Final blog post! Already?

Rosa Saucedo                                                                                                      Comm101C

            My third year of college has come to an end and I feel that my communication skills have strongly improved. Taking this junior seminar has taught me to take different behaviors that I never even knew there were theories for and apply to them to almost anything. It has taught me to think ‘outside the box’. For example, I did my communication analysis project on the Kardashians. Who would have thought I could have so much to analyze from a family who’s famous for random reasons? I analyzed each aspect of this family using the relational dialectics theory and came up with so much out of this show. Every time we discussed a theory in class, I learned to be able to speak it into my every day conversations. There are aspects of every theory every where and it’s so interesting for me to have been able to notice that through this class.

            In my future as a communication scholar, I do not wish to focus on creating new theories. My plan is mostly to use these theories and to apply them wherever I choose to take my career. There are parts of all the theories we have gone over than can help me in my everyday life and in my future as well. It helps me open my eyes, because it is like putting your finger on something that is not necessarily visible.

            My communication skills and behavior have obviously changed from the moment I declared my communication studies major my sophomore year until now. What are now different are the skills I have learned that are probably not noticeable to others around me, but they are to me. Yes, I have gotten less shy and more talkative in the past year. Two years ago, I would be up in front of the class giving a presentation while shaking from being nervous. The fear slowly disappeared as I transitioned into being a communication major but at that point, all I feared was WHAT exactly I was going to say and if it was going to make an impact.

            Preparation for speeches, and the poster presentations, is especially important and comm101C has proved that to me. Of course, it is crucial to go prepared to ANY class presentation and I did, but now I have learned a new way to practice. I learned that not only are you presenting the material you have researched, studied or gathered up; but you are presenting that you know every in and out of the topic. When I presented my poster for relational dialectics, not only did I have to make a poster and read the chapter on the theory. That is not what it takes. I spent days, hours preparing for what possible questions the professor or any student could ask me about my topic. This project helped me open my eyes, that no matter what kind of presentation you are giving, you have to put yourself in the audience’s shoes. It is simply not enough to sit there and write down 10 note cards and memorize a speech.

            What if you were an audience member? Would you understand what you are saying?

            Another way this class has helped me is through the mock interview I mentioned before. I have never actually sat down and thought of what kind of job I would apply for after I graduate. In fact, every time I did, I would get stressed and do something else. When I heard that for one of our biggest assignments, we had to pretend we were trying to get hired for a job we want after college, I freaked out. I made myself sit there and think. I looked up jobs online. I searched for jobs previous communication majors have chosen with their degree. I juggled between choosing minors or a second major. To put it simply, I was stressed. It was a different type of stress, not like the stress I experienced last semester, because I had two jobs, a sorority and school. It was a stress that made me realize that I am really growing up quick. I knew that I had to get my plans together and even if I did not need to have a set career in mind, I needed to at least have an idea by the end of the semester.

            There are obvious things I can go into as a communication major, but that is what I do know. I know what I DON’T want to do. If I ever end up having an office job, I at least would like to have frequent business trips so I can travel. The only thing I knew I wanted for my future was to be around new people everyday.

            As I prepare for the mock interview on the last day of class, I am challenging myself to random questions that could possibly be asked in a real world job interview. If it was any other assignment from before this semester, I would simply write down points I have on my resume and wish myself luck. This is one way this class has helped me improve and I believe this is something I can carry with myself in my future as a communication scholars. I began looking into internships, applying and I joined a mentor program on campus for kids. I started to go every Friday morning to Washington Elementary school to mentor two children. We read and then would go outside to play. I realized that maybe; just maybe, I wanted to be around kids with my future job. They all loved me and even children I knew would run up to me looking so excited just to say hi. I decided that I wanted to do more.

            Then the person in charge of the mentor sent me a forwarded message of an organization on campus about interning abroad. I usually ignore these e-mails. But this time, I looked into it and read about it. I was eager to apply, so I interviewed with the girl in charge the day after I e-mailed her. I spoke to my parents about going to a different country and convinced them to let me. Soon enough, I made myself a profile on their website, and began receiving e-mails from different countries such as Colombia, Taiwan, Brazil and China. I contacted Brazil back about an internship that involved playing soccer with underprivileged kids and working with a team to help them. I had the interview over the phone and was approved. I am now going to Brazil this June for six weeks to intern for this program. I am happier than ever and it is crazy to think that it all began with that e-mail.

            Looking back to the beginning of the semester, my goals in how I want to pursue my career as a communication studies major sound similar. I sound unsure back then, because that is exactly what I was, unsure. I said, “My career path in communication is not something I have determined yet, but I see myself working around different people every day. I think diversity is really important in communication.”  Re-reading this statement makes me that much more glad that I am going to take on this awesome opportunity this summer in Brazil. I go on to say that “I am very interested in how different cultures communicate…” I have always imagined that I would travel at least once in my life to somewhere totally different. I am so passionate about learning about how Brazilian culture will be different from our American culture. I wonder if it is similar to the Mexican culture and am so curious.

