Week One Journal

Week One Journal Alicia Campbell COM 320 March-Eleventh, 2013 Sheila Yarbrough Week One Journal This is the start of a long journey in learning to enhance my interpersonal communication skills. I know there is much in store to learn and I plan to take full advantage of the ideas to help me succeed. There are many elements in the communication realm and I never would have thought that they fit somewhere in my life; however, I learned differently. I experience source-receiver every day when I talk to my husband about his day at work or just playing with my boys.
Encoding-decoding is done daily as well when I instruct my four-year-old to complete a task and I know when he completes it, he has decoded what I instructed him to do. I experience competence every day as well in the form of communication I use with my husband vs. my children. When I put myself together to go out because I want to look presentable to others, I am giving them the message that I care about how I look because I want to make a good first impression. When I am on Facebook daily; I am channeling my friends and family when I post messages for them to read.
Context comes in my free time, when I have a chance to glimpse through a magazine; I will most likely read cover articles than any of the others. This is a physical dimension of context. My youngest son sees the Dr. monthly, and she uses doctor jargon, which is difficult to comprehend which is a form of noise. I learned ethics from a very young age; I was taught to respect my elders, talk politely, and listen. I realize all these elements incorporate in my life somehow I will take them into account more often.

By taking the quiz in chapter one, I learned I do not know much about my interpersonal communication skills. I did not realize that all of the answers were supposed to be false because I answered some true. Most of these statements were generally false; however because each of these statements is a learned skill because you are not born a competent communicator. Therefore, I plan to practice ways to improve my communication skills with people from different walks of life. One thing I did not realize is that quality matters over quantity in the amount of communication skills with others.
Because I do not have much adult interaction throughout the day (stay-at-home mom), I try to choose my words wisely when I do have adult interaction. In the context of the situation, I need to remember to adjust my communication type. I just experienced this the other day when my son came to me crying because he got hurt; I got down to his level and told him everything was going to be all right versus laughing at him. This also goes along the lines when communicating with people of different cultures; people with different backgrounds attribute different meanings to a message.
I experience this firsthand when I was employed, I had to choose what I discussed and how to choose my words carefully because women from different ethnic backgrounds were employees that may take the topic of discussion more to heart. I know I am a person who tries to avoid meeting new people if I can help it; I am a very shy person. However, I am getting better at this quality. I am the one that waits for the other person to talk; I reply back. Practicing this fear will help regardless. Another point to remember is to keep from avoiding conflict.
Every once in a while some type of conflict is healthy for a relationship. I do not see this, though, because I have so many people that tell me this since my husband and I rarely argue. Personally, I do not see how conflict is healthy for a relationship. Even though I communicate with people verbally and nonverbally daily, I did not know the true definition of interpersonal communication and what it entailed. I think it is important to study interpersonal communication because I will need use these skills for the rest of my life and studying it will only help me get better at the qualities I am not so good at.
Once I get better at communicating in different situations and with different types of people, I will come across more professional at job interviews and relate to people more effectively. Looking back at how I have communicated with people in the past and what I have come to just shows that the world moves at a much faster pace than once was. One area I hope to improve on is this, I used to write hand-written letters to my husband; however, time is changing so now all I do is Skype or e-mail when he deploys.
I still need to be thankful though that he has the opportunity for this; however, it would be nice to get a letter every once in a while. It just seems life has us moving in fast forward these days. So, I hope to get as much from this class as possible. The areas I need to improve on are all of them from what I see. I want to learn how to communicate more professionally with people of higher stature because I always get nervous, which makes me sound like I am not confident when on the other hand I want to communicate at an effective level.
In general, I want to become a more confident speaker and lessen my fear of speaking with new people. I plan on soaking up all the information this course throws my way and use it to my advantage. Interpersonal communication is part of everyone’s daily lives. I am going to take in every idea this course has to offer and my communication skills should get better as time progresses and make me a more confident person in all aspects of life. These girls look like they are sharing secrets and the girl with the shocked facial expression shows me that she is receiving the message from the source.
This man is using his messaging skills because he is showing he knows how to make a good first impression. Man and woman experiencing conflict and man trying to block her out by holding up his hand which shows me he is refusing to listen to anything she has to say. This is a form of psychological noise. This woman is receiving a hand-written letter via mail (the medium), which is a form of channeling. I see this photo as a form of encoding-decoding. The parents are reading the book to the boy and he is showing that he understands what is read (decoding) by laughing.
When this woman chooses to read a topic from the front cover that caught her eye, she is showing an example of context in the physical dimension. These two women are doing a form of gossiping, which goes against an individual’s ethical standard. The patient is conversing with the doctor in a way that aligns with her competence. This means she is adjusting her communication style because of the person she is talking to. References Alo Mukerji. (2010). [Photograph of two woman what looks like gossiping]. Retrieved from http://blog. compete. com/2010/11/01/the-latest-gossip-on-a-site-about-gossip-tmz/ Bridal Guide. 2012). [Photograph of woman getting her hair done while reading a bridal magazine]. Retrieved from http://www. bridalguide. com/blogs/bridal-buzz/david-tutera-bridal-guide-cover-shoot Classroom Tales. (2010). [Photograph of parents reading little boy a book, and he is laughing] Retrieved from http://classroomtales. com/2010/10/09/580/ Digital Den. (2011). [Photograph of two girls one whispering to the other]. Retrieved from http://thedigitalden. files. wordpress. com/2011/10/bigstock_secrets_910281. jpg P. Nannini. (2013). [Photograph of woman getting letter out of a mailbox].
Retrieved from http://providencepcc. org/awesome-things-getting-a-handwritten-letter-in-the-mail/ Regrounding. (2011). [Photograph of female patient talking to doctor]. Retrieved from http://regrounding. wordpress. com/2011/07/06/the-arts-of-doctoring-and-patient-ing/ Younglifeperception. (2012). [Photograph of man in suit reaching out to shake some ones hand]. Retrieved from http://younglifeperception. wordpress. com Younglifeperception. (2012). [Photograph of man and woman fighting; man putting up his hand to block her out]. Retrieved from http://younglifeperception. files. wordpress. com