1. Focused Interview Guide and Paper
Millie Bergey
13 Dec 2020
Introduction
Emily Rogers is a great friend of mine. She is a junior at UGA studying Landscape
Architecture. She is from Augusta, GA and is twenty-two years old. Her parents are married and
still live in Augusta, GA. Emily has two older brothers, Parker (age 33) who is a pediatrician and
Thomas (age 32) who is a product manager for a company out of Winston Salem. She is dating a
guy named Jackson who recently graduated from UGA with a degree in Entertainment and
Media Studies. I mention Jackson because he is a big part of Emily’s life and their relationship
defies gender roles in a lot of ways.
While I have a handful of older mentors in my life who I could have interviewed, I chose
to interview Emily because of the extreme amount of experience she has at such a young age.
Emily is well-traveled, has experienced different cultures in ways most have not, and has
experienced the normativity of gender roles in the workplace.
I did not have to ask Emily a lot of introductory questions because we have already been
friends for a few years. However, I have included a few facts I feel are necessary to understand
who Emily is as a woman. Emily graduated high school in 2017 and decided to take a gap year
before starting college. She spent three months in Wyoming with a program called NOLS
(National Outdoor Leadership Schools) which is a wilderness medicine and outdoor leadership
training school. NOLS is the leader in wilderness medicine around the world. After NOLS,
Emily spent one month doing EMT training, a month canyoneering and backpacking through the
Grand Staircase Escalante and a month in Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas, running and rock
2. climbing. Following her time in Nevada, she spent two weeks in the Wind River Range in the
Absaroka Mountains in Wyoming. Emily came home for Christmas and then moved to Montana
to work on a ski resort, Big Sky, all spring. She decided to do this because she had never been to
Montana, she hates the cold and she wanted a challenge. The following fall, Emily began
studying Landscape Architecture at UGA. Emily’s time at the ski resort and the work she is
involved in with the Landscape Architecture department have been two places where she has
been treated differently due to her gender.
Emily from an Intersectional and Contextual Perspective
Emily is a white woman who grew up in a middle-upper class family. She is a
heterosexual, able-bodied female who is twenty-two years old. Emily’s social categories (gender,
sexuality, race, class and disability) have largely contributed to privilege throughout her life as
she is not in the minority in any category. Emily’s social categories have influenced one another
to create experiences unique and specific to herself.
Due to Emily’s parents’ income, among other things, her oldest brother, Parker, was able
to play travel soccer growing up. Since Emily is several years younger than her brothers, Emily’s
parents used to drop her off at her grandparents’ house for the weekends Parker had soccer
tournaments. Emily’s grandfather was a woodworker and her grandmother was an artist. During
our interview, Emily shared the impact this time has had on her development. She stated, “being
in their shadows gave me the time to be creative. I would go on walks with my grandmother and
look for certain plants and artifacts. My grandfather would show me how to make bowls and cut
all different kinds of pieces of wood. Years down the road, I’ve been able to look back on this
time. Honestly, I largely credit my appreciation for art and passion for the outdoors to time I
spent at with my grandparents when I was younger”. These experiences have contributed to the
3. passions instilled in Emily which have led to her undergraduate major and involvement in the
stream community.
Emily’s dad is a financial advisor and works with an organization called Rotery. Her
father’s job has allowed them to travel around the world to attend different conferences. Emily
had a Swedish foreign exchange student living with her family through Rotery when she was in
elementary school. In all of the countries Emily has visited, she has experienced culture first-
hand by getting to stay with people her parents know through Rotery. The reason I mention all of
these experiences is to emphasize the ways Emily’s privilege has contributed to the way she has
developed as an individual and in her social context. She was born with an advantage over a lot
of other people and the range of privilege has increased throughout her life due to experiences
she has been able to have.
Literature and Theoretical Perspectives
In class, we learned women in heterosexual relationships report a higher value of
intimacy than their partners. Emily and Jackson’s relationship actually seems to be flipped.
