What did I learn over the course of the semester?

This semester I think the things I learned all were very relative to the course, and some of the readings, but for the most part it all is attributed to self learnings. For the most part, I really feel that I have come to terms with confrontation. Most of my life I turned my cheek when it came to confrontation, because I didnt like the animosity that came from it. With that, I also didnt like how confrontation triggers anger for those who dont know how to have a productive confrontation. I think that the number one most important learning from this course was the S-TLC system, more importantly the stopping and taking a time out. Too many times when engaging in a conflict, my temper and irrational thoughts would come out. I wouldnt give myself a chance to just think about things. I feel that taking a time-out is the most important thing for people to do when having some sort of conflict, because you really need to think about what is going on and thoughts need to be gathered. I feel that with that my relationship with my mother has become so much better. And in turn with that S-TLC has been good for me, because I have been able to relay this and help my mom as well. I really think this course can be helpful for many people and I would actually make this course a basic requirement for all Comm majors, because it really can change your life with the learnings.

Likes and Dislikes of this class

What I liked most about the class, is how we are in a sense forced to communicate with each other even though its online. I like to almost draw a picture in my head of who is who as the semester goes and I think its really cool, that through a blog we can see each others growth. I think that having this class is very convenient and I like the fact that its consistent and we know what to expect each week. The last thing I really liked about this course is how Carol, was very quick to respond to each and every one of our questions, she was very reliable and thats good to have in an online class. As far as dislikes in the course, there was only really one thing, I wish that the group could meet at least one time during the semester, just so we can put names to face. But besides that, I felt this was a really good course and I enjoyed working with Carol once again.

Ch.16 #1

I think that people feel negative about conflict, because most people are scared to confront their problems with other people, and confrontation scares people. Most people like to run away from problems just to avoid a conflict. I think that for sure the more people know about conflict they fear it less, and I say that because your more familiar with how people work. And conflict styles become more apparent. You learn strategies that allow to you face these problems comfortably and I really feel that with anything, the more you know the more confident you are about them. People fear conflict because it can be argued they have no knowledge of how to deal with it. Personally i've seen change it people with knowledge of conflict. And nothing but good things come from it, because your able to feel comfortable with approaching people of what may be of a concern to you.

Ch.12 #3

The concept I wanted to talk about from the chapter, is blaming. I really feel that blaming is such a huge part of conflict, and more so in a negative light. I think that people tend to shed blame on others and it leads to confrontation. As is says in the book, blaming is, "saying someone is at fault", now I really feel that people tend to blame other in a instant, to possibly relieve what is going on with them, and make them feel better. For more cases there is no justification for a blame, and its more so just a thought or assumption. I want to talk about the time, that I basically threw away a football game single handedly by myself, when playing in high school, I fumble 6 times, and ran for only about 25 yards, keep in mind, in my 3 previous years of high school football, I only fumbled three times, and averaged about 95 yards rushing per game. I went into the locker room at half time and was basically blaming my offensive line for not blocking and other players for not doing their job. This was in hopes to make me feel better about the terrible game I was playing, and essentially I used it as a pick me up, and it never helped. I really felt bad about this and took my teammates out for dinner, and publicly apologized to them. That was me over using blame.

Ch.10 #1

The sites I found for these words, first and foremost was wikipedia. As for forgiveness and reconciliation, both results produced bible sites, basically talking about what the word means to the uses of basically finding positive results. Revenge pretty much, all came up with tv show information stuff. I think that the term reconciliation and forgiveness produced more results, because they are in a positive light, what I mean by that is that people want to talk about the good part of confrontation which is the end result, revenge on the other hand is a dark light that society doesnt want to be seen or heard, I noticed in my search at the bottom a suggested result was revenge ideas. I found this to be really interesting because it shows that thoughts of revenge is shared and people look at those things. I found all of these searches to very interesting, and weird all at the same time.

Ch.12 #2

The one time I recall making in a sense a "false attribution" was with my ex girlfriend, and basically she was inplating lies in my head. She was making me believe that my friends were talking about me behind my back, and trying to turn me against them in her favor. It was a very bad situation because I chose to believe her and basically I came to them in the wrong was and pretty much called them out on it. I was so blind to what I was hearing that I missed the truth. It lead to a pretty big fall out between me and a few of my closest friends, and later make me really question myself and the people around me. I should have went to them first to clean up any confusion that I had, but I didnt. Later on though we sat and talked about it to relieve the problem and now things are back to normal, it for sure was a learning experience. There have been times where I have made accurate attributions about some people and it helped me in many ways because it allowed for me to distance myself from fake people. But with that said its a risk some times that you have to take, because it can go negative or in a positive way.

Ch.9 #3

The one concept that I wanted to talk about was apologies. The thought behind the term itself I feel is really thrown around without worth. I feel that people make apologies to maybe get over the hump of one thing or another. But after reading this chapter it allowed me to understand the importance of the term and how it can and should be used. The one thing that really gravitated towards me, was in the book where it states, "....as the actor's responsibility for the offense increases." And what this does is basically tells me how the person that causes the this problem, really realizes that they are in the wrong and need to take steps to fix that problem. In one instance I remember at time where I made my mother really upset and I didnt really realize the severity of what I was causing. After evaluating what was happening and seeing what I was causing and being that offender I took the time to actually propose a sincere apology to my mother, and I think that the importance or that apology was me being able to tell my mother exactly what I did wrong, so that she knew I was serious.