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.

Chapter 10 Q 2

2). After reading Chapter 10 in its entirety, answer the following question:  Is there an event in your life that you find difficult to forgive?  What is it?  What makes it so difficult to forgive the other person?  If you are not experiencing a difficult event now, describe a past event that you have found difficult to forgive.

Forgiveness is something that has always been difficult for me to do. I tend to hold grudges for reasons that I can not explain. Right now in my life I have a lot of family problems going on. My grandfather did something unexplainable and inexcusable by all means. It is not something that I wish to share on this blog, but it is something that no person or family member should ever have to go through or experience. It is extremely difficult for me to forgive my grandfather because I can not wrap my head around why he would do something so terrible. It is something that happened so long ago which makes it even harder for me to understand as well. I have went on for so many years not knowing this, so now it is making me second guess my past. I don't know if I will ever be able to forgive what has happened but I am trying to move forward to do so. I know that it is always best to forgive because it will allow me to move on with my life, but it is going to take time to totally forgive. 

Chapter 7 question 1

1). After reading Chapter 7 in its entirety, answer the following question:  Look at your work and school commitments.  How might you apply each of the "three solutions" to improve how you feel about your job and school?

The three solutions:
1. The first solution is making a balance between work and play. Working is something that we do for another purpose but play is something that we do for ourselves. We have to realize that even though work can be very serious at times, that we still need to make some time for ourselves and do things that we really enjoy. APPLY: I feel as if though this solution can apply to both work and school! I feel as if a large amount of my time is either taken up for work or school. I feel like there is always SOMETHING I can be doing which will help either one of my commitments. I need to be able to plan my work, school, and homework accordingly so that I have an activity I can do for myself. This can include going for a run or doing an activity like spending quality time with my parents, that really makes me happy. 

2. The second solution is actually changing your mind set on what you do. Its not always about what you but the mind set that you have doing it. If you have a positive mind set then your whole experience, doing whatever it is, will be a good one. If your mindset is negative then you will hate every aspect of what you are doing. I believe this to absolutely true and something that I can really benefit from. APPLY: For work I believe that this mindset can really change how I am. Right now work is really crazy and especially with holiday coming up it is going to become even busier. I am loosing the mindset that I began work with, which was positive and really fun. I am starting to become really negative about it and it is totally changing all the customer experiences that I am having. If I change my mindset then I bet it will change my overall attitude of life. This also applies with school because sometimes when I get down about assignments it truly affects the quality of work that I do. Changing my mindset will make me become a better student all together. 

3. The third solution is realizing that joy and pain are integrated, meaning that they come together. It a lot of situations you are not able to find joy without pain. I have learned this lesson a lot in my life and believe it to be very true. APPLY: In work I can take the pain that I am going through with all the stress and realize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That there is a reward when I am doing whether it be the joy from customers that I help or acknowledgment from management. In school I need to realize that even though I am going through a lot of stress and work now my light at the end of the tunnel is graduation and getting a job in the position of my dreams. 

Chapter 8 Q2

When it comes to expressing my anger toward or to other people, it depends on who I am talking to about how I express it. I am not a person that is very good at conflict at all so I don't think that I know how to control it very well. When it comes to people I don't know or my family I am very afraid to express my anger. Towards people I don't know I don't like to express my anger very much because I don't know how they are going to react towards it. I don't know if they are going to get more upset or not take me seriously. Around my family I don't like to express my anger because I don't like to disappoint them or be disrespectful. I will usually just hold it in and let the anger build up. On the other hand when it comes to being angry at my boyfriend, I blow up. I don't know why it is that he is the other person that I can blow up on when I am angry, but that's just the way it is. I am working on trying to express my anger in a calm way but it takes time to change. 

When I don't express my anger towards my family I feel like sometimes they just don't understand what is going on. I know that this is not beneficial for my feelings but I really really really don't like to disappoint them. When it comes to expressing my anger to my boyfriend that creates an even bigger issue. I don't necessarily get my point across when I blow up so it turns into something bigger than what it actually needs to be. Hopefully by learning all these skills in this class I can become a better communicator of my anger. 

