Kayley Nguyen

Dr. Cobos

ELA

October 29, 2017

What did you enjoy most about the interview process of the Oral History Project?

What advice would you give to future students doing the Oral History Project?

Throughout this whole project the things that I enjoyed most were seeing everyone really work together. There were many split groups that each had to schedule and give a interview. When I first heard about this project I was really worried that we wouldn’t be able to do it since none of us had never done this before. It was really not as hard as I imaged it to be because we had met with people who taught us how to properly give an interview . In our group we worked pretty well together on doing an equal amount of work and with helping each other. We were quite worried because our interview was really late so we didn't have as much time to type our transcription but even though it was really hard it was also really fun. When our groups had to join to make a collaborative project it was cool to see everyone's ideas join to be one. Our class made a website with each one of our interviews with an analysis and also a highlights page.

Some things to know that helped our group is having two electrical devices ready, charger, open ended questions, and patience. Our class was really stressed throughout this whole process and what really helped us is that we needed to be open minded with each others thoughts and opinions and we had to be really patient with each other. Our group learned how to work with each other and get it done but honestly if you don't work together as a group then it's going to be extremely hard to get your project done. Our group also really struggled with the videos because we didn't have enough storage to download every video and get it done on time so we just had to stay calm and trust each other, in the end we got what we needed done and our project came out really successful and informational.

Kayley Nguyen

Dr. Cobos

ELA

October 27, 2017

What led to Marjane's grandmother yelling at her? Was the yelling justified? Why or why not?

I chose this topic because I thought that there was a reasonable explanation behind why her grandma was yelling at her. From page 285-287 and 291 explains what happened and why her grandma acted the way she did. The story starts when Marjane wanting to get a makeover. After her makeover she saw the guardians and freaked out, since makeup was not really allowed her first thing was to completely blame it on the man that was right next to her as a distraction. On page 285 quotes “I had to distract them. I had to go see them before they saw me…. There’s a guy who said something indecent to me.” To me the first thing I thought was why would you do this, out of anything you could have done you chose this? Another thing is when looking at some of the pictures after the man was arrested she looked as if she knew she was guilty. I think that her grandma had the right to yell at Marjane because she told her grandma the story in a way that was not serious. Also I think what also made it worse was that Iran is already strict and she knows it, to put someone through that knowing the consequences are bad is just not acceptable. I also think that Marjane’s partner was a bad influence on her because like I was saying before on page 286-287 she looked as if she felt bad until she told him, he started laughing and then she became ok with what she did. The grandma did bring up a good point on page 291 when she brought up how her grandfather was arrested and locked up. “Have you forgotten who your grandfather was? He spent years of his life in prison for having defending some innocents”. I don’t think that Marjane understood how important that was to her grandma and to see your grandchild do something so awful is honestly heartbreaking.