Chapter 16. Q3

3). What did you learn over the course of the semester? Please give extensive detail. 

I learned a huge amount over this past semester which I will take with me and apply to my own life. There are three main ideas that stood out to me which I will take, those are: a new view on conflict, how to approach a conflict, and the use of "I statements". I never learned so much about constructive conflict in my life like I did in this class. It has taught me that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing in life, but rather something that can bring about good change. I never viewed conflict as negatively as other did because of the way that I was brought up, but this class has changed how I view conflict with other, especially in my romantic relationship.

I am able to view conflict in this way by something I learned which really helped me. That is, how to confront conflict. I believe that this is one of my biggest struggles when starting this class, but it has now become one of my greatest lessons I learned. Before this class I would try to avoid conflict at all cost because I thought it was negative, but after seeing the positives and learning how to approach it I have become better at confronting the problem. Which in the end is a benefit to the relationship.

An important part of confronting conflict is being able to express how you feel directly. This is not meant to hurt someone else's feelings, but rather to get them to understand how you feel. This can be done through "I statements". This is where you express someone how you feel because of something that happened or they did, but instead of stating "You did...", you would say "I feel...when you..". This is taking responsibility for your feelings and not automatically putting the blame on someone else.

I enjoyed this class a lot and appreciated reading everyone's comments. Great job everyone on all of your hard work!

<3

Chapter 16. Q1

1). After reading Chapter 16 in its entirety, answer the following question: Why do you think people have such negative views of conflict?  Do you think that as people know more about conflict, they fear it less?   Why or why not?

I believe that people have such a negative view on conflict because they don't necessarily know how to handle it. Conflict management is not something that we are taught in school, like science or math, but rather something that we have to learn on our own how to do. I think that if people opened up their eyes to the positive things conflict can bring about and learn ways of how to work out conflict, they wouldn't see it in such a negative way. I also believe that people see it negative because that is how it is portrayed throughout media. If we all can take what we learned in this class and pass off the information to a few other people and they do the same then we can try to make a change a few people at a time. There was a lot of information that I learned in this class about conflict management that I had never learned before. We have to be able to change our minds to embrace conflict rather than fear it. 

Chapter 16. Q 2

2). Summarize what you liked most and what you liked least about this class.  In other words, what were the strengths and weaknesses of this class?  Would you recommend this class to other students?  Why or why not?

Over this past semester I have learned a lot about conflict which I didn't know before. I think that is what I liked best about this class was the amount of knowledge I got out of it. In a lot of classes we just learn the material to pass the class then it's relevance to our life is not a whole lot. The information that we learned in this class through readings and projects, is something that is already becoming a benefit to in my life. The information deals with real world problems and situations that can arise in your life. 

What I least liked about this class is that it is an online class. I feel like when dealing with such a heavy topic that has to do with emotions, it would have been better to be an on campus class. I would have learned a lot more and probably could have had practice working with what I learned with other students. 

In conclusion, the strengths of this class was the relevance it has on our lives. And the amount of information I gained by the book and big projects. The weakness is that it is an online class and could have been better in person. 

I would recommend this class to any student, but probably the in class over online. Unless you work better on your own pace, in class would probably be the way to go. Other than that I would recommend this class to anyone.

Chapter 10 Q1

1). Going back to Chapter 10, answer the following question:  Do an internet search using the terms forgiveness, reconciliation, and revenge.  What kids of sites do you find?  Which term produces more results?  Why do you think that is?

When I looked up the word forgiveness on google it brought me about 56,000,000 results. The results were all very broad as well ranging from videos to loan forgiveness. I thought that I might find a lot more results on how to forgive or lessons regarding that, but I was surprised to see what I found. There were quotes, lyrics, songs, etc. I was also surprised to find a lot of positive results on forgiveness. From the few pages that I looked through there were any negative results.

When looking up reconciliation I found 52,400,00 results. I am not surprised to find less results than forgiveness because I feel like a lot of people affiliate reconciliation with religion and not everyone has a faith or believes in this. I was not surprised to find mostly all results having to do with religion or churches. 