Chapter 6 Q3

An idea in the chapter that I found really interesting is where they talk about the topic of competition. Competition is where people or parties are positioned against each other with the out come of a win or lose situation. Sometimes competition can be healthy and people are able to grow and be better because they are working against each other, but there are also times when people take it too seriously and create chaos and drama. Competition is usually seen on a win or lose basis meaning that at the end one person will have the upper hand against another. This can be in an argument, a sports game, or really anything as a matter of fact. Having competition where one person wins and one person loses can cause problems around the whole situation in general.
One example that I can think of where something like this occurred in my life is the arguments that I get into with my boyfriend. It's not like we are competing for anything, but when it comes to fighting there always has to be a winner and loser. I hate it because sometimes we are not even fighting about important, but it always comes back to fighting about something personal. Especially when we are out or around other people it just leads to an unpleasant environment to be around.

Chapter 6 Q2

          For a relationship to be successful I believe that there needs to be an equal amount of give and take. Both people in the relationship have to be able to realize that sometimes things can't always go your way and you will have to work and collaborate with each other for it work out. When either one of the people in the relationship feel like they are not getting the equal amount of give and take then thats when it becomes an unbalanced relationship. One person has more power over the other and controls or makes most of the decisions that happen. When you are in an unbalanced relationship you feel like very unappreciated and the other person is taking advantage of you. It will start to seem like what you want or how you feel is not valid enough for the other person to care about. Having more power over the relationship may feel good at first, but after a while of treating the other person not as an equal will cause the relationship to go down and you will feel like the difference.

          I believe that sometimes it does happen where there is an unbalance in a relationship, but the most important part of of creating a truly meaningful and successful relationship is being able to identify the unbalance and fix it before it is too late.

Chapter 6 Q1

        Trust is probably one of the most important things to me in any relationship that I have. No matter whether it is with friends, family, or my significant other, trust is needed for any relationship to be successful. If you are not able to put your trust in someone else then I don't think you have much of anything to rely on at all. You are always going to think the other person is doing wrong by you or not working with you but rather against you.  Of course there are times when people don't follow through with what you thought or what they said which makes you loose your trust in them.
         I have been through may situations where I lost trust in someone. One incident that I can remember is when my best friend started dated one of my ex boyfriends. If you are a girl you know that is a rule in which you don't break, well at least I thought every girl knew. I felt beyond betrayed because she never even cared to bring it up to me and ask me if I was ok with it. It wasn't until she seen that I was really upset did she actually want to talk about it.
        I did not talk to her for several months, but after going through a retreat where we confronted issues we had been dealing with I decided that it wasn't worth it for me to hold the grudge. It was coming down to the end of our senior year in high school and I didn't care anymore. I know that this is only a certain situation where I could ACTUALLY get over trust I had lost from someone, but I learned that you have to figure out situations that are worth it and others that are not.

Chapter 4: Q 2

Depending on outside factors depends on what I'm thinking about when someone is talking. I'm usually good at listening though when someone is talking to me. But if something big is going on in my life and I am stressing about it then thats usually what I am think about at all times. I can usually remember big ideas that people are trying to tell me or express to me but sometimes I dont remember exact detail. I appreciate when people listen to me so I like to be able to do that for other people.

Chapter 4: Q1

Me personally, I feel like I am on the fence about whether it is hard or not for me to start stop a conflict. I am the type of person who just likes to go along with things so that I don't disappoint people. Sometimes I have a completely different look on things, but I still will just not make my opinion a big deal. But on the other hand when I am really upset about something, I let it be known. I am known for holding grudges over something that can be so small. I feel like it depends on the person and the situation to know how I am going to react.
I feel like if I were to take a "time out"I would prefer to just separate for a certain period of time to let each other think about what was going on. Usually between that time you have been able to calm down and think logically about the situation at hand.

