Kind of sad that I think I am coming across my last blog! This class definitely challenged me in ways I would never expect. I learned new things about myself, like I would prefer to not take online classes. I just forget most of the times when things are due and when there are readings, but while I was in this class I tried to make the most it!

My goals to start out the semester were to be able to communicate at a higher level, try to cut out killer fillers (like, um, so) can also be able to put what I am thinking into words on my papers. These goals were very reachable in this class, considering we had a paper every week! I think I learned to write my papers in a timely manner while saying what I need to say at a high level. I think over the time throughout the semester I got better at writing these papers and using the quotes to support my situations in the blogs. I also believe by being in this class it I did get better at communicating whatever I am trying to say to someone. Which is very useful in things like media after or before games. I even got compliments on how much better and confident I sound this year! I can definitely see the difference in the way I speak now vs last year! Finally, one thing that really is stagnant are my use of killer fillers. I tend to use ‘like’ and ‘um’ the most. Whenever I feel like I am getting better at not using them the come right back full throttle. Something to definitely keep working on, but as long as it is at my attention I know that I will fix it eventually.

This class was very beneficial to my life, especially being that I want to be a sports broadcaster in my near future. For people that want to be announcers or sports analysis I definitely suggest this class. Be ready to work because it is a lot of work that goes into. I was able to get the opportunity to shadow Maria Taylor, a ESPN sideline reporter, and I utilized a lot of things I learned in this class that made me feel more at ease while getting the opportunity to shadow her. Thank you for allowing me to take this class!

Me shadowing Maria Taylor at the OU Baylor football game

For this blog I decided to write from the perspective of how different people have been raised to exercise either individualistic culture or collectivistic culture. Growing up my parents encouraged me care about the people around me and their feelings. I have a friend, who on the other hand, was raised completely different. Her mom taught her to only care for herself and her family, do whatever it takes for her to be successful. No matter what, don’t let anything stand in her way. That in return, made her this person who is very blunt, sometimes rude, and very nonchalant about everything. She is still one of my closest friends and I love her more than I can explain but she is still more invested in no one but herself and her family.

birthgiverrrrrr

This chapter could have been interpreted different ways, but I immediately thought of the way people act and how some people cannot control the fact that they act the way they do. In other words, I think of it as a personality trait, some people are individualistic and some are more collectivistic. The article can further support this notation in many ways. For example, Griffin et. al. defines individualistic culture by saying, “wherein people look out for themselves and their immediate families; I-identity, a low-context culture,” (437). The chapter goes on to define collectivistic culture with Griffin et. al. stating, “wherein people identify with a larger group that is responsible for providing care in exchange for group loyalty; we-identity; a high-context culture,” (437). The chapter also included a real-life scenario and in the second paragraph Griffin et. al. states, “we must have frowned because this girl from a collectivism culture instantly retracted her statement and continually apologized, saying that she didn’t believe we had “round” faces,” (439).

There were plenty of quotes that could have been used in order to support my claim but I felt by giving both of the definitions it would give a better understanding to what was being talked about. The definitions helped support the claim because it further defined what was being said. The last quote helps by showing that some people learn differently because further down that article was the mom stating something totally opposite of the girl that came off as blunter.

For today’s blog over communication accommodation, I decided to make my blog on my old teammate Kristy Wallace. Kristy was from Australia originally and played with us my freshman year. When I came here her accent was so strong, you could barely understand her calling out the plays on the court. In order for us to be great either we had to zero in on only her voice or she had to make it to where we understood her. Over the course of the year the team started noticing that she started talking like us a little more. She used to talk like us jokingly but it became natural towards the end of the season.

In the article it gave an example about communication accommodation and how it works. Griffin et. al. defines communication accommodation as, “changing communication behavior in a way that reduces social distance,” (423). In the example that was given in the article, Griffin et. al. states, “he noticed his accent changed depending upon where he was,” (423). On the following page, Griffin et. al. defines convergence as, “a strategy by which you adapt your communication behavior to become more similar to someone else,” (424).

There were so many more quotes in the article that could have went along with my scenario but these connected so well. In the first quote he defined communication accommodation and that just supported the simple fact that the situation that happened had a scientific name for it. The second quote was a great comparison from the situation in the article to the situation that happened to my team and I. Depending upon who Kristy was talking to she would sound more like them, and we thought it was pretty neat. Finally, the last quote shows another definition that connected to our team and our struggles at the beginning of the season. If she didn’t start to renunciate the way we do, we would have struggled all season.

freshman year team! kristy is #4

In this chapter I thought about this situation that happened to my cousin at the house. My little cousin loooves watching Disney and nickelodeon, she was growing up in a bling of an eye. I was telling them that she was learning this from the shows she was watching and my parents were not believing me. We got in an argument that shows cannot dictate her life, and I was trying to tell them that growing up my life kind of revolved around mickey mouse and whatever they said to do I would do. My little cousin loves watching doc mcstuffins an in order to prove my logic I began to put the character from doc on everything I wanted her to do, and miraculously she began to do everything I wanted because I said ‘doc mcstuffins’ would do it.

