Aging and Life Review
Interviews: Childhood & Adolescence Young and Middle
Adulthood
Later Age and
Retirement Summary/Evaluation
Types of Questions
TO: Participants in Summer Institute - “Aging and Life Review”
FROM: Mike Brady
RE: Things To
Do Prior to
DATE:
I know it’s only beginning to feel like spring, and it may be somewhat whimsical to be thinking in any detail about late June. But the nature of our course compels me to communicate the various tasks you need to accomplish prior to arriving at class on Monday, June 24th.
The way summer institutes have been organized in the past, participants get much of their work done before they ever come together to meet as a class. When we do gather as a class in late June, we shall hear various presentations (by me and others), see films, and engage in numerous large and small group discussions. A substantial portion of the material we shall examine at this time will be grounded in your readings and experiences of May and earlier June. I’ll expect you to do very little reading or other work outside of class during the five days of the course. My theory is that we’ll be deeply enough involved during the day to have earned nights of rest and relaxation.
In the meantime, however, I have three areas of assignment for you.
1.
Hendricks, Jon (Ed.). (1995). The Meaning of Reminiscence and
Life Review. Baywood.
I have ordered
these texts through the USM bookstore in Gorham. If you find it more convenient to shop
elsewhere,
I wouldn’t expect Hendricks’ text to be in a general bookstore because of its more academic nature. Fortunately, all are in paperback. The order in which you read these books is not important.
2. Interviews - A second pre-institute activity involves conducting a series of life review interviews with an older person, preferably one over the age of 65. This person may be a family member, friend, acquaintance, or total stranger.
The ideal situation is for you to lead three one-hour interviews, approximately one week apart. If it is impossible for you to schedule three distinct interviews, two will suffice. But it is highly preferable that you plan to conduct more than a single interview.
I don’t want to provide intricate guidelines about how to conduct these life review interviews. There is no special formula. Some of you have taken courses with my departmental colleague, Bob Atkinson, and have already done work in this area. Or you may have seen Bob’s book, The Life Story Interview, in which he describes theoretical and methodological aspects of life stories (if you have this book, pages 43 – 53 list numerous potential interview questions).
While it is by no means a “cookbook,” one of the texts we are using in HRD 558 - The Meaning of Reminiscence and Life Review - will give you a good sense of the genre and may also stimulate your thinking about engaging a series of life review interviews with an older person. Especially if you have not done any work like this before, you may benefit from at least a browse of Hendricks’ book prior to preparing your interviews.
My suggestion is to keep your interviews unstructured and open-ended. Use an outline to guide the older person in her/his reminiscence, and employ probing questions to fill out details once the dialogue has begun. If you and your interviewee feel comfortable doing so, you may wish to tape record the interviews (please obtain permission for this). If not, you may want to take down notes during the interview (again, seek permission). In the least, write down notes after the interview.
One logical way to plan the interviews would be to focus attention on three periods of the person’s life: childhood and adolescence, young and middle adulthood, and their recent past. Listed below are sample questions:
· Are there any family stories told about you as a baby?
· Did you have any brothers and sisters? Tell me what each was like.
· What kinds of play did you enjoy?
· What was your relationship like with your parents?
· What things did you enjoy doing as a teenager?
· What were the most pleasant things about your adolescent years? Most difficult things?
· (Other areas you may want to query are their experiences at school, friends, the house and neighborhood where they grew up, relationship with parents, early work experiences, cultural traditions, religious influences in their early years . . . )
· What was life like for you in your twenties? Your thirties?
· Tell me about your work. Did you have many different jobs over the years? Did you enjoy your work? Did you feel appreciated in the workplace?
· What are the accomplishments you are most proud of from your adult years?
· (Other areas: marriage and family choices, leisure activities, first house, role of religion, struggles encountered, crucial decisions, relationships with children, mentors who encouraged and helped . . . )
· How do you feel about life now that you are retired?
· What activities do you enjoy now? Are these different than those you enjoyed 15 or 20 years ago?
· Tell me about your grandchildren (be careful – the response to this invitation could take some time! J )
· (Other areas: health, volunteer roles, part-time work in retirement, relationship with adult children, travel, new opportunities to learn . . . )
Summary/Evaluation Types of Questions
· On the whole, what kind of life do you think you’ve had?