Week 4: Q3

I think that the idea of a mediator in the first place is a very interesting concept. I have heard of a mediator before in terms of working with conflict, but never did I think about it in the way that it is described in the book. I always seen it as someone who broke up conflict, which it is, but it happens to be way more than that. In the book it describes the role of a mediator in a much different view. When it is describing the role of the mediator they are not actually to resolve the problem. They are rather another person in the situation which makes the first two parties think more about what they are saying or their interaction. For example, when I thought about this in my own situation I thought this:
When I am fighting with my boyfriend we both may say hurtful things because we are angry. We are the only two actually hearing this conversation so sometime I tend not to really think about what I am saying. BUT when someone else is near us and we are fighting I tend to think about what I am going to say FIRST then construct it in a way that gets my point across in a respectful, clear, and understandable matter.

I wish that a mediator is something that I could have at every argument, but my goal is to try to think as if there is one there and maybe my thoughts, feelings, and frustrations will be communicated a lot more effectively.

Week 4: Q2

All of these techniques that were geared towards the meditation process can also be used in other parts of your life as well. Fractionation, which is breaking down down bigger issues into smaller ones, can be used with practically anything in your life. For example I use a technique like this when working on  big projects for school. I will break down the big project into smaller tasks which are easier to accomplish. This helps me stay organized without getting too stressed. Framing, asking questions that are unbiased, can help relationships not lead to issues. A good amount of time people get angry because people ask questions that are making an assumption. Having an unbiased look and position on issues will help all relationships, new and old. Reframing, taking negative comments and turning them to a position differently from their own, is an amazing skill to have. This can be used with your self talk and with other people. You can step back from your feelings and try to think in a different position. This is difficult to do, but can help you get a better understanding of any situation. It also can help with other people by being able to help others see different sides of situations as well. And lastly common ground is characteristics that parties share as an agreement. This is used in everyday life when people make friends. They find a common ground then grow off of that.

These techniques can help any situation if used correctly and will lead to a better outcome for all parties.

Week 4: Q1

I believe that communication majors would make the best mediators out of all careers choices because we are familiar with the processes and the different ways in which people communicate. We have learned or are learning about how to have an unbiased standpoint in most situations. Communication majors, especially dealing with conflict, have to be able to step back out of the situation and look at it from a different point of view. When people are angry, frustrated, or upset this is not possible which can lead to the conflict in the first place.  This is not something that cannot be done if not practiced enough which is what I believe sets us apart from other careers. Lawyers, for example, are used to fighting for one side of the argument over the other. They are trying to prove that their side is the right one and the other one is wrong. The mediator needs to be able to hear both sides of the story to come up with a resolution that would be best for both parties. 

Chapter 3 Question 2

To me there is a huge difference between punishment and discipline. I think that the way I was raised makes me have such a strong feeling about this topic. From my point of view I believe that discipline is the way of teaching your children or another person what is right from wrong. From a parents stand point this is teaching your children how to act or practically do anything on a day to day basis. Children do certain things or act a certain way because of the discipline that their parents have put on them since they were little. Parents sometimes use punishment to help a child understand what they did wrong. To me punishment is what the child has to do or go through to help them understand what they did and why it was not right.
When I was younger my parents were fairly strict in teaching me right from wrong. They taught me not to use bad words, to use my manners, to show respect to my elders, so on and so forth. But the unique thing about my situation is that the punishment that I went through when I did something wrong was never abusive. I was never hit or slapped like I have heard parents have done before. Some people think its impossible for a child to learn anything without using that kind of punishment, but I differ. The punishments that I got for the things I did wrong were very specific to that action. This lead me to not learn violence or fear, but rather what I was doing wrong was in fact wrong.
I think that a lot of parents over step their parental authority when they are very angry and upset and not clear on how to communicate their feelings. If you think about it violence, hitting your child, is not the answer. I believe that its not teaching them anything productive. If parents were able to channel their emotions in a more clear and understanding way then the child would learn a lot more effectively.

Hello everyone! My name is Breanna and this is my first year at San Jose State! I am a transfer student and am excited to be here at SJSU!:)