Informative Speech Evaluation

While I prepared for my informative speech, I felt that I used credible, reputable and scholarly sources of information like from George Washington University, National First Ladies Library website and from the New York Times.  When I first started to do my research I was anxious about where I was going to begin, but it seems like once I got going I was able to uncover some really interesting facts.

 I felt I kept my information organized and clear.  My speech started from the time Eleanor Roosevelt was born, then I explained when she started her schooling at Allenwoods Acadamy which helped shaped her career as the First Lady.  I ended my speech by explaining what she did as the First Lady and what obstacles she had to overcome.

 Even thou I felt my research and organization was done well I felt that I could have been prepared better for my speech.  During my speech I tried to make eye contact at my audience, but looked at my index cards a lot.  I had a hard time getting pass the "giggles" so it was hard for me to constantly look at my audience.  I wish I had more time and resources to prepare a visual aide like using a Power Point.  I think this would have helped me in not being so distracted. 

Eleanor Roosevelt

In your posting, you will briefly explain which successful leader you chose and why. Secondly, you will want to propose a thesis statement for your speech. Remember, you can revise and rewrite your thesis statement at any time during the speech writing process. This is just your first attempt at formulating your thesis statement.

There are two reason I choose to do my speech on Eleanor Roosevelt.  The first reason would be is because I did not pay a lot of attention to my history classes in High School; I thought it was a very boring subject.  Now that I am more older and wiser I am interested in history and I hope to learn something new.  Secondly, I wanted to choose a woman in American History that had a positive influence as being a successful leader.

At the age 14 Eleanor attended a boarding school in London, this boarding school became the stepping stone in educating Eleanor on how become a successful leader.

Credible Source

 http://www.patheos.com/Library/Mormonism

The Patheos website is a good starting point in researching the Mormonism Religion.  This website contains a religion library regarding multiple religions, thus making Patheos unbiased.  The Mormonism overview page lists several statistic.  This website describes many elements of Mormonism such as Beliefs, Rituals and Worship, Symbolism and their Principles.

Gen-X Latchkey Kids

I am fortunate to be part of the Generation X Latchkey Kids.  "Latchkey Kids" are kids who carry house keys to let themselves in their homes while their parents are at work.  These unsupervised kids would take care of themselves before and/or after school until their parents come home.

Since you were home alone your parents would have a list of things that needed to be done.  The list could include starting your homework, chores and preparing supper.  Kids were given strict instructions on not to open the door for anyone and if someone called never tell them you were home alone.

Latchkey kids became more independent, self-reliant and resourceful because of the early responsibilities that were required of them.  Because of this, Generation X values freedom and responsibility.  I can identify with being independent and wanting the responsibility that comes with it.  I enjoy the freedom that the latchkey kids are use to.

Since the number of divorces was on the rise, there was an increase in the number of women in the workforce these two events would effect the generation's current beliefs and values.  

Skills that I can offer my group:

• I feel I would have good editing/proofreading skills.  My full time job requires me to proofread the customer service staff letters before they a mailed out to our customers.
• Along with the proofreading skills, I also have good written communication skills.  Since I am unable to communicate verbally with the customer service staff, I need to send them feedback in regards to their letters I proofread using written form.
• I am organized and keep track of time frames.  This would be able help our group to stay on task.
• I do have leadership skills from past leadership roles that I have had.  I can use these skills to keep our group organized, to help each other work as a team and help with conflict management.  If needed, I could take the responsibility to have to take on additional roles.
• I have good problem solving and decision making skills.  I am one where I will analyze the situation and look at all aspects of the problem before I make a decision.  I do not like to make assumptions. 

Proposed Code of Conduct: If a group member is finding they are having a hard time finishing their portion of the assignment, they will need to contact the other team members, within a reasonable time frame (to be determined by consensus of the group), for delegation to other team members.  

Nonassertiveness vs Assertiveness

For the past 12 years my husband and I have a house on the Wisconsin River that is 15 miles out of town and in the middle of nowhere.  A few years ago we had gotten some new neighbors that are from a suburb of Chicago.  Since this is their cabin they only come up on weekends and maybe a couple full weeks a year.  Our relationship with them hit it off right away.  My husband would help them on their remolding project, we would get our kids together to play and spend time socializing with them around the campfire.  Things were going great until we started feeling like they were taking advantage of us.

