(https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/five-ways-virtual-reality-now-become-rea...)
Written by Jacob Skilich
REALITY CHECK!
Some of you will already know what I mean, while others may be new to this idea. Emotional involvement in history.
I have spent the last four months transcirbing oral intervies from the 70s and 80s with the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO). In that time, I have experimented with applying my daily and constant introspection regarding my own life to the stories of those immigrants to Canada whom built themselves from scratch.
When getting personal in the transcribing process, and seeing if you as a student are making the most productive decisions with your time while also listening to those who started with less than you have, consider these three things.
1) Searching for inspiration will also sometimes lead to vehement disagreeement.
No seriously, it will anger you. Here is one of the dangers of becoming emotionally invested in history. One transcription I finished in early January of 2019 had me astounded when I got near the end and heard the narrator's very old fashioned (even for the 70s) views on gender roles in the household. Two minutes later I was astonished at the terrible and impractical taxation recommendations he provided (as a licensed accountant) in a paper to the government during the Pierre Trudeau era. Just remember, you will have to accept this risk while transcribing, and the solution is to consider these people as complex, and stick to the things you did like if your goal is looking to be inspired by their successes.
2) Listening to the accomplishments can be intimidating.
"Don't be intimidated." That is what you tell yourself until you realize that you are in your twenties making a low wage to pay for school, and these narrators were going from low wage work after immigrating to running successful businesses in less than eight years. A German immigrant who started his photography career in Montreal in his first year in Canada was getting to meet popular classical musicians and selling numerous pictures from his work done in the yearly Kitchener and Stratford musical festivals in the late 80s, and only after a few years in the industry.
When I say "success", I also mean making such a good living he was already getting recommended for photos for newspapers in Texas, and travelling for work to Los Angeles after only a few years and he admitted he initially knew nothing of photography when he immigrated. That is productivity.
3) Take that intimidation and use it. You have to look in every nook and cranny.
That same photographer was wanting to be an actor in Munich before he came to Canada. His writing didn't get him far in public journals and newspapers in Canada. He stuck to developing his skill as a photographer. Just as an Italian immigrant who was a carpenter (an earlier transcription I did in Septmber) went from less than 50 dollars a week in wages to building the connections he needed to start his own residential building company. Everything is a process. Just as a Portuguese immigrant I focused on started in the mines of northern Ontario, was told he was not good enough for law school in Toronto and became a lawyer and NDP community memeber anyways.
When looking for inspiration from the past these considerations while transcribing have brought me back into reality. Not every person with great advice in one area will have the best ideas in other. Sometimes these ideas even from a distant time trouble us since when we look to history we also look at human development. Yet it seems the one key factor that has seemed common for all these immigrants from Europe, is the ability to stick to it and trudge through. Maybe our worries in our Univeristy careers are inflated after all? Maybe when applying human development to a search for inspiration in our own lives, we need to accept the circumstances and keep trying to monopolize on the smallest oportunitites. Food for thought.