One concept

One concept that we discussed on is what is self. The first post I wrote for this week, and the last paper I wrote, included about one's self. Throughout this course, I have learned that the way we are depends on how much we communicate with people. The book states that "The self arises in communication with others", which explains we develop a self in the process of communicating with others. I believe that this is very true, and didn't know this until I took this class. Also, this isn't all that it made me realize, the people you communicate with, eventually defines the kind of people you will become. Sometimes you hang out with people who has a certain type of idea about a particular thing, and when you communicate enough with them, their idea will become your idea. We all form ideas of our own, but sometimes it will overcome our own. It also defines the type of person you are, whether you're a good or bad person, generous, nice, mean, etc. Communication with others will define you as a person in general.

Favorite/ Least favorite

My favorite part of the class was the discussion part of the class because we get to express our opinions about what we think, what we learned and correlate how it relates to our lives and to the class, and also we get to write to other students about what we think about their posts. I like it when teachers use this type of teaching because it engages us as the students to interact with other students to get different opinions/ ideas from them. It is exactly what the book talks about with communicating with others, we get their ideas and opinions. The only thing I didn't like about the course was writing the papers. It seemed a little tedious for me. I think the topics wasn't as engaging to me, as the blog questions were in my opinion. I wished the topics were a little bit more different. Other than that, the class itself was a really good class. I really enjoyed this class and would recommend it to others.

What I have learned over the course

What I have learned over the course of this class is that communication is what helps us grow. Without communication, we won't know any better and we will have a tough time growing up. It is in our human nature to have needs of belonging and communication in order to make personal growth. The book had the example of the 2 girls who had minimal to no contact and communications who had minds of 6 months old. Writing the last paper made me realize that sometimes we take communication for granted because we don't realize how much it plays a role in our lives and how much it affects us if we never had communication. We learn a lot through communication with people. Sometimes we get different views that we would not have thought and that's only through communication. We use communication as source of knowledge to support our own personal growth. We use communication in multiple ways in order for us to become a fully developed human.

Diversity in Family Life

We have so much diversity in today's family life, before, it was just a man and a wife with kids but nowadays we have gay couples being married and they're having kids too. They either adopt or have someone be a surrogate mother to have their child. We also have single parent families and interracial families. The way the families lives their lives are different too, we are seeing a bigger increase in women working outside the home, not just in being a house wife taking care of the children and house. In some cases, we see the women working and the man working at home or not even working at all. Family life in today's society has changed completely from what it use to be back then. The views of the people have expanded from what we never would have thought before. People rush sometimes to get married and/ or have marital problems that they can't solve. The divorce rate is a lot higher in today's society than it was before. We are seeing more and more new views on marriage and family life, who knows what it'll be like in the future.

Marriage

The way we see marriage now is different from how it use to be before. Our views of marriage has changed throughout the years and it will continue to change. When most of us thinks of marriage, we think of two people being happily married, but nowadays, people make mistakes and think that they are happy with one another and ends up getting divorces. The divorce rate is much higher in today's society than it was before. Also, when people thinks of marriage back then, the man goes out and hunt while the women did house chores and took care of the kids, then it became the man went to work, working the factories while the women stayed home and cleaned and took care of the kids, it wasn't til recently that men and women had more equal roles in the work force. We are seeing women having careers outside of just taking care of the house and family. The women before, always tended to the men and the rest of the family but it is changing where men and women are having equal roles in the chores. Also, marriages today, we are seeing Gay couples in some states coming together and celebrating their lives together. The diversity of marriage has seen new light. There are also marriages of different races which we haven't seen before. It's hard to say what will happen with marriage next. We have seen so many different things in marriage. Maybe one day gay marriage will be accepted everywhere. Who knows, maybe sooner or later, aliens will come down from space and we'll start marrying them too. Marriage will continue to change with our times. We might not even eventually celebrate marriages anymore. We'll just wait to see in the future what will happen.

family

My definition of family is someone who is always there for you no matter what. My family consists of my parents and my sisters, not to mention the aunts and uncles too. But, my immediate family are the ones I can always count on. They have always loved me and accepted me unconditionally no matter how many times I have messed up. Family members always helps each other out whenever they need one another. Whether it's to talk to, or to pick them up, whatever they need, they can always count on. One form of relationship from the book that doesn't fit my definition is my relationship with my friends. Some of my friends have always been there for me and always helped me out in whatever time of need as I am for them. They are way more than my best friends, they are considered my brothers and sisters. I have so much love for them and always will be there for them if they ever need me.

