Journals

JOURNAL 1

Communication means a lot of different things. Mainly, how you talk to or interact with another individual, or in some cases with a larger group of people. There can be a lot of barriers to communication, such as language, emotional, and even physical barriers. Obviously it is hard to communicate with someone if they do not speak the same language as you do. Sometimes emotions are hard to read for people, it can be harder to read a room or a person and have empathy or excitement. And physical barriers could be a lack of body language and signaling, that’s a huge part of communications. Growing up in a big family I have sometimes struggled to be heard in simple family conversations. With everyone talking over each other sometimes it’s hard to get a specific point across. For bettering my personal communication with myself and my family and friends I have taken big steps back to listen more. I tend to talk a lot so my way of fixing that is letting others talk first. Academically and professionally I feel go as one for me, I have been practicing with professors, other students, and advisors to address them in a professional matter, in person or over email. This is helping me get into a habit of always addressing people by their full name and in the manner they prefer. 

JOURNAL 2

I find the first sentence of the chapter interesting because I did actually stop and think about it. And they are right, there not a lot in this world that’s important in my life that does not include communication. All the important people in my life are only important because of the communication I have with them, the kind of communication, the amount of communication all of it. But then I was like well what about something materialistic like a car. But then, how did I get that car? I had communication with the salesperson that sold me that car. Everything in life comes from or had communication in it. I also really liked the “Communications Requires Meaning” section of the reading. Every single person spends the majority of their day communicating with others in some way, but they never really think about the meaning behind some of the communication. Especially me, I have never thought that every little letter has a meaning. And it’s really cool for me to think about words can convey as feelings and thoughts. The words you communicate to someone else can affect their mood, their feelings, and thoughts. Words are a way of showing feelings or connecting feelings. Connecting or comparing feelings. It’s so interesting. 

JOURNAL 3 

I am choosing to write about how to better myself academically. I feel this is the topic that I most relate with, as I am sure most others are. I will talk about things that I have done, and continue to do as a student. I have been working on my academic self for the past 20 or so years. Every semester I have to readjust the way I learn, according to the classes I am in. And especially at this time. I also have dyslexia, and over the years have realized that it is a lot more common than I thought it was. I like telling people that I have this disability and then showing them how I help myself and better my academics and make them feel more able to do the same. I really enjoy talking in groups of people because I do find that I have more of a natural leader side to me. I am able to scan the room and make eye contact with a number of people as I do so. I will be able to keep my nerves at a minimum as I will practice and recite what I will be presenting. I can make some parts of my presentation interactive, for example, I can ask questions like, “does anyone else do this?” or “Does anyone have any tips that I haven’t listed”. This is a really great way to keep the attention span of people in the audience because it makes them feel better than they have something in common with someone else.

OUTLINE: *Talking about how I have struggled with dyslexia and my academics 

  *listing off a few things that have helped ME improve

*weekly to-do list

*a planner

*color coding

*getting ahead 

*time manage

*take breaks

*don’t put too much on your todo list at once, break things down 

*making it interactive, making academic goals for yourself 

JOURNAL 4

If I am being completely honest. I did not have a huge interest in this section of the reading. I have never been one to really love history of, really anything. But I obviously know that everything in history is important, and is taught for a purpose. If something wasn’t important, it probably wouldn’t be in writing being taught to students across the world. It was cool to see the emergence of some of the terms that I use in my daily vocabulary. Like Mass communication, and how it was originally connected to journalism and how most universities didn’t think journalism was worth even teaching. I feel that journalism now is critical, and not to mention my favorite classes. I thought the “Methods of Studying Communication” section was neat too. I liked how they compared communication to something like a scientist doing things in a lab. Communications has so much to it like stated in the book it says “You may run mass surveys, collect anonymous e-mail data, or establish viewing and usage trends in a large population.” I feel like saying these things and comparing communication with a job that is looked at highly gives it more meaning. People forget or overlook how complicated and hard it can be to be in this field, so this was a good reminder. 

