I interviewed a resident assistant named Sahil Kumar. Sahil is a senior here at The City College of New York and is a very friendly and joyous person to be around. I decided that he would be the ideal person to interview due to conversations that we have had in the past where I learned that he been a resident assistant prior to this semester. This made me think of him as a bit of an expert because he has a few years experience when it comes to interacting and helping students that are away from home.

This interview had a very informal setting since it was something that had to be done quickly. The resident assistant that I interviewed named Sahil as well as myself were quite busy. We decided to meet up since we had a little bit of free time within our schedules. This interview took place in the sixth floor lounge inside of The Towers at CCNY. We were located right in front of a set of elevators with multiple dorm rooms surrounding us. This caused us both to fidget a bit just because we wanted make sure that we could hear each other clearly but also just because of curiosity in our environment. Sahil was dressed professionally in a button up dress shirt and dress pants. Although, I’m sure it’s because he was either on his way back from or on his way to an important event. We both greeted each other and he asked me, “how’s your semester going so far?” before we actually got into the interview. Anytime I have spoken to him he usually checks in and asks how I’m doing. This made me feel really comfortable with him and respect him as a person within the short time that I have known him. I explained to him the logistics of my assignment and what I was trying to get out of it. He didn’t seem to be expect me to explain this to him but it was important on my part just because he was volunteering his time to help me.

Once the interview began I started the recording and people were passing by or getting on and off of the elevator. This caused there to be a lot of background noise in the recording and for the duration of the interview. This interview lasted a little over four minutes with a series of about seven questions throughout regarding the social life on campus. I started off with an opinionated question just to see where he stands on the importance of students having an active social life on campus. My question stated, “Do you think that an active social life is crucial to the lives of students?” He responded by saying, “Absolutely, I think an active social life is crucial to the lives of all student because it promotes them to grow in other areas and helps them to become more involved academically and in other areas as well. But aside from that it also just develops real skills; social skills, things they’re gonna need in the real world. So, to go along with that, CCNY I feel especially needs that because CCNY can sometimes be considered a commuter school sometimes. So, for myself, working in the school dormitory it’s really important for me to promote that social aspect and social life so that people can get more out of college and use those skills when they graduate.” I thought this was really interesting because I shared a similar view even though I am definitely not very active on campus. When I asked, ‘how do you think student life has changed in the past few years at CCNY?” he responded with an answer that highlighted the change in a very positive light. He said, “ So, I’ve been here for four years now and I can say that it’s definitely changed a lot. From my first year it kind of felt very forced, like everyone should just do it. But, now it feels very relaxed; like it’s an option and it makes me feel more willing to be involved.” I asked about a general wonderment that I had by saying, “I’ve actually heard that maybe three years ago that clubs were more active on campus.” His response to this was, “To some extent yes but I’d also have to say that some clubs are more active now because I do remember that in the past we had a lot of budgeting issues and a lot of funding issues. I don’t see that as much this semester and a lot of clubs are even finding their own ways to provide their own budgeting at this point because we wanna get involved and we wanna give back to people.” When it comes to the way that the social life has changed I agree with his statement that it really does feel like an option. However, in a sense it feels like so much of an option that it seems as if it is not as important.

Throughout this interview Sahil really helped to inform me on things about the social life on campus that I was not aware of. As a first year student I can only speak about what I have seen in the few months that I have been here but he has been here for four years. As he described the changes in social life he states that some of the changes in social life “could have happened due to the change in political parties. This encouraged students to speak up and want to actually do something to make a change.” He was very genuine and did not hold back on the way that he felt when addressing my questions. This made me as the interviewer feel accomplished because the interview was fulfilling and rich with information about the subculture I was looking into.