Before COMM 310, when I thought about interviewing, I mostly thought about questions.
Prepare good questions. Ask them. Record the answers. Write the article.
It feels less simple now.
This week I interviewed Dr. Mélodie BOUEYA in her office at World Winner Academy in Brazzaville. The conversation lasted about 30 minutes. I had prepared several questions, but the parts I remember most were not always the answers I expected. It was not my first interview for this course — I noticed a similar pattern when I interviewed two people about AI in Moungali a few weeks ago.
One example was money.
We had been talking about her health, work, discipline and her path into business. Then the conversation moved into saving.
She said, in French, that people should not wait until they earn 1 million CFA francs before learning to save. Even with 100,000 CFA francs, she said, saving is possible, but it requires discipline.
I did not expect that line to stay with me.
It sounded almost separate from the rest of the interview at first.
Later, while writing, I realized that it connected with almost everything she had been saying. Her idea was not really about money. It was about not waiting for perfect conditions before starting.
That moment taught me something about interviews.
The answer I need may not arrive under the question where I expected to find it.
I also noticed that interviewing makes me less confident about assumptions, which is probably a good thing.
If I had written the article without speaking to her, I could have made a clean story about resilience, leadership and success. It would have sounded fine.
It also would have missed the person.
Now I understand better why listening matters as much as asking. A guide to interviewing basics I read this week made a similar point: staying quiet is sometimes the most useful thing an interviewer can do.
Sometimes I have to leave the next question alone for a few seconds and stay with what the person just said.
That still feels slightly uncomfortable to me because I like preparing things carefully.
But interviews are not PowerPoint slides. People do not always answer in the order I planned.
I am learning to accept that.
