Personal Communication Reflection

1. My feelings about Interpersonal Communication has changed drastically over the course of this semester at the beginning of this semester I thought that “interpersonal communication is people exchanging information, weather it is just by body language, a text message, a group chat, and even just emojis being sent back and forth.” Throughout the course of this semester I have learned and become more aware of how interpersonal communication actually does influence us every second of everyday. I never use to feel this way, but after being in this class I realized it is. Interpersonal communication is online, in person, long distance, and so much more.

Intro. Something as simple as communicating can be both a positive and negative thing. Understanding the impact of individual differences across various situations such as explaining the extent of others when they use humor to interact with other people, or how our emotions come into play with other people and Communication traits enable us to be more accurate in out predictions on how others will send and receive messages. With the communication trait questionnaire it helped me learn more about communication behaviors and understand the impact of individual differences across various contexts such as the humor orientation, affective orientation, and argumentative orientation and how I ranked.

During class I learned there are certain steps to take to solve a conflict and I had tried using them with my friend and they worked perfectly. Even though I was thinking about them and it didn’t come nature with time it will eventually become natural. Some of the steps were to simply just breath. Breathing before I gave feedback made me have a few extra seconds to process what was going on. Another step was to avoid using personal attacks, name calling and emotional overstatement. Now whith that step I thought I never did this but after analyzing myself I had learned a new thing about myself that if I felt as if I was under attack I would lash out and find anything personal that I could potentially use against them to hurt how they felt I would. With arguments with family members it seemed to be the only way to have them stop

On Monday 23 May 2016, at approximately 1339hrs, I 6246 Leading Rate Joseph S was in my office at the Welfare/Housing department located at #31 St. Vincent Street Port of Spain. Present in the office at the time was Sgt Cassie R and L/Cpl Neptune. Whilst performing my daily duties in the office, I was about to use the telefax machine to make a copy of a document which is not an unusual function carried out by the members of the office. As I was about to do so, I was stopped by Sgt Cassie who said “yuh can’t copy nuttin they.” Being a bit confused about his uttered word I asked the question “why Sgt Cassie.” He then replied in a loud tone “don’t make no fucking copy LR.” I responded to the Sgt by saying “I am a grown woman bordering Petty

Since the start of this class, I have been reminded again and again that the concepts we are learning can be applied to everyday life. For instance, when we talked about non-verbal communication, I realized that it is impossible to not communicate. There are many activities, other than the use of language, that allow us to draw meaning from something we observe. When my mother widens her eyes at me without stating a word, I understand she is telling me to think twice about the action I’m about to take. It has been great to be able to assign concepts and vocabulary to interpersonal relationships and communication activity that I have been experiencing. Now let me introduce you to my friend Izzy and her boyfriend Ken as I analyze the

that we explore why she’s been feeling down lately together. Mary then said, “Talk about what?” I then stated, “Why have you been feeling down lately?” Mary then stated, “No I don’t want to talk about that?” Using mirroring I then stated, “You don’t want to talk about why you feel down?” Mary then stated “No I don’t”. What occurred here can be described as a disconnection. Whether it be my working or something that happened with Mary prior to me coming in or Mary was just not having a good day, I was not able to connect her in conversation and she disengaged. Again in a non- judgmental tone I repeated what Mary stated so that she knew I had heard her, I was not dismissing her feelings. Mary from the beginning was very agitated so I knew that I probably would get much dialogue from her, maybe it was the nature of our discussion because I was asking her

Communication is something that all beings use, whether it be animals or humans. It is “the process by which we use signs, symbols, and behaviors to exchange information and create meaning” (Floyd, 2011). Communication styles vary by different people, but it can be summed up the way we interact with others and how one is perceived and how we perceive ourselves. Communication apprehension is the level of fear that a person has of speaking. To test this, the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension was used to measure my level of apprehension. Throughout this assessment, I will self-reflect on my strengths and areas I can use improvement on.

others on a much deeper level because I grew up being taught to acknowledge others

Today I worked with Level C again. During my last class, I found out that each week the lessons focus on different topics. This week’s topic is communication. For this lesson the teacher decided on phone calls for different purposes such as booking appointments, inviting someone, accepting or declining invitations, etc. as well as the non-interactive aspect of modern communication like leaving a voicemail. She wanted to do a simulation exercise. As usual, she started with giving them some vocabulary words. The students were then divided into pairs and given some handouts with instructions. There were six pairs. Each pair was to create phone conversations based on the situations listed in the handouts. They would later be called in front of the class where the teacher would pick a situation from the list and they had to act it out. To demonstrate what we wanted them to do, the teacher and I did one of the exercises. We sat with our backs to each other and acted out a phone conversation. Then we moved around the class helping the students understand the background that was given for each situation and to find the right words that they wanted to use. We corrected their grammar and pronunciation along the way. We let the students perform the first few exercises sitting in their own seats to make them comfortable, but for the last six situations, they came in front of the class to perform. They found it very funny when I made the ringing sound for the first pair, but then they