             My point is, is that I love that I have changed since the beginning of the semester. You could say that in the beginning, I sort of expected everything to fall into place. With how confused I was with what I wanted for my future, it stressed me out to even think about it. I expected to just “go with the flow” and keep doing what I was doing. But I now realize that there is always room for improvement as an individual.

            I’m not going to lie, it still stresses me out, but I have been doing more for myself personally in order to help my future. I have been trying to not procrastinate as much and do better at managing my job and school.

            This summer might change my outlook on what I want and that is exactly what I want to get out of it. Besides the usual learning about different cultures and helping people, I want to learn more about myself. I am eager to see the children I will be working for to help them.

            In being able to apply how I feel about my life now after this class and this semester is the social penetration theory. Imagine an onion: as you peel it, you find that it has so many layers, some thicker than others. The outer layers are more of the everyday conversation topics, such as what kind of music you enjoy or what you like to do on your free time. The very middle is considered the concept of self. In my opinion, I might not have been sharing these things with others, but as the semester went on, I began to realize some of my own “onion layers”.

            Personality structure is defined as onion-like layers of beliefs and feelings about self, others, and the world. The theory says that the deeper layers are more vulnerable, protected and central to self image. This is true between my parents and I, because this semester I kept all my feelings to myself. I never once asked them for money. If I ever needed money, I would learn to figure it out. I am the kind of person that wants to earn what I get. For example, my trip to Brazil is going to be paid by myself. My dad is giving me extra money for when I am there, but everything else is on my own.

            Independent is one quality I have learned through this semester and this is because I don’t want to rely on anyone to help me or tries to change my ideas. I realize now that this is needed, though. I can’t do everything on my own. Just recently, I opened up to my parents and showed them my ‘inner layer’. It is important to open up once in a while. After this talk, I was clearer on how to approach my future.

            Overall, this class triggered a numerous amount of thoughts about me and what I want in my future. It seems unbelievable, right? Well I am glad this is true. What’s the point of taking upper division major classes if they don’t affect your mind in one way or another? J

3rd blog post

            My second year here at San Jose State, which was last year, I participated in the Forensics Intramural tournament as part of my comm major units. This annual tournament is composed of different possible ways a student can participate. There are individual debates, partner debates, poem recitals and speeches. Me and a classmate participated in the partner debates. There also are students who can be judges and help organize the event. At the time, I was taking a Comm 40 argumentation and debate class and I found I enjoyed arguing both sides to every speech we gave in class. Our job to prepare for the tournament was to prepare strong arguments for each side for three issues. Some of the issues we were going to be debating were:

• Should sports be eliminated from SJSU?
• Should bullying be considered a crime?

            We made a list of positive and negative points for each. We had a strong argument for each side, so we were very confident. We wouldn’t know who our opponents were until the day of.

            The day came and we went through each of the debates. Unfortunately, the side of the argument we hoped we would be on was not the side we were assigned. It was tough, but we had to make that argument ours even if we did not completely agree with it. Some of the opponents were not humble and treating it as if we seriously were arguing with them. One of the judges even was friends with one opponent. Then and there, my partner and I knew we would lose.

            But guess what? We won SECOND place!! Those girls that we thought would do better than us, because she was friends with the judge was not even on a top place, which made us glad that the judge was still fair.

            Now, what communication theory can we apply to mine and my partner’s successful participation in the forensics tournament? I chose the Muted Group theory. It is defined as “people belonging to low power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly, thus, their ideas are often overlooked”, according to A First look at Communication Theory by Em Griffin. Those low power groups that are mentioned in the definition are usually women or minority groups.

            The intramural tournament had obvious people who were in forms of power, which were the judges. I mean, they had the power to choose a winner for each debate and an overall score for each team at the end. That sounds like a tremendous amount of power to me.

            When dealing with the muted group theory, there ALWAYS has to be some sort of hierarchy. There is always a group or an individual whose voice is more heard than the other. In the debate where my partner and I felt we were going to lose, the girl that was friends with the judge seemed more in power than any power we might have had. I felt that anything we said, whether they be good arguments or not, would not matter.

            I believe that sometimes the muted group theory sometimes is something that plays out in one’s mind. In my example, it was all in my head that someone had more power than my team did. But I do believe that this theory can apply to everyone almost anywhere they go, whether their feeling of having less power than that of someone else is real or not.

