One Final Thought

I really enjoyed reading Chapter 10 on preparing and presenting public speeches.  I have been dreading taking speech class my entire college career based on the fact that I don’t want to get up in front of a bunch of strangers and be the center of attention.  The chapter had a lot of great useful information such as how the introduction of your speech should grab the audience’s attention and how the conclusion should summarize what you have talked about and leave the audience with a feeling of closure.  I think I could have benefited more with how to deal with the anxiety during your speech, ways to help if your mind goes blank, perhaps what you should focus your eye contact on during the speech, how to prepare for questions at the end, etc.  Or perhaps how to take a speech from being a memorized, rehearsed speech to making it more personal so it’s like you are telling a story instead of reading it from note cards.

The Concept I Found Most Interesting....

I felt the most interesting concept I learned this semester was about organization communication.  I learned a lot about communication in the workplace and I constantly feel I learn something new every day at my current job.  I work in a multi-cultural office so learning to communicate with a different culture was a struggle for me at first.  I had a hard time understanding accents, gestures and dialects.  It has been a wonderful learning experience.  I also really learned about typical interviewing questions because for the first time in my career I have started interviewing people instead of being the one who is being interviewed.  It is very empowering and I learned a lot of new questions to ask.  I also liked the questions the interviewee should bring up, as well as interviewee questions that should not be brought up such as salary expectations, etc.  The chapter was very applicable to my everyday life at my job.

Experimental Research

During the Presidential election, I often saw heated posts and comments on Facebook regarding that person’s political stance.  At times it got annoying and caused me to ponder “unfriending” these people or blocking their posts from my news feed.    Which in turn caused me to wonder…..are people more likely to unfriend or block posts from people who annoy them versus confronting that person and telling them how they feel?  If I were to conduct research I would most likely use the experimental research method.  I would rather manipulate the question so I can provide them with choice A or choice B to choose from.   It would be interesting to see who would choose the polite option and just block the Facebook posts so they don’t get annoyed by them and who would unfriend that person altogether as a passive aggressive way to end their friendship and show their distaste for their posts.  I saw on Facebook after the election where someone posed the question asking if anyone had lost friends because of their political beliefs and several commented that they had noticed that they had been unfriended by several people.

Social Isolation

One of the topics in Chapter 11 this week that I enjoyed reading about was how the internet can lead to social isolation.  I see this some nights in my family, where I have one kid on Xbox Live, one kid on our Kindle, while I scroll through Facebook on my phone.  We tend to retreat to our rooms, or conversational becomes minimal as we become absorbed in our own worlds.  It is interesting how in the text it talked about in the 1950’s and 1960’s the television was introduced as a way of bringing people together.  Now, with the availability of multiple televisions in one home as well as the DVR, more families are watching TV in their own room so that they can watch their own selection of shows.  I definitely feel that with email and texting being so prominent in our worlds now, it takes away from the face to face conversations we all used to have.  I often find that I would rather just send someone an email or text to avoid having to see them in person or picking up the phone and calling them.  What happened to 20 years ago when I could talk for hours on the phone with my friends??

The Medium is the Message

I would definitely agree with Marshall McLuhan that “the medium is the message”.  I read on a web page about Justin Bieber, a popular teenage singer who is practically a household name in every home across the world.  Without the internet, radio or TV, Justin Bieber would not exist to most of us.  He would be a part of the world, but would not be as popular as he is without the medium that got him to where he is.

Most business can attribute their financial success to selecting the right medium and what they choose to broadcast through that medium.  For some business, it makes more sense to network through social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.  For others it could be a website or television commercial.  It depends on how large of a market you want to reach.

I agree with Marshall that TV is a cool medium; it require more than one single sense to interpret and depends on the viewer to fill in the gaps with meaning.  It requires a great deal of interaction as the viewer must participate more in order to perceive the gaps in the content.

Friendships in Cyberspace

I did have a friendship that was exclusively through cyberspace.  We actually knew each other when we were little but I do not remember him as an adult.  We talked primarily through texting or Facebook chat, never on the telephone or in person.  This relationship was different from face to face relationships because he didn’t know me in person and didn’t know what I look like today so I felt there was no judgment in how I have aged or how much I weigh.  It was nice to be able to say whatever I wanted, whenever and have the control to end the friendship at any time if I ever felt uncomfortable.  I ultimately did end the friendship when he started saying things I felt were inappropriate and did not sit well with me.  I watched an incredible movie called “Catfish” which was about a guy’s journey to meet a girl face to face that he had a relationship with online.  It turned out she was not at all who she presented herself to be and the relationship he was having was actually with her mother.  It is very interesting to see how people can hide their “true selves” behind their phone or computer and present themselves as the person that they want to be.

Typical Interview Questions

One of my favorite topics this week was the Typical Interview Questions (Table 8.4).  Due to the economy, I have been laid off from several jobs over the past 8 years and have been to numerous interviews.  I am to the point of feeling comfortable in interviews and have prepared responses in my head.  I know what responses are received well due to reactions I have received in previous interviews.  I also for the first time in my life have started conducting interviews at my current place of employment.  I love how empowering it feels to be on the opposite side of the table and my high level of expectations I have from the interviewee.  I watch for body language, if they have a level of arrogance, how well spoken they are, etc.  One of my favorite questions we ask the person we are interviewing is if they feel that they are lucky.  It is amazing how some people come right out and say no, not at all….while others say they are.  One of the more favorite answers is when they say they would not describe themselves as lucky but fortunate.  When I asked the candidate at the last interview I conducted, he stated that he is very blessed.  We offered him the job the same day!