1. I overheard a conversation between a couple, a boy and a girl who I assume are both freshmen. They had gone to highschool together and both came to Syracuse University, they’ve been together for about 2 years - I know this because I was with my friend while this was happening and she peripherally knew the girl in the relationship. In their conversation, the girlfriend complained about how they never see each other anymore, it’s even less than they saw each other in high school even though now they don’t have limitations like curfews and strict school/extracurricular activities to work around. He answered by saying he is very busy with classes and new clubs and it’s hard to find time to spend together. She retorted with the fact that he’s managed to find plenty of time to spend with his new friends, and that their bond should be a stress reliever, not adding more stress to their workloads and the new college environment. I believe that they were really talking about how college has already changed both of them - she clearly wants to continue the relationship and hold on to what they had in high school, whereas he is taking on this whole new world and discovering that there is a life outside of the confines of his hometown. I think that he wants to break up with her, and that’s why he’s only making excuses and defending himself, rather than working to find a solution to the problem. He’s just allowing the distance between him and his girlfriend to run its course until they

According to the Thomas-Kilmann quiz in our iBook I scored highest in the following areas: compromising, collaboration, and accommodations. Whereas my lowest, and nearly nonexistent areas are competing and avoiding. As a speech/theatre major, the topic of conflict resolution isn’t new to me. I’ve done many reflection papers just like this one and have taken many similar quizzes. For the most part I would agree with the results they’re very similar to most of the quizzes like these I have taken, including this one. In life I believe everything is about wearing different hats. Depending on the company and setting depends on the hat you wear. For instance, how you act around your friends and how you act at work isn’t the same. At work, you wear your professional hat, or at least I would hope so. Same goes for conflict resolution.

I really enjoyed the reading for this class, the book was full of great insight into how we ourselves communicate with others. The chapter that had the greatest influence on me was chapter two. In chapter two, we discussed social media, a mediated communication that many use today. I have always had a problem communicating with social media. I found it impossible to comment or respond to posts, feeling they were insignificant compared to face to face communications. Now I see that it is just a different way to talk with friends and family. As long as I remember that some may just speak their mind using disinhibition and others use idle conversations, all people are there to be involved with others, regardless of interaction types. For many people this is the only connection they have with friends and family, perhaps living far away from others or not owning a phone. With this new type of relational communication, I can talk with others about idle subjects or have in-depth discussions about life and the world around us. I am thankful I was part of this class and had an opportunity to read Looking Out, Looking In by Ronald B. Adler and Russell F. Proctor. This book had many insights into mine and others behaviors and what they could possibly mean. I am able to evaluate my own feelings and communications as well as my relationships. I can listen better and express my thoughts thanks to COM110 and I will recommend that everyone I know should either take this class or at least

The other day I had brunch with a friend and got the opportunity to meet one of his colleague from New York. United by our continued struggle for in realizing women’s rights, equality and justice we often get into the most heated conversations and this gathering was no different, in between talks of clinical trials, dapivirine vaginal rings, PReP, feminism, freedom etc. The conversation gravitated towards our lives, how we navigate spaces and how deeply embedded harassment and rape culture is in our society.

When I spoke with Sheena you immediately noticed that she has been involved in several years of college and work ethic. The outfit she picked out shows that business and professional work is what she is into. Her voice was mellow and smooth throughout the conversation and had thorough answers. Her word choice matched her age and personality. Through the whole conversation she was comfortable with answering the questions.

The following study investigates an area of my own personal communication behaviour. It is based on communicative events over the course of a single weekend day in which I usually spend studying until the afternoon, then take part in martial arts training. I have been studying towards my degree part time as well as working over the past five years which often leads to built up stress. The key aspect of my communication to be examined is that my de facto partner often comments about how grumpy I am a lot of the time. For the purposes of this study, grumpy will be defined as moody, silent and bad-tempered (Grumpy, 2001; Sulky, 2001). Through the process of conversational analysis (Saville-Troike, 2003) my aim was to discover whether there were any activities over the course of the day involving verbal and nonverbal communication that triggered my negative mood. My hypothesis in this case is that my current work-study stress results in less friendly conversations in everyday interactions with my partner that she perceives as my grumpiness.