Memories of the 1980s
When researching through oral history, a historian is able to derive a biased and personal opinion on how historical events occurred. Oral history is normally used to obtain insight on an individual’s personal take on a point in their history, but a historian can derive more information about the time period and people the individual interacted with from their oral history. By focusing on why someone would mention or not mention a specific part of the history can allow historians to learn more than just what the individual tells them. To obtain the information for my oral history research I had a conversation with one parent at a time, prompting them with topics like pop culture, politics, music and recording our conversation. By recording our conversations, I was able to capture everything my parents had to say about the time period without the possibility of leaving anything that may be important out. I also made sure I had a conversation with each parent separately in order to avoid one from influencing the other's memories of the 80s.