In this chapter, there were many quotes that led me to this situation. On the first page, Griffin et. al. stated, “multinational corporations such as GM, AT&T, Apple, Tie Warner, Disney and Microsoft are the dominant force in society- more powerful than the church, state, or family in their ability to influence the lives of individuals” (259). Another quote on that page, Griffin et. al. uses is, “more than 90 percent of the mass media outlets—newspaper, broadcast, cable, telephone, and satellite- are owned by just a handful of corporations” (259). The last quote in the chapter that Griffin et. al. says, “Deetz says that corporations “control and colonize” modern life in ways that no government or public body since the feudal era ever thought possible,” (260).

The quotes that were used in the chapter were great support for the situation that I used in the first paragraph. The first quote supports the situation because it showed that Disney every other company has a huge influence on our life and it just supported what I was telling my parents. In the second quote it also reiterated what I was trying to tell my parents about when I was growing and now why Layla is the way she is about Doc, yes that is majority our fault for always sitting her in front of a tv when we are trying to occupy her but it also shows that Disney is taking over. Finally, the last quote also emphasizes the fact that with doc it makes sense why Layla did everything to help me when I used doc as the motive.

my mom!!

In this chapter it talked about cultural approach to organization, the organization that I am going to use is our Baylor basketball team. On a basketball team, there are roughly 12 players. On our team, we not only have 12 players but we are all from 5 different states. To know that we are from 5 different states, is to also know that with that comes different backgrounds and different cultures. That is hard on its own, in order to gel we must understand each other’s backgrounds, which is also known as our webs according to the chapter. In order to perform the act of untangling one’s webs we needed to play team bonding games and get to know each other!

At the beginning of every chapter, there is a little story or scenario, that is where I got all of my quotes from this week. I felt that the describing at the beginning was enough for the whole chapter. It definitely described it well. In the first paragraph, Griffin et. al. defined culture as, “shared meaning, shared understanding, shared sensemaking,” (237). In the same paragraph Griffin et. al. stated, “in order to travel across the strands toward the center of the web, an outsider must discover the common interpretations that hold the web together,” (237).  A couple of paragraphs down, Griffin et. al. talks about communication by saying, “that process is communication. It is communication that ‘creates and constitutes the taken-for-granted reality of the world,” (237).

This one was pretty tough to find a connection for, that’s why I kind of stayed on the first page. I didn’t really understand the chapter sadly. IN the quotes that I did make out, it seemed to connect to the idea of a team, and how we don’t really know anything about each other when we get here. The first quote kind of emphasizes the whole idea that with different people come different cultures. In the second quote, it just showed that we need to get to know a person by getting to know their culture and what holds them together. Finally, the last quote emphasizes communication as the main way of figuring out someone’s webs. Which goes a long way in our team bonding skills and getting to know each other.

ropes course

In this chapter for this week we read about group decision making and why it could be beneficial. There are so many times when we have to come up with something within a group, without even realizing it. Every night whenever I was back home with my family, we had to figure out where we were going to eat dinner or what we were going to eat for dinner. Some nights were better than others but we literally had to start slowing down the process because it became so feisty. We would each name the place where we individually wanted to eat, then we would weigh out the options and figure out which one is one that we all had a taste for.

There were many quotes that could have been used in order to further create the picture I needed for the analysis I decided to connect it to but I came down to the three that really outlined it. In the chapter they gave the Four Functions of Effective Decision Making and that’s where my quotes will be coming from. In the second function, goal setting, Griffin et. al. states, “because group members need to be clear on what they are trying to accomplish, Hirokawa and Gouran regard discussion of goals and objectives as the second requisite function of decision making,” (212). In the third step, identification of alternatives, Griffin et. al. states, “Hirokawa and Gouran stress the importance of marshalling a number of alternative solutions from which group members can choose,” (213). Finally, the last step, Griffin et. al. concludes with, “After a group has identified alternative solutions, the participants must take care to test the relative merits of each option against the criteria they believe are important,” (214).

