“Why did you join the military?”
“There was nothing else to do at the time.”
“What was it like in Korea?”
“There are things I’d rather do.”
That was Lorelei Moser and her great grandfather discussing his service in the Korean War—just one of dozens of interviews in Etown StoryCorp, a new exhibit in the Elizabethtown College High Library’s Innovation, Design, Expression and Art (IDEA) Lab.
From 7:40 a.m. to 7 p.m. now until Oct. 11, students can come to the IDEA lab to listen to interviews between fellow Etown students and their family, friends and mentors. They can also hear these talks online at https://etownhighlibrary.github.io/etownstorycorps/browse.html.
The project is the brainchild of Etown professor Suzanne Biever-Grodzinski and all interviews in the audio exhibit were completed by students in her first-year writing classes.
Biever-Grodzinski explained her inspiration for the original assignment.
“I listen to NPR when I drive like a true academic,” she joked, pumping a fist in the air.
Through NPR, she discovered the StoryCorp format in which people are encouraged to interview their loved ones and these discussions are placed in the Library of Congress catalogue for posterity.
“I heard the interview they did with the founder of StoryCorp and just thought it would be really cool to factor that into a first-year writing course and have students contribute to something,” she said.
After Biever-Grodzinski had her students complete their own StoryCorp-style interviews, her colleague Dr. Matt Skillen recommended she have these discussions preserved in Etown’s Hess Archives. Director of the High Library Sarah Penniman then suggested displaying the interviews in an audio exhibit in the IDEA Lab.
“We in the library are always looking for work by students that we can promote in the IDEA Lab,” Penniman explained.
“Many of the students interviewed a family member. A couple chose teachers, pastors, friends. Their questions spanned the course of their relationship with the other person and how each person brings meaning into the other’s life. They were very touching, and I highly recommend listening,” Penniman said.
Biever-Grodzinski appreciated how the assignment acted as a natural segue for her students to connect with their loved ones in a new way.
“I had students who said they were skeptical at the beginning, then by the end they were so glad they did it because they had conversations with loved ones that they never thought they’d get to have,” she said.
In one case, the assignment allowed such a conversation to happen before it was too late.
Biever-Grodzinski recalled, “I had one student who interviewed a grandmother and then his grandmother unfortunately passed and then the family used the interview as a means to celebrate her life and reconnect with her after she passed.”
In addition to generating a new family artifact, StoryCorp interviews can be used as an icebreaker.
Biever-Grodzinski reported, “This semester there are a number of students who are using it as an opportunity to interview their roommates and get to know who they are going to be living with throughout the rest of the school year.”
One pair of long-time friends used their interview as a chance to reminisce. Danielle Polizzi’s interview with her childhood buddy recalls “magical Italian words” they invented in fourth grade.
Like everything else, COVID-19 shook up the StoryCorp assignment.
Biever-Grodzinski said, “Students had to get creative during the pandemic,” and make use of technology to conduct their interviews.
A few students interviewed relatives who were frontline workers during the pandemic. Jesse Piergallini began her interview with her mother, a doctor, by asking her what made her want to go into her line of work. Apparently, during a nursing class she watched a video on changing bedpans and figured she couldn’t do that, so she may as well be a doctor.
This and hundreds of other sparks of real life make the StoryCorp exhibit worth checking out.