Jackson has a higher desire for intimacy than Emily which has been a point of conversation
throughout their relationship. Emily believes her “short-comings” in this area stem largely from
the way she grew up so independently and around brothers and family members much older than
herself. Emily shared the implications her independence has had on relationships, “any
relationship I have ever been in is the exact opposite of the norm. I have been the ‘heartless’,
‘insensitive’ human being which is painful because I end up hurting the ones I love the most. I
have had to relearn ways of caring for people and have grown to value intimacy more”.
During her time at Big Sky, Emily was one of about three women who worked in a
department of one-hundred men. In the Landscape Architecture department at UGA, Emily has
4. found herself in a very similar position. Emily shared the difficulties of working with almost all
men. Reflecting on her time at the ski resort, Emily explained she was seen as a ‘newbie’ who
could be pushed around. She was cat-called and groped several times. Once, she had an
encounter with a guy who was trying to use her to cheat on his girlfriend. To wrap up this story,
Emily explained, “despite the negative impacts of being a girl in that environment, I learned a
lot. As I got to know my co-workers, respect grew and for the most part, everyone I worked with
had my back and would look out for me. It just stinks that things like this are not a matter of ‘if’
but ‘when’. I worry about my nieces growing up and want to protect them. It just sucks because
things like this are so normal”. As we transitioned to discuss her time at UGA, Emily shared
about her involvement with other organizations due to her major. Emily is a stream enhancement
designer. This means she analyzes the threats to stream channels specific to concerns for trout
habitats. This also means Emily works with a lot of older men and her gender is the minority
here as well. I asked Emily if she has experienced being paid less than men. She explained, “a lot
of times, I have been volunteered to be in a position that I wasn’t aware of and one of my
professors has taken all of the punches for me. People ask me to do things without mentioning
compensation. If it weren’t for my professor defending me, I would not have known I was doing
something for free that was worth compensation. I am thankful for the position I am in, but know
so many women around the world are being taken advantage of in the workplace…Also, in this
type of work, women are very uninvolved and there is a huge push towards diversity. Even
though there are probably way more qualified guys, I have been given the opportunity to work in
as a steam enhancement designer simply because I am a girl”. (Emily is also just really talented
at what she does!) This part of the interview reminded me of the wage gap discussed in class.
5. Emily and I are both frustrated by how obvious it is that women are being treated unfairly in the
workplace and that steps towards equality seem to be so trivial.
Takeaways
Throughout the process of this assignment, I have been able to reflect on all this class has
taught me. I have grown in awareness of the privilege I have due to my intersectionality. It has
been interesting to learn more about Emily through the application of course material. Specific to
relational intimacy, Emily and I have talked before about the ways our independent upbringings
have contributed to pushing away intimacy while men we date actually seem to value it more.
Emily and I have learned a lot from each other over the last few years and this interview was
simply a continuation of that. Additionally, as our interview progressed, I was able to apply
Emily’s experiences directly to studies and findings from the course. I am now more aware of
gender normativity in a wide range of lives of women—from social media activists to one of my
best friends.
Interview Questions
I did not have to ask many questions to get to know Emily. These questions were asked with
prior knowledge but have been clarified in order for the reader to understand.
1. What were the main things that influenced you as you grew up? As the only girl and the
youngest of three, what things did your parents and older brothers do that influenced you
over the years?
2. Did you say your family does an annual trip? Can you tell me a little about it and how it
came to be?
3. What work does your dad do? How has that influenced your development?
4. What is NOLS? How did you hear about it?
6. 5. Were your co-workers mostly guys? Did you have experiences where you were treated
differently from men?
6. I feel like you and Jackson are the opposite of the norm in a lot of ways. In class I learned
that women in heterosexual relationships value emotional intimacy more than their
partner and many said that their partners had fewer skills in this area. Can you speak to
this as it relates to your relationship with Jackson?
7. What ways have you seen women and men treated differently in the workplace? Have
you ever experienced being paid less than men?
7. Focused Interview Guide and Paper
Here, interrupting Emily’s adventures,
is a picture of our interview!
