Archive for month: November, 2014

Part I

Our last two sessions in class where pretty interesting.  Two weeks ago the activity with the stars was touching. During the activity i had a blue star i believe where my family and friends where having a hard time accepting but still supporting the decision. The whole time i was thinking about my cousin because he went through that scenario when he came out of the closet. I found it interesting how he waited until the day of his high school graduation to confess that he liked males instead of females. I understand why he waited because in high school every kid judges and more when someone is different. Like Jaimie described, our whole family knew but we never said anything because it wasn’t our business.  When he took me into the room and confessed all I had to say was, “your my cousin and I’ll love you for who ever you choose to be”, and he responded by, “Thanks, I know i can count on you”.  Not just me, but i am happy to say that the rest of my family is supportive too, and I know that means a lot to him. Then our last session we did our chapters presentation. I enjoyed the book, it was a powerful story. Lavar is like a role model. Someone who came from a bad neighbor hood, had his ups and downs in life, and yet still made it to be someone important that people can look up too. This book reminded me of the first activity we did outside. I see it as no matter where we come from or the struggle we went through, at the end we all together in the same school, in the same class, with the same professor, with the same goal of getting educated to be someone in life.

Part II

The readings where about gender in higher education are more about the females progress and discrimination in education. In chapter 9, it states that in over two decades, women are stepping up and achieving more in higher education than men. Before college, males are more likely to drop out than women. Years ago in the 1990’s males where the ones that where two times more likely to graduate than women. Somehow this has changed and I believe it’s because women have more rights and more choices to choose. In the article of Goldman, he says that women are underestimated to earn a degree in STEM. Women are expected to have easier career choices like education, art, nursing, or other topics that men don’t really go for. But it is said that once in college women tend to change their majors for one of the fields in STEM. I believe that women can be smart like men in solving math problems , studying technical courses,  being engineers, and figuring out science. Me on the other hand STEM was never my favorite topics, that’s why i chose communication. I rather speak than doing math.

Questions:

1) Why is it that men are dropping out instead of completing their education?

2) Why are women not encourage to study STEM

3)Why are women more interested in education than men?

4) How can we make women interested in STEM?

In episode six of Survivor there were some interesting dynamics Dale of the Cayopa tribe is upset because his daughter was voted off. The hunapu tribe is stressed out over their lack of food and tries to barter for food. They had to trade all of their comfort items and some excavation tools as well as tarps to protect them from the weather.  The Verbal and Nonverbal communication begins. For cayopa, Dale expresses anger and distrust it is written all over his face.  For hunapu. As they give up all their items for rice they begin much nonverbal behavior and expression. There are many sighs, frowns and hand gestures expressing their concern and frustration with the situation they found themselves in. What stood out to me the most was Defensive and supportive behavior. Dale is planning a strategy to manipulate the tribe with his fake idol. Natalie expresses empathy in volunteering to go to Exile Island even though she didn’t have to go. But then they receive a idol tip and begin to devise a strategy to use the idol to manipulate the game.  Jeremy exhibits evaluation he is questioning everyone and wants control; he was all upset that they gave away their things for rice when they did.  But over all there was allot of team talk. The tribes act as teams either to win challenges or keep from being voted off. . They listen to one another for information regarding banding together or deciding in whom to vote off. During their individual interviews all they reference to is I but in the tribe at camp it’s another story. They speak more supportively Jeremy telling his team mate Natalie that he needs her and she can do it, to hang in there. During the challenge the team Hunapu is successful in communicating well as a team during the puzzle portion and it encourages the team in a supportive way leading to their win.

After reading Chapter 6, the concepts of verbal and nonverbal communication seemed to jump out at me in this episode. The dimensions of team talk were evident in a variety of situations but, more often than not, the dimension of identification was readily identifiable. In both tribes, members were heard using plural pronouns when talking about their tribes. Alec expressed concern about “our tribe” and wondered aloud about “what we’re going to do” about food in the Hunahpu tribe. Jeremy, also, identified with his team as he stated his belief that “we can win a reward tomorrow.”

On the other hand, singular pronouns were also used frequently, but in a different context. When tribe members were talking about their own personal agendas in the game, they began saying things like “I won’t be going home” and “this goes in my favor”. It should be noted, however, that this kind  of speech was only used when tribe members were talking one-on-one with the camera. If anyone used this kind of language in front of the tribe, they would appear self-centered and untrustworthy.

That being said, not all of the communication that occurred in front of the tribe was appropriate. It seems that the tribes are still working their way through the storming stage because abusive language was abundant. Alec was really upset about the mismanagement of food in his tribe and, it was indicative in his verbal expression as he exclaimed, “what the hell guys?” It didn’t stop there, though. After Julie had a rough night in the rain, Alec used some offensive language to communicate how he felt about the matter.  Saying things like, “Bitch, this is Survivor!” is demeaning and not an effective way to use team talk.

It follows, however, that Alec wasn’t the only tribe member to use abusive language. Jeremy was clearly irritated with the way his tribe handled the lack of food situation and, he complained that those “braniacs gave [the tarp] away”…”they’re so dumb!” While this language is highly offensive, no words were necessary to interpret how Jeremy felt about his tribe’s decision. Jeremy’s nonverbal behavior left no doubt  that was he clearly unhappy with losing the tribe’s comfort items.

However, despite the offensive language and disagreements, the Hunahpu tribe continues to dominate. Coyopa does a better job of managing their resources at camp, but they can’t get it together for the challenges. Hunahpu is the stronger tribe but, maybe the tide will turn…

For episode six of survivor can connect a lot with chapter 7 about listening from the text. The episode began with an interesting situation on the blue tribe with their food situation. There definitely seemed to be a divide on what should be done about moving forward with bartering for food. Members of the group that wanted to barter for the bag of rice appeared to outnumber the number of members that felt the barter was a bad idea. While the communication was not shown it would appear the non verbal cues were not picked up by the other tribe members and members like Julie and Jeremy both felt that the trade was a bad decision. Especially for Julie during the rain. Listening also played a key role in the elimination challenge and what followed. The listening to respond and understand didn’t take place for the yellow group, so they lost yet another challenge, and it is the continual loss of the yellow tribe that is really making the show depressing to watch. No one wants to watch a team get completely dominated in a competition and i for one am tired of watch Coupa lose.

Listening was also interesting in the situation with Dale. Dale played a good game using the bluff immunity idol to his interest, and even though it didn’t work out for him in the end, it was still a good play on his part. Ultimately the What’s In It For Me just wasn’t large enough to get John to listen to Dale and switch sides at tribal council.  I think that what Dale was missing was mainly personality differences within his tribe. We didn’t really see the day to day operations of the tribe, and what i think ultimately happened was Dale made him self an outsider do to his differences in personality with his tribe, which ended up painting a target on his back.