Teamwork

Teamwork

                “It’s not cheating it’s team-work.” I recently saw this on Facebook and as I laughed at it I thought of this class. As we start this group project I think of all the group projects I had in the best. I never been a big fan of group work and in general I approach it with caution. The most interesting part of me and group projects is that my personality always changes. I found it funny when Ben went over the personality types in groups and how depending on the class and project I can be any of the four. In this blog I am going to discuss the difference personalities I have so you can be prepared for the upcoming weeks.

                Last semester I took Crim100, which I now realize was a waste of time, and the entire semester we was in groups and we had tests/quizzes and group assignments we also had individual assignments on the same topics beforehand. I was upset because I would always get a higher group on the individual assignments then we gained on the group ones. So I ended up becoming a “d” personality and tried to take charge and get the work done I was annoyed when others did not talk or wanted to look at the little details. The other members of the group despised me and that shown on the peer review.

                In contrast I had a group project my junior year of high school in A.P. physics. That is a class that I am not really good at, I got a 2 on the A.P exam, so I ended up being a “S” type. I made up for not being good in the subject by not really talking and making those around me feel better when possible. I never actually contributed to the group, but I talked to everyone and made them feel good. The project turned out great and my group members liked me even though I was useless.

                In summary my personality changes depending on how good I am in the subject so I hope you guys are now ready.

Stall stories

                                                Stall Stories

                Rush into bathroom almost knocking over random person in the hall who you mumble an excuse me to without even bothering to see who it is and finally getting into a stall. Once you are settled and happy you made it there safely you notice what in a way resembles a newspaper. These stall stories are found everywhere from the bathroom to dorm rooms even to the employee bathroom. Is this because people are more likely to kill their bathroom time by reading a newsletter? These newsletters are full of actually important facts, helpful tips, and fun crossword puzzles or riddles. I guess the 30 seconds I spend in the bathroom should be used to read as much as this as possible.

                My RA gives us new stall stories on almost everything going on in campus and provides us with some useful tips and strategies that are actually relevant. Last week she had one up that was all about conflict resolution which reminded me of this class. She made a series of this stories the first one was about the different ways to argue and when the argument is appropriate to use based on the situation and who you are arguing with. In other words the context which fits in with our paper we wrote this week. The second was about realizing that the opinions of a person did not define who that person is and that you should take their point of view as what it is. Most people do not do that when they argue instead they connect people opinions with their values and then believe that people are defined by their values. The last story was about forming your arguments in a logical way that the other person can understand or connect with. The next time you are going to the bathroom look for a stall story because you never know what you can learn.

Public Speeking

                                    Public Speaking

After this week I felt it was kind of necessary to talk about public speaking. We all did it this week and we are all glad to be done with it. As I gave my speech I realized that being a rhetor is not as easy as it looks. It takes a great deal of courage to speak to a crowd and get them to understand your beliefs or at the very least be interested in what you have to say.

When I gave my speech I was beyond nervous and it was hard for the words to come out. This is weird since I am a very outgoing girl who loves talking. On Monday I could barely talk and it felt as though I would faint and I had to stop every so on to breathe. After class people commented me on the fact that I did not use notecards, but that did not make me feel good since my problem was not with the memorization of facts because that is something that I am good at. My problem is being able to stand in front of a crowd and speak without feeling afraid or nervous. I felt as though I will never be a good speaker I would always just be a nervous wreck.

Things got worse for my on Tuesday when I had to give a 30 minute presentation on a short story for my Honors Asian Literature class. The presentation went great I had a lot of information to present and since I was sitting in the front of the class I was not nervous. The problem arose when it seemed like no one was interested in what I had to say. When I looked around the room people were either doing work for some other class or on their phones. This annoyed me because I worked hard to have a good presentation and no one cared.

Public speaking is a very hard thing to do and it is even harder when no one else listens.

Image is everything

                Image is everything

                If I had a nickel for every time someone told me to watch how I represent myself I would be rich by now. It seems like now a day all people care about is your outside appearance. Now that facebook, twitter, and other social media sites are very popular the way you present yourself is very important. Employers look on your facebook to try and gage what type of person you are by the pictures you post and this can have a major impact on your future. I take a lot of pictures that can be viewed as inappropriate because there is a red cup in the background and someone looks slightly intoxicated those pictures stay off the internet. When I entered college I learned the tell-tell signs of partiers and how to present myself so that I to won’t be seen that way.

                When I was a senior in high school I was in a program with the District Atorney’s office and I remember hearing about a case where a guy was found guilty because he posted pictures showing himself with the deceased. That example is extreme. But you never know who is looking at your facebook and how they will view the information seen. Now that I am in a sorority that is really true Panhell the organization which is in charge of all sororities keep an eye out for statuses and pictures that depict Greeks in a negative light so whenever a frat has a party they hid there letters in case someone takes a drunken picture they won’t look bad.

                My facebook as many others is now slightly fake. I hide things about myself due to the image it might present and when we was discussing the fakeness that ethos creates it made me laugh because of this.

Debates and Arguments

“I am the best at arguing.” My best friend from home can constantly be heard saying, which we have all accepted as true. He has a strong invented ethos he has spent the last 5 years of our friendship building a reputation as a great debater and now I would not even bother to argue with him. He would have his points laid out and present them so well and eloquently which is not surprising since he is a communication major. As I go through this class I release more and more the different rhetorical devices he uses. Which contrast the fact that one of the first things I noticed is that he is not a true rhetoric user since he does not allow us to prove him wrong. Even if we have strong arguments he dismiss them as if only his can be right which makes it hard for us to argue with him so I just stopped trying to.

            This is the problem with most debaters you can only have winners or losers so the person who you are arguing with points gets dismissed. The main purpose of rhetoric is to gain the opinions of others and see if their opinions can also be right debate discourages this sense of compromise. That is a problem since debates are the most common form of rhetoric and we end up with problems like people not wanting to argue their opinion the way I am with my friend and this is not good.

            I realized how bad debates are after I had one in my Asian literature class. We were discussing whether or not the dropping of the atomic bomb was right or not. There was mixed opinions and in the end no one’s view changed. My side technically won, but to me it was a lost because people felt the same way after the debate as they did before and a few students asked if the debate can be ended since it was getting heated. Debates are bad rhetoric and discourage compromise and leave us all as losers.