Committed Romantic Relationships

When a couple becomes in a relationship, they feel a strong connection with each other that they don't feel with others. There's a passion that you get from the other person that you usually don't get from other people. You feel like you can and want to connect with the person. It's not a just a I-You relationship, it's a I-Thou relationship which is the strongest and best connection you can make. You have a romantic and sexual feeling for that person that you can't get with other people. In a healthy committed relationship, a couple shares everything with each other. They feel comfortable enough to share everything with each other. The couple shows the other the love and support one needs and are looking for. We are there for them no matter what. You invest a lot of time and effort in these relationships and they are the ones that pays off the best.

love/ commitment

There are times during friendships where people are have commitment or love, or maybe even both. An example of this would be some friendships that I've experienced. Some relationships with people I know, the people are just mainly acquaintances, we're mutual friends, but we have no commitment to each other whatsoever. I had a friend in the past, we were best friends but in the relationship, I was putting my all into it, but the other person wasn't. We use to hang out a lot, but that's really it. I tried to give it my all, but she didn't. Eventually I just gave up and just stopped talking to her. She tried talking to me about a year ago and tried to make amends, but to me, our friendship is more whatever. She is more of an acquaintance to me than a friend. We all go through stages like this with people. Your true friends will always stick by you no matter what. Even if they don't hang out with us as much as we use to, as long as they make an effort to talk to us once in a while and try to hang out, then you keep the relationship alive. In my older post, I mentioned my friend who became busy with work, school, her boyfriend, but she still makes an effort to hang out with me and try to catch up with me here and there. Not just her, but a lot of my other friends are also like that. We use to hang out but we have our own lives to live and we eventually grow apart but as long as the commitment is there, then the relationship will stay alive. If there isn't love in a relationship, whether it's love as in they mean a lot to you, or you love them (boyfriend/ girlfriend) there's no need to keep a relationship going. You need both love and commitment in order to have a strong healthy relationship. The example in the beginning I gave, I really liked the girl, but she didn't like me back. I eventually just said forget it because I knew that she didn't feel the same and that I was tired of her not even being fully committed to our friendship. If she was making an effort to be my friend then I wouldn't of just stopped talking to her.

online vs one on one relationships

It is very hard to try and grasp what a person is truly like from online vs in person. The way people communicate online is also different from in person. Sometimes when I'm online, I just leave my instant messenger on and not talk as much, but in person I communicate a lot more also. There are also perks of communication online, sometimes it is easier for people to communicate to people and get comfortable with them before they communicate face to face. Some people deceit people for whatever reasons. Some might be on how they look and goes all the way to extremes as pretending to be someone else. An example of this would be how some people take pictures of themselves online in certain angles, and posting them up. Not to sound shallow, but some people try to make themselves look skinnier, hide some features of their bodies, basically find the best angle for them so they look their "best". Another example of this would be people pretending to be someone else in order to talk to people. On Dateline NBC, Chris Hansen and his team pretended to be little boys/ girls to try and catch pedophiles. There are many people who lies online and in face to face also. It is easier to inaccurately perceive yourself online with fake pictures or photoshop. It is also very easy to lie to people in face to face communication also. People lie, but it's harder to lie about their looks or what they look like as much. Even when you think you might know someone, you might not truly know what they are all about. It is hard to say which is more likely to happen whether people deceit to people online more or face to face more. The scary part of online communication is that you might really don't know who they are, unless you met the person through a mutual friend, other than that, you have to be very careful with the people you communicate with online.

Waning Friendship

Waning friendship stood out to me because it has happened to me with one of my best friends. My friend Kristin and I have been best friends since high school. She has always been there for me and still is today. She being a little younger than I am, after I graduated high school, we didn't hang out as much. She has always been busy with work and school and when she finished high school, I saw her maybe every other month. But when she got a boyfriend, we started talking less and less. It's okay though because I understand how hectic her life is trying to manage working so hard to pay for her own expenses, going to school to get a better opportunity in life, and having a boyfriend at the same time. I'm not mad at her or despise her at all for not being there as much as before. We all have to realize that we all have our own lives and that we're growing up. Some people don't understand it like they say in the book and the relationship deteriorates, but if you have a good strong communication with somebody, then you will still be friends with that person no matter what. I still hang out with Kristin every now and then, we still invite each other to events or to go get some lunch to catch up. I actually just had a chance to hang out with her the other night when she asked me for a favor to pick her and her boyfriend up from the airport. I was more than happy to do it, even though she's not there as much and we don't talk like we use to, I know that she's always still there for me like I will always be there for her. Knowing that someone always will be there for you keeps your strong bond with the person and keeps the friendship alive.

