Pause, Rewind, Play. Pause, Rewind, Play.

Transcription is a job for monkeys.

I might be bitter, so you should probably take those words with a grain of salt. And probably these words, too: transcribing interviews is a terrible, mind-numbing, carpal-tunnel-and-back-injury-inducing task. How do closed-captioning writers do it? That'd be a fascinating feature piece to write, "The World Behind The Words."

Twice as far as I've known him, Bill (my boss) has paid people to transcribe interviews. I think it might even be the same girl. And now I'm starting to wonder how high the price is to transcribe a 45 minute interview. That would have taken her hours, if her typing speed isn't superhuman (which it may very well be; I won't assume).

And I do pride myself on typing speed. It's normally somewhere around 100...110 on a good day, and perhaps with a little bit of caffeine. Transcribing has given me a lot of practice recently, though. Taking another one of those Facebook Typing Tests sounds tempting.

Today I finished transcribing two interviews. One was very short, more informational than anything, and I got to be selective on what exactly I wanted to keep. The second was the interview I did last week (which ended quite abruptly, and was about a half an hour long). That took me the most time. I worked on it all of yesterday and into today.

Remember Shawshank Redemption? Hard labor on the railroad tracks or somesuch? We could make them do transcriptions for journalists.

I'm reminded of the third grade, with Mr. Ecklemeyer. We would go to the computer lab after handwriting a first draft, and type up our essays. He used me as an example in front of the class for a very simple reason: I typed the essay by sentence, not by word, looking at the paper much less often than some of my classmates. As a little teacher's pet, you can probably imagine this incident was a matter of pride for me for some time. To be perfectly honest I still get a little twinge of pride just remembering it. (Might be that teeny fraction of teacher's pet I still have in me...)

The point is, it's very much the same concept with interviews. Don't pause every sentence, just pause when you start getting behind. It'll let you get further, faster. You might make it through a couple of phrases before you can't catch up.

And remember, unlike real life, you can always rewind.

Five Minutes

I've discovered today that the voice recorder on my phone goes up to 5 minutes of recording before shutting off.

Don't worry--I figured it out about 6 minutes into the interview.

I was early, she was late. I was waiting outside her office for a few minutes before I saw her running up the stairs, half a sandwich in her mouth and a brown bag in her hand. "I have to be at a test at 2," she said after we briefly greeted each other. "Just so you know." It was 1:32.

Let me just tell you: I had prepared for this. I had questions about her career, her research, her involvement in the department, the whole kit and caboodle. But I was nervous about going into it by myself, so I spoke quietly and asked her to talk about her recent public engagement grants.

Blunt and to-the-point, she told me the grants really didn't have much to do with the department, and she didn't even have much to do with one of them (her name was just on it as the PI for the grant), but she spent almost 15 minutes straight explaining exactly what the programs were, as well as a partial history.

Every five minutes, I would reset my recorder.

I fumbled to phrase a question about her research, throwing out terms I had read on her website: balance, pregnant women, firefighters. I think she could tell I had no real aim. She first stated she had already given the department information about her study on firefighters and the grant that came with it, but didn't give me a chance to meekly pipe up that I had only been here a few months. Instead, she chose to explain the details of the study, her tone fast-paced and purposeful.

Me: "Do you have any other ongoing projects?" (This is not a very intelligently-worded question to ask a professor. The vast majority of them always have several.)
Her: -laughs- "Of course we do!"

I'm sure in her head she was thinking, "Where on earth did they find this girl....?" But she continued, telling me about her research into pneumatic and fluid-powered orthoses, and the progression from metal to plastic to--

A knock on the door. A professor with a thick accent: "Liz! We have test!"

"Oh, crap. [to me] Sorry, I've got to go."
"That's all right. I'll probably send you a follow-up email--"
She was already grabbing the rest of her lunch, with a few folders and a bag. "Mmhm, that's fine. Nice talking with you!"
"Yes, thank you very much."
And she was gone.

So here are my thoughts. My boss (Bill) was thinking of two articles: one on the public engagement grants, and one on her. I definitely did not get enough information for an article on her, but probably enough for one on the grants. So I'll tell him that, and also tell him that she was under the impression we had enough information on her research, and offer the one article. If he wants a second one, there will have to be a second interview. Hopefully a more successful one than the first.

I can see why there exists the "absent-minded professor" stereotype. They have so much going on around them, it would make anyone dizzy.