· If you were able to live your life over again, what would you change?
Leave unchanged?
· How, if at all, have your values changed over time?
· What people have had the greatest influence on your life? How?
· What was the hardest situation you had to face in your life? Please describe.
· What are the most important things you have come to learn about yourself?
· Do you feel you have left a special “legacy” to your family or to the world? If so, what is it?
You need not use these exact questions. Part of what I would like us to focus attention on in the institute is what question(s) worked particularly well for you and your classmates. If you prefer to organize your interview other than chronologically, that’s fine, too.
During the final interview (whether it is your third or second), I would like you to spend a little time focusing the older person’s attention on what the process of life review s/he has been engaging has meant. In other words, what value, if any, has this guided reminiscence had for them? This is an issue to which we shall pay careful attention during the course.
You are not expected to write a summary or otherwise prepare a formal paper based upon these interviews. This exercise is intended to provide you with experience doing this kind of work and will give us a baseline upon which to build during our week together. If you agree to tape record the sessions, the tapes may be used for review of salient portions of the conversation and/or to give to your interviewee.
3. Writing - The third pre-institute assignment is to write two brief autobiographical sketches (which we’ll call “memoir vignettes”). The purpose of the summer institute is wider than simply learning about gerontology and the life reviews of others. It is also to get each of us to become aware of the importance of attending to our own lives and stories, no matter what our current age.
In order to do this, I would like you to focus upon what the theologian-philosopher John Dunne calls “stories within stories.” Take two stories within the larger story of your life. Write a brief (500 – 1000 words) vignette about each one. These stories need not be connected to each other in any way, except that is, that they are part of your life history. Write your texts in your own style and with your own originality.
One recommendation I would like to make is that you take, for at least one of your sketches, a small event in your life, albeit one that was important and memorable. Examples might be a walk with your child through the woods, Thanksgiving Dinner, or a class reunion. Try to fill out the story with as much detail as you can. It is helpful to recall the guiding principle used by the physician-poet William Carlos Williams –
“No ideas but in things.” I do not mean to completely discourage you from taking on a larger and more monumental life event (eg., death of a parent, divorce, etc.). But these more dramatic and tumultuous stories are more difficult to contain in a brief memoir. You may wish to attempt one of each. Your choice.
After you have drafted your texts, read them over several times. With my own writing I have often found it helpful to read aloud. You may even risk reading them to (or having them read by) another person. Then perhaps you will want to do re-writes.
I want to give you advance-notice that it is a tradition within HRD 558 that we reserve time at the end of the week for members of the institute to read one of their memoir vignettes aloud. Without exception this has been a powerful and evocative experience. The “public” reading of a memoir vignette is voluntary. But I want you to know in advance that we’ll schedule time for this and encourage you to consider sharing your writing (knowing this now may also influence your choice of themes for at least one of the two stories).
In the spirit of sharing - and also providing you with examples of what I mean by memoir vignettes - I include two samples. In one, award-winning Chinese-American author, Amy Tan, writes about her mother. In the other, I tell the story of playing sandlot baseball as a child. Enjoy.
I also want to inform you that, in the tradition of intensive summer institutes at USM and elsewhere, there will also be post-institute work for those of you taking the course for academic credit (if you are auditing HRD 558, while you won’t have to bother with post-institute work, I do ask that you engage all of the activities thus far described in this memo). The post-institute work does not involve large or complex activities, is
basically integrative in nature, and involves a range of choices. You’ll have the rest of the summer to complete it. We’ll examine these post-institute activities in detail the first morning of the course. I do want to assure you, however, that most of the energy and work you invest in this course will be expended prior to and during the institute rather than after June 28th.
Please call me (207-780-5312) or e-mail {mbrady@usm.maine.edu } if you have questions or otherwise want to discuss details about issues raised in this memo. I have offered this course every-other-summer during the past decade and each iteration has, in its own way, been a wonderful experience in adult education and community. I’ll do my best to make this summer’s life review course a comparable learning - and living - experience.
Thanks.