friendship

One of my closest friend Harvey and I have been getting even closer lately. Our friendship has always been close, but after about a year and a half ago, we got even closer. We started hanging out more and more. We started out as just having a good time messing around, but then we started communicating more on a deeper level, we started sharing our feelings, etc. We are now very close especially lately that we've been hanging out even more, almost every day and he hangs out with my friends too now. Fortunate enough that we haven't hit some of the bad parts the book talks about like waning relationship. It's nice to look back and see how our friendship grew and is still continue growing. He has always been there for me and I have always been there for him. He is basically like my brother. I'm excited to see where our friendship will take us and how much more fun we will encounter throughout our lives.

forums

This site is very interesting, I didn't know that there was a site like this. It is a good site for people to talk to other people about their problems or to get advice. Sometimes, there are certain people you can talk to in your group of friends about some things, but not everyone can give you advise for every situation. It is nice to get a wider range of advise and have more of an open minded views from others. The book talks more of, general issues, while the forum talks about more personal situations for people to understand more. The book can teach you only so much, but you need people who can relate to a certain situation in order to figure out/ solve the problem or get better advice. We can learn a lot from other people and the trials and tribulations they've experienced before which we can use for our present or future problems. You can just go online and talk to everyone and not feel judged or not as much as you would if you were talking to your friends or family. 

Affirm and Assert Yourself

This topic is what I believe is what everyone should learn. You can't just let people talk to you like you're any less of a person. I've lived my life before just letting things go because of not wanting to get into an argument, but there is a difference between trying to avoid an argument and trying to assert yourself so that people don't walk all over you. Of course we can't always please everyone, you have to let people know your feelings and opinions also. We can't grow as communicators if we don't assert ourselves tell people what we're thinking. Assertion means in the book, is a matter of clearly and non-judgmentally stating what you feel, need, or want. I never realized before that not saying anything and just letting things be was a bad thing. But now after realizing this from people and learning it in class, it has taught me to become a better communicator. If you're communicating with someone and they're talking all over you, you have to assert yourself and let them know what you think. It is just a one way communication and it won't help people grow as a person and communicators.

Defensives

An example of me feeling disconfirmed or defensive was when I was at work. It was my first few days at work so everything was new to me. I was working at Safeway as a deli/ sandwich maker. I felt that I was going at a fairly reasonable speed when a customer came up and started complaining. There was already a long line and I'm still trying to learn how to make the different types of sandwiches. I started to explain my situation with him and he just gave me a scuff, a sigh, and rolled his eyes at me. I felt defensive about everything people were saying, fearful of messing up on my new job, I tried to defend myself from not just customers, but from workers. My boss explained to me that it's okay and to take my time. She also told me to not listen to them and that I'll pick it up very quick. It has eventually helped me out a lot that even with my new jobs, I don't worry about customers being rude about things. It taught me to just smile to them and explain to them. I have done all the defensive listening that are talked about in the book. There has been a situation where I have used each of defensive communication barriers when something happens. We all have and we can't avoid it. It is if we realize and try to avoid doing it that will make us into better communicators.

difficulty confirming with others

Sometimes it is hard to confirm with others especially if you don't trust someone. But when you have a personal relationship with someone, it's easier to accept their ideas and opinions. Of course there are moments where we both don't agree to the same thing, but we have to learn to at least listen and try to understand where they are coming from. I use to somewhat think closed minded where I thought I listened to someone but eventually as I grew up, I realized that I don't analyze what they say. I've met a few people in my life who has changed my life for the better. I now can say that I try to look from a 3rd person perspective and look at both my thoughts and the other persons thoughts and see where they are coming from. There are moments where I don't think from both sides especially if what they say just sounds ludicrous. This chapter helped me a little bit more on distinguishing between confirming with what people say and endorsing their ideas. I believe that sometimes especially with friends and family, you can't always agree with what they say because sometimes you need to help people open up their eyes and realize the bigger picture. You can try all you want to explain both sides but in the end, it's up to the person to accept the help or not. This is what helps grow and strengthen a relationship. The difference between confirming and endorsing ideas is that confirming is that you accept it, doesn't mean that you have to agree with the person and endorsing means that you accept it, and you're agreeing with the person. Both play a role in communication with people. Sometimes you confirm and sometimes you endorse. Everyone has done this at some point, sometimes you accept the idea with someone and support them even though you don't believe it, but sometimes you accept it with them and support them. They are two totally different things that revolves around our relationship with people