In other words, it didn't go as badly as I feared. But I still have a ways to go.

And somehow, I feel as if I'll be ending posts with those words quite a lot.

Music and Lyrics

I know our generation is supposed to be really connected to music. Ipods filled with 1000+ songs, Spotify/Pandora/Grooveshark/etc, the rise of indie and the "you've-probably-never-heard-of-them" hipsters, and all that. We're compensating for the post-90's disintegration of MTV, someone once told me.

Relative to the musical stereotype of my generation, I feel very much like a square. I skip a despicable percentage of the songs on my mp3 player. Most of them are songs unconnected to albums (who has albums anymore? sooo pre-millennium) played by artists of whom I have heard exactly 3 songs. 3 of those are on my player.

(Yes, I'm one of those people:
"What kind of music do you listen to?"
"....uh, alternative rock pop indie folk-pop instrumental acoustic hard rock orchestral....music. Yeah."
"Well, who are your favorite bands?"
"....uh.")

So our musically-saturated generation goes through life with earbuds firmly secure. The most tedious task of our lives: homework. You could listen to teenagers' homework playlists for eons, and never reach the end. However, being the square that I am, the list of homework subjects I can successfully do to my typical range of music consists of only two subjects: math and physics. For anything else, I thought I couldn't possibly listen to a song with lyrics.

I mean, really. You're listening to that Foster the People song, writing your english lit essay, and all of the sudden your next sentence looks a little like:
"The latent symbolism in these pumped up kicks, demonstrates a clear need of the main character to better run better run...."

Editing that paper will be real fun.

I've discovered, however, that as long as I don't know the lyrics, I'm in no danger of accidentally transcribing the words in my ears instead of the words in my head. This has led to a rather obsessive use of Pandora and Spotify, and a strange compulsive addiction to new music.

As long as I've never heard it before, I can write to it.

Except if I'm writing in French. Word to the wise: the duality of listening to English lyrics while struggling to remember the word for "basement" in French is a very painful way to do homework.

Frequently Asked Questions...Among Other Things

One of these days, I'm going to get an interview right. I just know it. There'll be one time, with this one person, where I'll be on the ball and ask all the right questions and get them to say funny and interesting things that would be good for the article and I'll cover every base and have no questions left by the end. My article will be full of witty quotes, essential information, and leave the reader saying, "Wow. That was cool."

Until then, I'll continue to stop halfway through articles and realize I don't know a crucial piece of information about my subject. And send them a humble email asking them for said information that I never asked them while I had them sitting across from me, voice recorder ticking.

Oh, and have five mini-interviews for award applications, and intelligently arrange to meet them at a crowded coffee shop. The interview recordings were 1 part interview, 2 parts laughing people, and 5 parts roaring espresso machine.

The one interview that did go well was one where I tagged along with my boss. It would be my first feature article; he thought it would be prudent if he came along and led the interview, while I watched. (My first thought: "Oh, thank God.")

The subject was a professor who headed a consortium of steel companies and the NSF, researching the casting process. We'd planned to be with him for about a half an hour--he gave us twice that. He would take a single question and launch into explanations, tangents, anecdotes, and we could only sit and listen.

My boss asked him questions about his research group, the award he had recently won, how his consortium worked...but that's not what I wanted to know. My question was about his research, using numerical methods to minimize defects in continuous casting.  What advantages did continuous casting have? How did it work? Could the molds be different shapes?

I noticed this in my science journalism class--journalists ask different questions than scientists do. Journalists want to know the story. Scientists want to know the science. Their interests lie in different places.

I discovered, however, looking back on the interview while I was writing the article, that I couldn't use much of what he had said about the process. That's not what the article was about. The article was describing him, his consortium, and his research. No one would read the article for an explanation of the continuous casting process. That wasn't my job.

So in my interview with a grad student today, I tried to cut down. I stayed focused. What is your research on? What is your end goal? What award did you win? Which professor are you working for? And in focusing so hard to ask the right questions, I never asked the necessary ones. What are you majoring in/which department are you in? How many students presented in your symposium? Where did you go for undergrad? What year are you?

That's right. I don't know what year of grad school my subject is in, or even her major.

One of these days, I'm going to get an interview right.

Until then, I'll send her a humble email....

**stay tuned for next week, when I interview a professor for a feature article--on my own. eeeep.