In the beginning they would borrow all sorts of stuff from us, from my husbands tools, to my ironing board and allowing their children to take toys from our house to theirs.  Their dogs would free roam in our yard and we would allow them the use of our boat landing and dock.  It did not bother us at all in the beginning as we were trying to be neighborly with our new neighbors.  As time went on the more they thought they had free will offering of our things.  They started borrowing things without asking and forget to bring them back and would use our yard as their own.  Since we did not want to cause waves with them and thought it was a short term thing we just let it be and took the non-assertive route.

Looking back I realize that this was not the way to handle the situation.  If I would have been assertive and addressed the situation when it came up, I would not have felt like we were being taken advantage of.  I felt our friendship was deteriorating because I had a lot of frustration bottled up inside and I started to avoid them when they would come up to their cabin.  Since I did not want to lose their friendship over something that could have been resolved; I told my self the next time there is a situation with them that I would not avoid it and bring it to their attention.     

The next time we had a conflict with them was this past summer.  Since we live in the country my husband as 5 hound dogs that he uses for hunting.  My husband has a really nice set-up for his hounds and I have to say they are really well behaved.  They typically will only bark when it is time to be fed, when my husband is getting things ready to go out hunting or if someone pulls into our driveway.  Our neighbors have owned their cabin for 5 years now.  They have had no major complaints to us in regards to my husband hounds or the occasional short term barking, until this past summer when they decided to rent their cabin to other families. 

One early Monday morning as my husband and I were leaving for work we seen this red light flashing by our kennels.  My husband went to check it out and found that our neighbors had put a no bark device in the shrubs.  To say the least I was furious!  I felt betrayed and felt like they disrespected our friendship.  I was upset that they hid this device without talking to us first.  All the way to work I pondered on how I was going to deal with this situation.  

Since I am unable to make personal calls at work and I wanted to get in contact with them right away the next best thing was to send an email.  I sent a very vague email asking them what this no bark device was and if there was anything we needed to know about it.  I was shocked by the response I got back stating, "Don't worry about it.  It does not work, the dogs barked for 6 days straight around the clock."  This response set me over the edge because now not only did they disrespect us, they were making false accusations against us.  Knowing how upset I was and knowing that arguing over email was not going to solve the situation I did not respond until I got home.

That evening when I got home I waited until my husband got home from work so we could call them together.  We were unable to make contact by using the telephone so we decided to send an email.  In our email we expressed how we felt betrayed and disrespected and did not understand why they did not come to us first if they felt our dogs were an issue.  We explained that we did not appreciate them making false accusations against us; as it would be like us telling them that are dogs do not bark at all.  We pointed out that we do live in the country and not the suburbs so at times our dogs may bark.  

The next day they contacted my husband by phone and had a good conversation with him.  They did apologize for the comment they made about our dogs barking around the clock and admitted that was not true.  My husband worked out a plan with them for when the dogs do bark excessively.  I feel since we did not ignore the situation, nor did we get aggressive with them and handled the conflict by being assertive the outcome was positive for all involved. 

Losing our Listening

  In Julian Treasure's video he is explaining the different ways we are losing our listening.  He states that the invention of how we record things from writing, to audio and now video has made the "premium of accurate and careful listening disappear."  He further states the world is so noisy that it makes it hard and tiring to listen.  Because of this we are becoming impatient, being desensitized and it is becoming harder for us to pay attention to the quiet. Julian expresses that losing our listening is a serious problem because listening is our access to understanding.  Conscious listening always creates understanding and without conscious listening the world would be a very scary place.    While watching and listening to this video it reminded me of my everyday life.  Just at supper tonight there was so much noise around us, the fan on the microwave, the TV, the dog barking and each one of us trying to talk over the other, that it made it impossible for anyone to listen to anything.  These kind of nights make me impatient and too tired to listen.  When I become too tired to listen I become the "fraudulent listener."  Which effects the type of feedback I am giving back to my family.  If listening is the main way we experience the flow from past to present then we really need to become accurate and ethical listeners.  In Julian's video he lists 5 exercises we can do to improve our listening skills:  1. Silence Excercsise: Take 3 minutes of the day to get silence.2. The Mixer: Try to listen to how many channels of sound one can hear3. Savoring: Enjoying mundane sounds.4. Listening Positions: the idea that you can move your listening position to what you're listening to.5. RASA: Receive, Appreciate, Summorize and Ask   I felt it would be fitting for me to try the "Silence" exercise.  I waited until everyone was asleep, otherwise this exercise would not work.  Almost immediately I felt more relaxed and ready to listen.  The sound of my children breathing almost in sync deed in fact reset my ears and got me ready to listen again.  I feel if I practice this exercise everyday I will have less and less days where I am feeling impatient and too tired to listen.  I feel that I can become the conscious listener Julian is talking about and be able to give effective feedback.  Julian is correct in saying, "That every human being needs to listen consciously in order to live fully"