Choose How to Express Emotions

Choosing how to express your emotions is a good thing. We need to vent ourselves from time to time. If you like someone, it's sometimes better if you let them know how you feel. Who knows, maybe they'll like you back. You'll never know until you let it out, remember, the other person isn't a mind reader. We communicate better and reach a better understanding of a person if we express our feelings to them. Of course there are times where some of us don't like to express our emotions for fear of being rejected, put down, or just want to keep private. Communicating about your feelings could help because you get different people to help you out for whatever feelings you're encountering. If you're feeling really angry, the book suggest that you should wait before you express your feelings because communication is irreversible. Sometimes, people say things they don't mean when they're angry. I also suggest that too. If you're feeling angry, let out your emotions in a way that you don't do harm to anyone or yourself. Look for people who can relate to the subject you want to talk about. I find myself talking to certain people about a certain subject and someone else for another subject, sometimes someone can understand how you might feel in multiple ways, but it's also good to get other points of views. Expressing your feelings might be difficult in person and they might do it online, while some others express it better face to face than online. Expressing your emotions takes part confidence, comfort, a person to listen to and understand. Sometimes people keep it to themselves, that's fine also, they might just need another way of expressing their feelings, like I said previously, do something so that you can get it out somehow whether it be drawing, working on a project, work, etc. There are many ways to express your emotions and you should take advantage of it.

Fallacy

The fallacies in the end of the section are Perfectionism, Obsession with shoulds, Over-generalization, Taking responsibility for others, Helplessness, Fear of catastrophic failure. Perfectionism would make a person never feel satisfied because no one can be perfect but one will always strive to be anywhere close to it. One would feel dissatisfied at ones self and jealousy towards others. We all try to be the perfect looking, speak perfectly, etc, which if we worry too much over. Obsession with shoulds makes a person living in the past in a way, because they're always so worried/ thinking of what they SHOULD have done, they don't think about the present or future. Their standards are always unrealistic which will always lead up to future failure. There are moments where we think, I should have done my homework before I go out, or I should have gone to the fair instead of stay home. Eventually it will make us think too much into things. Over-generalization makes one think too much into it which makes the person miss some important bits and pieces of it. Lets face it, we've all had that happen to us where we think too much into things. Taking responsibility for others will never let the person who made the mistake learn from it and makes the person who took the blame really think they are truly responsible for whatever actions they made. I'm not sure how many of us really do that, an example of this might be where you're in a argument and you just want to end it, you take the blame and say you're wrong. Helplessness makes someone depressed overtime because they think that things will never get better. They have no hope that things will better or that their feelings will change. It has happened to all of us at one point. We've all felt this before, eventually one will get over the feeling at their own pace. Fear of catastrophic failure makes someone never put themselves up for a task because they will be scared to mess up and think of the extreme negative things that can happen. All of these fallacies comes up in intrapersonal communication. We face them with others, with ourselves, and see others face it. These are what holds most of us back, whether it's one of them or a few of them. We just need to learn to work with ourselves and others to get over this. We can't let these take over our lives because it won't lead to good communication skills which everyone should have.

Different Perspectives On Emotions

Out of all the perspectives of emotions, the one that caught my attention and really made sense to me would be the Social Influences on Emotions. We determine our emotions by the way we were taught and by the people around us. We all have different ways of showing or not showing emotions. In the text, the example they use are how many Irish Americans holds wakes when someone passes away while being joyous and festive, but at the same time Jewish people practices sitting Shiva, where no one talks because it means to them of disrespect and inappropriateness. This one stands out to me and I understand it the most because I feel that in my culture, we're not suppose to act/ show emotions in the open. We're suppose to be modest, kind, thoughtful, and be respectful. If we're bad, our parents would punish and yell at us in order to set us straight. The book states that how Western cultures places emphasis on feeling pride in their personal accomplishments reinforces the values, while in non- Western cultures teaches people to regard accomplishments as communal, not individual. I've always felt that the emotions and the way I act wasn't exactly the same as everyone else. I didn't really know exactly what it was til I read that section and it made sense to me a lot more. It made me think of how much it really affects us to have the kind of people you're always around influence you on not just your emotions, but the way you act, the way you think, and the way you're going to influence everyone else around you.

