Eminent Person Interview – The Reflection

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get an interview for my eminent person this year. I did, however, get an interview for my pervious eminent person this year before I changed, so this really changed and helped me make up for not getting an interview.  

I think that first of all, I should’ve been more open-minded when looking for a person to interview. I tunnel visioned on people who were close with my eminent person and didn’t think about reaching out to someone who maybe wrote a few articles or blog posts about him. It was only after the due date for getting an interview when I found someone on the Alpinist blog site who had written many many great posts on Marc Andre. Part of the problem with tunnel visioning on these people was that they were really hard to get a hold of and required a bit more work to contact. Not only this but I was also so nervous about reaching out to people that it took a lot of convincing to get myself to send emails. If I ever have to reach out to people for interviews, I will definitely be more open-minded and hopefully confident. 

However, as I mentioned before, I was able to get a better view on what the interview gave insight on with my previous eminent person. I was doing Louisa May Alcott before Marc-Andre and I did an interview with a professor from Kansas State University who studies Alcott’s work. I was so nervous for the interview and had originally just wanted to get it over with, but as I did the interview and reflected on it later on, I realized just how valuable the interview was. Talking with someone about something they’re passionate about is really inspiring and makes you more interested in that person. He was really interested and genuine in his love for Alcott’s books and message that it inspired me as well.  

With this in mind, I had a better idea of what I had to do to make up for not having and interview for Leclerc. I know that I needed to get a view of him through the eyes of people who knew him, were inspired by him or were apart of his life. I went looking for a lot of resources where there were people talking and giving their opinions of what kind of a person he was like. People like his close friends and girlfriend were really helpful in this. I also looked for more videos of him and about him. I found that I was able to learn a lot more about a person when watching them interact and talk than I could on a few words on paper. One really big resource to me was the documentary, The Alpinist. In the documentary, not only do they talk about his accomplishments, but also his impact on other people, his personal life and countless interviews with other famous mountaineers about Marc-Andre. I found that out of anything I connected most with him through watching the documentary.