formal English.

On September of 2016, I did an oral interview with Vanna Moore about her military past and Vanna’s ties to Texas. Over the whole interview I asked her questions about her experience in Afghanistan and along the way I asked her questions about Texas. To the best of my knowledge Vanna answered “who are these people, these Texans”, what do Texans tell us about America, and what she thought of Texas. We talked about how her military experience shaped her conceptions of Texas. In a setting such as this one and her experiences combined she had moments where she seemed more comfortable and opened, and other moments that were difficult to get through. After this oral interview experience I feel as though I know how I could use oral histories in my classroom.

By growing up on a small cattle farm and being highly involved in the 4H club and FFA, she entered Auburn with an Animal Science major. She says, “I did not necessarily want to be a vet, I wanted to be an Embryologist, which are people who work with cattle.” However, during her sophomore year, she took Ag. Law and fell in love then proceeded to change her major to Ag. Business. On a job hunt her senior year right before graduation she realized her true calling of being a teacher. Therefore, she decided to do her masters in Ag. Education. After receiving her degree, she moved back down to Florida to help a small Christian college create a degree in agriculture science. Cline felt that this was a sign from God to work in the college level and did so there for three years until a better opportunity brought her back to Auburn.

She would recall this event later on in her writing, in which she accused leaders of the company of using unfair tactics to put not only her father, but many other small oil companies out of business. As for schooling, she graduated at the head of her high school class in Titusville and went on to study at Allegheny College in 1876. She also graduated there in 1880 as the only woman of the class. After graduation, she began her career as a teacher in Poland, a city in Ohio. She taught geology, geometry and trigonometry classes as well as multiple languages. After two years of working in that profession, she realized teaching was not for her and that she enjoyed writing a lot more- this prompted her to pursue a career as a journalist

Dorothy McCormick graduated high school in 1960, but couldn’t go to college because her brother already was going. Her family did not have enough money for the both of them to go so McCormick went to work right out of highschool. She remembers one day, driving to work,

Never having the help, she needed and not having a proper role model made this transition worse. At the end of the year she decided she need to go back to the basics, she dropped out of the IB program for her sophomore year. Over the course of her sophomore year, she made connections with teachers, her counselor, and her CSU Trio Advisor which gave her hope and a goal for her future. Her Junior year came along where she was a part of concurrent enrollment classes, a leadership course, and a religious education mentor. At the end of her junior year, her parents had decided to move to Texas for personal and financial reasons. Not wanting to leave the opportunities she would get in Colorado she stayed behind for her future. Having difficulties living away from home, she focused on work and school. This allowed her to not want to wait until college to make a difference; with other students and staff, they began a mentoring program with middle schoolers at Lincoln, to help students just like her. Having the best grades in her education and the dedication to help others like her she decided the correct career for her would be as an educator, a mentor, a teacher for other students like

This interview has taught me that I don’t know a lot about what really went on throughout history. There are things such as textbooks but, they don’t tell how an individual felt or what it was like for each person to experience certain things during the same time period. For example, it is easier to generalize about how people felt during a major historical event or just living during a certain time period, such as the Great Depression, but it is another to actually get to know how it actually affected people. Everyone reacts to things differently and by generalizing it, it does not allow us to fully understand things that went on throughout and how the people were possibly changed by an experience.

As Dian began to grow up and she finished high school she left to go attend Martin Junior College which is located in California she took business classes and when she finished a year in Marin Junior College she actually left to go work in a farm where she began to work as a animal caretaker which in this job she began to expand her love for animals while she was working at the farm even though she was having fun taking care of all those animals she had to leave because she got chickenpox. After she left she went back to college but this time to a different one which was the University of California at Davis, this school was actually to start her career as a veterinarian her first year was pretty good and easy but when it came to her second year she was terrible and didn’t really understand one specific class so she failed and had to transfer to San Jose State College where she

Prior to graduating high school, Mrs. Bowman confided that she received little guidance and direction from her parents or the school’s guidance counselor. Exercising her own judgment, Mrs. Bowman attended Livingstone College graduating with a degree in English. She admits that she was not very good in English, but maintained a good grasp on

During the interview I felt empathy for Cathy and had a general understanding how challenging it must have felt to care for someone but could not be with them due to prejudice. Cindy's experience reminded me of the time I was dating an Italian man, that I care deeply for and one day he was invited by his cousin to attend a party, Giovanni asked me to accompany him but when his cousin saw me approaching his car, he called out and said that nigger is not getting in my car, as a result the relationship dispersal. Also, Cathy is one of my dearest friends, whom I have always felt the need to protect or defend her for one reason to the next especially since she is a transgender female and I have personally encounter how insidious some people can

Interviewing my mother Regina Burns she expresses that “growing up for her was bitter sweet because her oldest siblings who are all stair steps never set good examples for her”. Her whole life she has felt like the black sheep of the family keeping to herself. By her being academically smart at a young age, she was separated from going to school with her other siblings. She said that she wasn’t close to any of her siblings and this dissimilarity followed my mother and her siblings all the way through high school. She had to do all of her older siblings homework on a daily basis. She expressed that growing up and going to school was not anything like how when her mother was in school. She said that it was acceptable for girls to be smart and that they pushed smartness and wanted the young woman to be as bright as they could be. Interviewing my father he said