Message Overload

Message overload is when there is so much information that's given to you in a amount of time that it's difficult to process and remember all of it. It is especially difficult for students because when we go to school, we have so many classes and in the short amount of time, we're expected to remember and comprehend all the information. There are so many other things that we have to do also. When we're at work, sometimes new information comes very fast and you're suppose to know it. We also have a social/ personal life that we still have to go home to. The human mind is a very complex, but it can be overwhelmed. We cannot process all the information either fast enough or maybe even at all. If we are overwhelmed from all the information to us, it causes us problems because we're trying to remember all the past information that we miss the information still being given to us. Our world is a very fast paced in today's day and age, it makes us more efficient. It is natural for us to be overloaded because we are still human, not machines and we cannot process all the information fast enough sometimes. We just need to practice and try harder.

10 part skill in listening

So the article that was presented to us was about the 10 parts of listening to become an effective listener. The article talks about how the different parts that we usually tend to do when we're listening and how we should change it. The 10 parts of listening is finding an are of interest in the article, judge content not delivery, hold your fire, listen for ideas, be flexible, work at listening, resist distractions, exercise your mind, keep your mind open, capitalize on thought speed. Each one of these might seem easy to do, but it is what we're constantly not doing, or not doing enough. It gives good examples of what we're doing wrong, and the correct way of fixing the problem. The article made me think that I do some of these things. There are many distractions that can be found in listening, but it is up to each person to try and fight the temptations so that we can fully comprehend the material being given. It is a good lesson for us to take with us because we all have a problem with listening in one or more form of what the author states.

6 Types of Non-Listening

The six different types of non-listening is pseudolistening which is pretending to listen to somebody, monopolizing when you're dominant over the conversation and not listening to the person who's speaking, selective listening when you only listen to certain parts of a conversation and ignoring all else, defensive listening when you take all comments and think that you're being attacked, ambushing when you listen closely to find something to pick at so that you can attack the speaker with, and literal listening which is listening for literal parts but ignoring the personal communication that the speaker is trying to give. I believe that everyone has these in common in their communication. We aren't perfect, depending on the situation, we've all done this at some point in our life. It's inevitable that we avoid any of these 6 types of non-listening. I think the one that I use the most would be pseudolistening because I have a bad habit of pretending to listen when I'm extremely tired, lost in conversation, or the conversation is boring (I need to stop that). Getting more rest, or pausing somebody and asking them what they're talking about, and try to engage myself more in the conversation would be the ways of stopping, or not do it as much.

American Society

The metaphor about America being a melting pot, actually meant something else to me from my previous course. I thought of it as that we recognize that the United States is land of the many different cultures. Just like a melting pot, we're throwing everything many different ingredients or as in this case, cultures, into the pot, and recognizing them. I've learned to not strip them of their culture, but to embrace it. The metaphor I would suggest would be, to just leave it. From what I learned in my other class, I've learned that America is a free land that has numerous cultures living here. We are recognizing that we have different cultures living with us, and that we're trying to embrace everyone's different culture. What happens in a melting pot anyways, when everything mixes, we eat it and enjoy the different flavors that got blended together while still enjoying the original flavors that was in it. We aren't necessarily wiping out the cultures, we're just mixing it together. I guess some would see that we're wiping them out because we're trying to have them assimilate to our culture. In a way, it's true, but they still retain their own sense of beliefs while learning and recognizing our beliefs and views. I mean, we are living in America, they do need to learn the language and culture, it is almost impossible for them to come here and retain their lifestyle. They're going to need to learn English and some of the our customs in order for us to understand them. Going back to the question, the reason why I think that we don't need to change the metaphor is that we're still retaining our own customs. We're not all becoming "American", people choose to keep their traditions and cultures or they choose to change.

Introductory Posts

Hi everyone, My name is Eric. This is my introductory posts. I'm looking forward to be reading my fellow bloggers on this site!