The One on One

Only one person has attended my last two conversation circles, so I have had to scramble a little bit to make them as productive as possible. Despite being disappointed that I could not converse with all my participants at the same time, I am glad that I have had the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with two of my participants. I learned more about these two in these sessions than I ever had before, and it felt as though they were more talkative than normal. I could ask them both specific questions that bore personal answers.

A couple of examples come to mind:

When I had a one-on-one meeting with Ray, the conversation inevitably turned to her struggles with the Philosophy major, which has been the focus of many of our discussions. However, this time, I was able to ask her why she chose the major to begin with. Her reply surprised me. Apparently, after taking a particularly difficult Psychology class (her other major), she had had enough. She walked directly to the Philosophy department (seemingly at random) and asked how to sign up for a major. What a story! I admire Ray’s desire (courage?, recklessness?) to try something completely out of her comfort zone. I feel like I know her a lot better now. I also had the chance to meet with Ting. Together, we explored Hatcher, picking random floors to walk through. While a similar story did not come up, we did discuss our majors and she even planned to take a history class soon.

These two experiences have made me re-think the one-on-one conversation “line” (as opposed to a circle). Although it resembles an interview too closely, it also gives the facilitator the chance to really get to know his or her participants. Perhaps, future conversation circles would benefit from one-on-one meetings with each participant outside of the conversation circle itself.