Artifactual Communication

 

I went through several advertisements before I chose this controversial Hardee's advertisement "BBQ's Best Pair - The Memphis BBQ Thickburger."  I chose this advertisement because they are using women that most men would find attractive to sell their burgers.  The advertisement is clearly displaying the use of communication artifacts such as clothing, hair, make-up and jewelry to appeal to their audience.

 

It is important to recognize that the advertisers are using a woman with blond hair and a woman with brunette hair.  The advertisers want to appeal to the audience who are attracted to blonds and the audience who are attracted to brunettes.  Both women are in bikini tops and "daisy dukes" which revel most of their bodies and the audience cannot take their eyes away from the advertisement.  The blond has a heart necklace which dangles above her breast and draws your attention there.  Both women are wearing make-up, but it is applied so the audience is drawn to their eyes (which never look up at the camera) and lips.  This gives the audience the impression that the women are satisfied with their sandwich and if the audience would have the same sandwich they would be just as satisfied.

 

This advertisement uses several forms of nonverbal communication, matter of fact, there is no verbal communication until the last 10 seconds of the advertisement.  The advertisement begins with the two women meeting and giving each other eye contact, which implies that either woman better not invade the other's personal space.  There a lots of use of gestures from a hand on the hip to the movement of their legs.  Towards the end of the advertisement when they realize that they invented a new burger their facial expression changed and there was no concern over personal space.

 

These artifacts and use of nonverbal communication are illustrating that the potential buyers are young men in the age group of 18-34.  The advertisement is using very attractive women and are expressing how Hardee's can make men crave sandwiches like they crave women.

 

 



Language & Society

1. What information did you find interesting in the article you chose?  Why?
• The information that I found interesting was when "Ms." took root.  The reason I found this interesting was because I never realized that "Ms." was not used at one point in time.  I assumed it was always either Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Miss.  In my job when we address a female customer primarily in a letter we are to address them as Ms. because we do not know if this person is married, widowed, divorced or single.
2. What did you learn that you did not previously know?
• I realize as Americans everyone may or may not speak English as their first language, but I did not realize that many African Americans use a language known as Black English or Ebonics.  I was not surprised as I read further in the article that many non-African Americans who live in the inner cities speak this language as well.  It would make sense to me considering they would be exposed to this language everyday.
3. What information did you find fascinating and wanted to learn more about?
• I found it fascinating to learn that bilingual schooling was more common practice in the 19th century, but the students were not given the tools to learn English and more than half dropped out.  I feel it is a shame that immigrants are losing their native language and they should have minority language rights. On the flip side, I do feel that if they are immigrating to America then English should become their primary language. 
4. How will you use this new information in the future? Where? How?
• Even thou English has been adopted by many as the official language we need to keep in mind that not all Americans speak English or can speak English fluently.  I can use this information everyday at my job.  Since I work in a call center I deal with customers from all over the United States.  There are customers I can understand with ease, while there are others that have a heavy southern or foreign accent that I may need them to repeat what they are telling me.  I have to keep in mind that I cannot make stereotypes about the other person on the phone and judge them because they have an accent.

Working Mom

If stereotype is defined as a generalization about people, places, or events held by many members. I would define stereotype in my own words as a pre-conceived judgement about someone/something.

1. How am I most likely stereotyped?  I would stereotype myself as a "Working Mom"
2. What characteristics of the stereotype would be generally true about me?
• Organized
• Multitask
• Flexible
3. What characteristics of the stereotype would be completely untrue?
• Unreliable at work
• Not being able to be that "super mom"
• Not being able to separate my personal life from my professional life
4. What does this tell me about the role of stereotyping in communicating with others?  It is important to recognize fact from inference.  For example, as a working mom there may be times that I come in late to work due to taking a child to the Doctor.  It would be unfair to make the assumption that I was unreliable at work. 
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages to stereotyping others?
• The advantages of stereotyping would be that we already have a generalization about a person, place or event.  When we would be first introduced to a particular group of people, for example "working moms", we would already know that they need to be organized, flexible and be able to multitask.  If we did not stereotype we would have to go through the stages of perception each time we are introduced to this group of people. 
• The disadvantage of stereotyping is when stereotype is involved there is also prejudice and blindering which limits one's perceptual capabilities. 