Symbolic Interactionism in the work place

            At my work, the associates are divided into the level of work they can do. It goes from Level 1 to 7, then the manager positions. As we each train for the next position up from ours, we get feedback every few times we train. We also get feedback and compliments everyday we work and it helps us know how we are doing as well as motivate us. I strongly believe that my job has helped me improve my communication skills and also helped me help others improve theirs. I decided to use a theory called symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead to explain my experience with communication with coworkers. In Griffin’s book, A First look at Communication theory, the symbolic interactionism theory is defined as the ongoing use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the other will react; a conversation.

            One thing I love about my job is that I don’t do the same thing every single time I work. I always work a different position or multiple in the same day. Not only does it help pass time, but I get to get better at my communication skills with each position. Like when I am on the register, I probably interact with more than a hundred people in one shift. When I interact with customers, I use the term “minding”, which is another word for thinking before you speak. I want to offer the customers awesome customer service, because well, that’s my job. To do this, I have to interact with them in a professional and friendly way. Some customers are tougher to interact with than others and will give different responses than others even if you act the same. This requires me to do a little rehearsing in my head on how to act with certain types of customers. For example, I would not act the same with an elder customer as I would with a customer who is 10 years old. If a kid customer comes up to me, I will offer them kid stickers and speak in a more upbeat tone. If I handed stickers to an old woman or man, they’d give me blank stares. As the book also says, “humans act toward people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those people or things.”

            I train for my next level position a couple times a week and have received feedback on my performance. I get comments on things I can improve on as well as what I should keep doing. Not only do I receive these compliments after my shift, but during the rush, managers like to compliment you if you are doing a good job. That’s another one of the things I love about my job. The positive atmosphere around me as I am working makes me feel like I can do a good job on anything I do. The looking glass self term described in the book can help explain the fact that I always have an image of myself I want to be. I don’t expect to look like I am doing a perfect job every single time, but I like to look like I am trying.  The term is defined as the mental self image that results from taking the role of the other or being the objective self. According to the book, you see yourself how you imagine others see you. If I feel as if I am doing a horrible job at my position that is how I am going to come off as being.

            The symbolic interactionism theory is all about interaction between an individual and the “other”. There are many ways to look at you as an individual at your job, but I thought this was the best way to describe mine. Each day I learn to communicate in better and efficient ways and thanks to this theory, I can understand why workers communicate the way they do.

Why communication? Well, why not?

Rosa Saucedo, COMM 101, Introduction to Communication Studies, Fall 2012, Section 2

Hi! My name is Rosa Saucedo and I am a third year at San Jose State University as a communication studies major. So why did I choose the image above? First off, I love Ecards and secondly, I 100% agree with the statement on it.

My attraction to communication studies has its roots in my sophomore year while I was in a comm 20 public speaking class. My professor was Nita George and she made the class fun and I actually learned a lot about how to lessen my nerves as I went up to give speeches. Before this class, I would have never thought about being a communication major. I thought, “I’m shy. I can’t do all that communication major stuff.” Thankfully, thanks to this professor I finally decided in which direction I wanted to take my college career.

I began taking more communication courses and then had a performance class with the professor Marjorie Hazeltine, which definitely gave me much more confidence. We would do random skits and act out things every time we had class. I loved it and it helped me come out of my comfort zone. I then decided to declare the major.

I also feel like my current job has played a huge factor in why I believe communication is the most important thing to know. I work at In N’ Out and this job is ALL ABOUT communicating. When I first started, I was still in the process of testing out communication courses. With every position at this job, you communicate. You communicate with your co workers and with the customers of course. I learned a lot from this job like that I love to communicate. Their system of communication during lunch rushes and they way the give feedback taught me a lot about the importance of my major.

I see communication as a way of getting along with others, a personality. I see it as a system that once practiced, becomes easy no matter what background you come from. There is always a right way to communicate in my opinion. A person can say just about anything that’s on their mind and it’s just a matter of HOW they say it.

As a communication scholar I am primarily interested in using my communication skills to help out others. My career path in communication is not something I have determined yet, but I see myself working around different people everyday. I think diversity is really important in communication.

Communication is such a fascinating subject to me and it’s something that teaches you new things everyday. I am very interested in how different cultures communicate and how it has changed over time. Technology in our present world is one of the most popular ways of communication and I would like to learn more about why we don’t stop depending so much on technology if we know how negative it is to our personalities.

If I were to choose between being an interpretivist or being more of an objectivist, I would definitely fall more back on seeing things in an interpretivist way. I do believe that you should be able to prove theories and statements, but I also believe that things change everyday. If something is proven scientifically, it does not mean that the next day it will remain the same. I think that opinions matter and that everybody sees things differently based on their own individual experiences. There are always going to be two sides to everything and the interpretivist views seem more open to diversity.