The last search I did was on revenge. This brought up about 264,000,000 results, which over powers both of the previous searches I did. I think that this topic had a lot more results because a) It had a show/tv tittled revenge and b) because people believe more in this than anything else. The first few search pages all had to do with the movie/tv show, but pages after that included actual revenge as we know it. 

Chapter 12, Q3

When I first started reading this chapter I was instantly attracted with the first theory that introduced, psychodymanic theory. This is a theory that says that "people experience conflict because of their interpersonal (internal, psychological, emotional, mental) states". These types of conflict are ones that can happen over overblown conflict where a situation receive more attention that it really needs. I was automatically attracted to this because I experience situations on a weekly basis with my boyfriend where we give situations more attention than it needs. We make big deals over things that actually don't really matter at all. I also might label these as misplaced conflict. This is where we argue about issues other than the ones at the heart of the conflict. I feel as if we give bigger attention to smaller situations because we are not actually identifying what is really wrong. For instance, I might get really mad at him because I feel like we don't spend that much time anymore, but instead of bringing that to his attention I will blow up over him leaving his dirty clothes on the floor. I will try to repress my feelings, which is a defense mechanism that occurs when we try not to think about our situations, and let it go but I wind up blowing up over the something non important or relevant. Leaving his clothes on the floor is something that is not a big deal to me, but because I am mad about something else that is bigger but don't want to tell him about it  I will blow up over something non important.

Chapter 12. Q2

According to the book attributions are, “an interference made about the causes of another’s behavior”. There are two kinds of attributions that can be made about another person’s behavior. The first is internal which is related to the other person’s personality and the second is external which is regarding that person’s circumstance. Internal attributions, for example, get on their personality which can usually lead to name calling. (She’s stuipid… Name calling: Idiot). External, on the other hand, is a way to avoid blame and avoid giving credit where credit is due. (You got that job because you graduated from a good high school)

False attributions are interferences made about another person which are not true. This can lead to many problems because you are beginning to call names or wrongly accuse someone they didn’t do anything wrong. There have been times where I have made false attributions about another person when I shouldn’t have. I feel like this happens a lot when my boyfriend and I are arguing. He will do something that bugs me and instead of thinking of all possible situations about why he could be doing that I immediately make an internal attribution about him like “he’s stupid”, “he’s lazy”, etc. This makes our arguments a lot worse than they already were because I really don’t know what the situation was or what was going on. This has caused me to not judge so quickly and step back to think about everything before doing so.

There have been times where I have made an accurate attribution that has actually helped me to be more aware of the situation I was in. I used to have this friend and at first I thought she was the greatest. We would spend every waking moment together and I would tell her all my secrets. I then started to notice some actions that she was making that didn’t seem right to me. From that point I started to hold back information from her and not spend too much time together. After doing that I came to find out that she was talking to my ex boyfriend behind my back. Because I made that attribution about her and the behaviors she was doing, I was able to watch my back for myself. 

Chapter 9. Q1

1). After reading Chapter 9 in its entirety, answer the following question:  If you are a member of a social networking website such as Facebook, think about the way you use it.  How do you present yourself?  What impressions do you hope people will get from reading your profile?  Have there been times people have posted something to your profile that you wished they hadn't?  How does this relate to conflict and communication? 

I joined Facebook about two years ago.. At first I really used it and was a frequent user. I would post everything I was doing, feelings, or thought about. That would be done through status updates, comments, and pictures. For a while I thought it was the "cool" thing to do then I stepped back and rally thought about what I was doing. I started to see other people do that as well and realized the negative effect I was thinking about them. I then thought about the effect that people may have gotten from me from what I posted and that was not acceptable for me. I wanted to create a positive face where people respect and liked what I was doing. I then started to think "what would a family member think if they saw this"? I want people to get the impression that I do like to have fun BUT that I have morals, I respect myself and others, and that I am a responsible person. From that point on I made a good amount of my profile private. Before pictures are posted onto my wall in which I was tagged in I have to approve it. I also stopped posting certain things so that I wouldn't get a negative response from people. I have had people post things I didn't approve of... I usually ask them to delete or delete it myself or untag myself from a post/picture. This is important because even though you may not see it as a big deal the impression you put online sometimes is the first impression you make upon people. Protecting the way you portray yourself is important for everyone.