Seeking a Mother

Mother

• Tomahawk WI
• Full Time Sunday through Saturday

Background & Role

The role of a mother is a 24 hour, 7 days per week position.  Your primary responsibility will be to serve the needs of two young boys that are 7 & 6 by providing a nurturing environment.  You will need to have patience, love and understanding.  You will need to be able to handle pain, conflict and sickness.  Most important you must be willing to put your own needs aside and focus your attention on the boys.  The successful candidate will need to be organized and maintain daily morning, evening and bedtime routines.  I should also include that there is a 4 month old puppy that is involved in the daily routines.

 

 Morning Routine

• Let Buster outside
• Put 3.5 cups of food in Buster's food dish
• Get the boys up at 5:45
• Help the boys get dressed
• Let Buster outside again
• Give Louis his morning medication
• If the boys are not eating breakfast at school, you will need to give them breakfast before leaving
• Put Buster inside his crate with a full bowl of water and a treat in his Kong toy
• Grab the backpacks, have the boys get in the car and bring them to the bus stop by 6:20

 Evening Routine

• Pick the boys up at the bus stop at 4:15, head for home
• Let Buster out of his crate and take him for a 20 min walk
• Have the boys put 3.5 cups of food in Buster's food dish and make sure he has a full bowl of water
• Make supper, load the dishwasher and wash the dishes
• Help the boys with their homework
• Get backpacks ready for the morning
• Have the boys set their clothes out for the next day

Bedtime Routine

• Both boys will need to take a shower
• Let Buster outside
• Have Louis put on his "night -night" undies
• Help the boys with their pajamas
• Give both boys their night time medication
• Help the boys brush and floss their teeth (make sure they use the mouthwash)
• Read a bedtime book and tuck the boys into bed

Please keep in mind, that depending on the day of the week, the routines may change due to Wednesday night church school, obedience class for Buster, parent teacher conferences or sports to name a few.  The role of being a mother will bring great happiness, pride and joy, but along with the happiness, pride and joy; you need to be ready to provide unconditional love, able to handle frustration, and have an unlimited amount energy and patience.  Being a mother can be complicated because every child is unique.  Since your behavior will be reflected onto the children you must maintain self-awareness and have a good self-esteem,   As they say, "Children do not come with instructions!"

What "Course" to Take?

The questions that need to be answered are... was this course chosen by me to take or was it a requirement and what do I hope to learn from this course? I guess it all depends on the way you look at it. So to give you a better understanding of my situation and why I am here lets take a look back into my past.

For the past 9 years I have been trying to work my way up the ladder at work with no college degree. I have had some great accomplishments, but the lime light would always shine down on the fact that I don't have "that" degree. I'm told it doesn't matter what kind of degree you have as long as you have one. I have always tossed around the idea of going back to school, but I would always use the excuse "I don't have the time"; I am already working full time, raising 2 young children and my husband travels for work so he is not around to help.

This was my mindset up until 6 months ago when I received the news at work that the contract we are working on will not be renewed and we will be out of a job March 2013. So for about 4 months I did not know what to do. Do I find a new job, do I wait it out hoping the decision would be reversed, do I go back to school. Knowing that it is a tough job market right now and I do not have "that" wanted degree I felt it was best to take this opportunity and go back to school.

Yes, this course is a requirement for the program I enrolled in, but I did choose this specific course to take. Since I will have a job for another 6-7 months I am not able to start my program until Fall of 2013. My husband and I decided it would be best for me to go back to school slowly and start working on my general ed courses. I chose this specific course because it will help me in my current position at work. If things do not go the way they are planned for me to start my program next fall I will be able to use the information learned for a lifetime.

The next question to answer would be what do I hope to learn from this course?  Although I face losing my job, I am up for a promotion.  My promotion would put me in a leadership role, so having effective communication skills is a must.  I am intrigued by chapter 7: Listening, Feedback and Critical Thinking.  In a leadership role you must have excellent listening skills along with giving and receiving feedback from your co-workers.