These quotes further support my examination by explaining them throughout the book. The first quote supports the analysis because, our common goal is to get something to eat. We might not know what we are going to eat but we know that we are hungry! The second quote chains the two paragraphs together by supporting the idea of everyone giving their own food option. Every option is an alternative for the others. Lastly, the third quote supports my analysis because when we would give the reasons we had a taste for something those became what made it important or not.

fam portrait

Believe it or not, I was shy once upon time and believe it or not it was recently when I broke out of my shell. My freshman year here I had 3 roommates in the Texana girl dorm. I knew one of them because it was my basketball teammate, but the other two I had not met them yet. One day I needed help in a class that I had with girl in room A, so it took everything out of me to go and knock on her door and ask for help but I did. After we finished the assignment we starting talking about our lives, she started telling me about her boyfriend back home and how much she misses home. I was a little hesitant on opening up to her, and how much I told her at the beginning of the conversation. I did not want to spill too much about me to someone I really did not know. Once I felt comfortable I started talking back to her and the conversation started flowing, it became a normal thing for us to talk after classes and we began to support each other at our sport events and became roommates in an apartment off campus.

In chapter eight on the first couple of pages it introduces the idea of closeness through self-disclosure. In this chapter it kind of supports why I was the way I was and why people are so closed towards people they don’t know. On one page, Griffin et. al uses a character to help explain by saying, “Pete becomes accessible to others as he relaxes the tight boundaries that protect him and makes himself vulnerable,” (94). Towards the bottom of that page, Griffin et. al. he further explains, “if he admits these feelings, he’s opening himself up for some heavy-handed kidding or emotional blackmail,” (94). To end that section of the book, Griffin et. al. concludes with, “future privacy will be difficult. Realizing both of these factors, Pete may be extra cautious about exposing his true feelings,” (95).

While reading chapter eight I realized that this is a common reason why people do not open up to other people. It was definitlely my reasoning! In the first quotation I felt that emphasized when I finally got relaxed around Morgan (my roommate) I was okay with feeling vulnerable around her once we talked a little bit more! Moving on to quote #2 this is how I used to feel before I gain the confidence to knock on her door. I felt that if I told her anything, it would be all over the school and I could never trust her. I just didn’t feel the need to open up to someone I barely knew. Finally, the third quote caps it off with once I told her something she will obligated to know everything about me, or she would feel closer to me than I what I wanted her to feel like. Now I am happy I went the extra mile of knocking on her door because shes one of my best friends!

*SINGS* go best friend thats my best friend!!

Symbolic interaction is all around us, an example that I constantly experience is whenever I am greeting someone I have my mind predetermined to answer the ‘how are you’ question with a ‘fine, how are you’. That happens more often than it should and it is pretty embarrassing when it does happen. Today I tried to count how many times it happened to me and I lost count. The crazy thing is, is if it didn’t happen on my end it happened on the other persons end. It is something that happens to everyone I feel. Our minds are predetermined to answer these questions and ask these questions instead of actually have a conversation.

Some proof that symbolic interaction is all around are found in the text we were asked to read this week. Griffin et. al. defined symbolic interaction as, “the language and gestures a person uses in anticipation of the way others will respond” (53). He continues throughout the text with “the verbal and nonverbal responses that a listener then provides are likewise crafted in expectation of how the original speaker will react,” (53). Finally, he later states in the text “A symbol is ‘a stimulus that has a learned meaning and value for people’” (55).

These points are so easily connected to what happens to me almost a billion times a day because the author basically states in so many ways that communication is anticipation. I never realized how often something like this happened to me until I read this article for communication theory. I might have noticed but I never knew it had a name. after I read the text that I quoted in the first quote I quickly started to connect it to when I am greeting someone. Since I am on a basketball team we are constantly meeting new people and boosters that support our team. I hate going through that awkward moment when you and the person you are talking ask the same question, usually “hi, how are you” and now we are stuck trying to figure out who is going to answer first and said the usual “fine, how are you.” Or the part that can make it even more awkward is when you both say “fine, how are you.” This proves the last quotation I used from page 55, it shows that we are not really listening or answering on our own but have learned the key components to a conversation and now say the same thing in every conversation we have. Sometimes I go out of my way to say something different to see if people have the same responses and they do. For example, saying “that’s good” when I say that I am doing bad. It is not their fault, it is something that is learned over time.

Meeting new people at the photoshoot

In this course, communication theory, my goals are that I plan on achieving this course are being able to communicate at a higher level, trying to cut out killer fillers (like, um, so) an also be able to put what I am thinking into words on my papers. I hope to learn and better my communication with the people around me.

In order to reach my goal, I plan on being attentive in this class. Which will be pretty tough since it is an online class! I also plan on using whatever I learn right then in a real-life situation. Usually when I learn something, I learn it, memorize it then forget about it. This semester I plan on learning it then applying it to whatever I am doing at the time.

I plan on being a sports commentator after college life, so being able to eliminate things like killer fillers and add whatever Dr. Rhidenour has in store this semester it should really benefit me in the long run. I also do a lot of speaking for our team in press conferences and on social media pages, so hopefully these goals I have can help improve my communication skills this season.

This was roughly my 3rd Time on the radio (best one yet!)