JOURNAL 5

Joe Kowan on TED talks talking about stage fright while having stage fright is quite ironic. I loved it. It honestly makes me feel a lot better watching something like this of a real time person having real anxiety about something so common. I know I am not the only one that gets anxiety before talking in front of a large group, it’s to be expected most of the time. Joe talks about how your sympathetic nervous system kicks in when you experience fear. “Your heart rate increases, your breathing gets faster, next your nonessential systems start to shut down like digestion.” He continues on to say that your mouth gets dry and the blood stops pumping to your fingers so those don’t work anymore. He is a bit dramatic, but I’m here for it, because everything he says is an accurate description of what happens when you get anxiety from talking to people in large groups. He started to talk about being aware of what he sounded like, he understood himself, so he could adjust and allow the audience to understand him better. He was expecting himself to get nervous, so he adjusted songs and whatnot to accommodate for himself. He was able to connect with the audience, because the both felt uncomfortable. 

JOURNAL 6

This section of reading was titled Public and Personal Influence. A lot of this was repetitive for me because I went over it all in a public speaking class that I had a couple of semesters ago. But it was nice to go back through and get a refresher on all the topics. I really enjoy public speaking and can say that I am not bad at it so most of this is pretty common sense to me. For instance, the section that started off this chapter, Analyzing Audiences, is very important. Understanding who you are talking to will allow you to adjust what you say and how you say things so you are not offending anyone, and you can get the most out of the speech. Having audiences that relate to what you are talking about, or agree with what you are saying is a lot more beneficial for the speaker and the audience. Following that with the Relationship with a Speaker section was good too because it is just as important to understand the audience will pay attention more and get more out of a speech if they know who the speaker is, if you walk out on stage and not introduce yourself, especially if you are doing a scientific speech, people might not believe the results you got if they know your educational past. Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values are so important to understand. “Attitudes are learned predispositions to evaluate something in a positive or negative way that guide thinking and behavior.” Beliefs “or what people hold true or false, are formed like attitudes through your direct experience, as well as through media, public and personal relationships, and cultural views of the world”. And values “are deeply held and enduring judgment of significance or importance that often provide the basis for both beliefs and attitudes.” All three of these things feed off and into each other so they are all important to understand. 

JOURNAL 7

This Ted Talk had so many fascinating facts in it. The first one that really stood out to me was when Amy Cuddy said that “judgments of political govenatoral candidates face in just one second, predicts 70% of US senate and gov race outcomes”. This was so interesting to hear. I know that things between US governors are very intense and tiny things can affect them in the long run, but not how just one second can do that. She then goes on to talk about ourselves, and how we often forget that we ourselves are influenced by our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions. And this was a good reminder that we have several influences. Including ourselves even when we don’t think that’s true. She talked about virtually collapsing versus the power stance, and how this is an unconscious nonverbal communication that we have with the rest of the world. Amy used the example of students in the classroom, and how some strut into the room, sit down in the middle, are relaxed and open and just throw their hand up for answers. Versus others who come in hugging close to themselves, not touching anyone else, and never wanting to put their hand up.  Thought it was interesting that she moved the conversation from there into a gender thing. I saw it, but had never sat and thought about it enough to realize it. Females are more likely to quietly walk into a room and not talk to anyone and stay balled up in the corner. Whereas men typically walk into a room loud and striking up conversations immediately.  “Women feel chronically less powerful to men, so this is not surprising” and it’s not, just very interesting. 

JOURNAL 8

After the peer review day, I feel pretty good about where I am at. I got some good feedback, even though there wasn’t a lot, there are definitely things I can approve of just from rewatching my own video myself. I will be sure to add in more body language and my visual aids as well. I was not able to give in-person feedback to my group, but able to make virtual comments back to the videos from the people in my group. It was nice to see other peoples videos and hear what they have to say, it gave me a good perspective on how other people’s thought processes worked. For the edits I am going to make with my video, I am going to get more lighting, make the screen a bit brighter. As I rewatched my last video it felt dark and slow and it just wasn’t the vibe. The next change I will make is my visual aids, I am going to add in a bullet point on the side of my video for each topic that I cover, that way it’s not super overwhelming with a lot of writing and it keeps people attention from wandering to the next bullet point I have without listening to me talk about the one I am still on. I will also be adding more body language into the video. I am not quite sure how I will be doing this yet, maybe instead of sitting I will be standing, that way I am able to move around a bit more. I will be keeping the amount of “eye contact” that I have the same, along with the topics I talked about.