10 Emotional Intelligences

I believe that judging by my near above average emotional IQ that the one area I should work on from the ten suggestions is relaxation. I participate in a great deal of extracurricular activities at Rider and I did in high school as well, so I typically found myself feeling very stressed but I never felt like I had enough time to relax. I learned while watching the video that relaxing for the sake of relaxing can lead to a positive response. I believe this to be very true, the more tired I am the harder it can be for me to be positive. I feel cranky and it’s easier for me to snap and get upset about little, unimportant things.
My job can also be very high stress because of the various responsibilities that I have, so the advice to try and find time to relax in the heat of a moment of stress was a very helpful suggestion that I plan to try and use in the work environment. Hopefully, with this advice and these tips I’ll be able to find time to relax for myself and create a more positive and stress-free for myself.

Interpersonal Communication and Conflict

For pretty much my entire life I have tried to avoid confrontation with others. Not out of fear, I just have always tried to put the needs of others before my own and because of this I tend not to argue if something is asked of me or if a person tries to start a confrontation with me, I’ll allow them to get their anger out of their system and then I’ll try and discuss the problem with them once they have calm down.
As I have gotten older and been given more responsibilities, I’ve realized that I can’t realistically accommodate the needs of all people, so I have tried to incorporate the defusing technique when I find myself in some kind of conflict with someone else. I have noticed that when most people are angry they will be completely unreasonable in their arguments and accusations, so it is best to get them to calm themselves down a little bit in order to have a conversation that will lead to a resolution of conflict rather than cause more problems. I also try and use elements of the empathy technique because even though I am more willing to take on a conflict if necessary, I would prefer to come up with a method that will suitably satisfy both sides of the conflict.
I think that my use of the defusing technique is one of the healthier options that a person can use in conflict because it will allow for an easier conversation where both parties are speaking to each other in a calm and civilized manner. However, I do think that the empathy method can sometimes be an unhealthy one for people, myself included. If you show too much empathy, you can easily be walked all over by the opposing party or your empathy could get the better of you which will leave you overwhelmed by someone else’s problem.
Speaking personally, I have three younger siblings so I have found myself in the middle of more conflicts than I could possibly begin to discuss here. Often, these are serial conflicts that have come up between us over and over again about chores around the house or even about who is going to use our car and when. My brother is a lot more stubborn than I am so I usually let him have what he wants, not because he’s right but because I have other things to do with my day then argue with him.

Self Disclosure and Social Networking

My thoughts on this article can be summed up pretty well with what I said in class on our day of discussion- “Remember when stalking used to be hard?” There is something incredible about the power that the internet has on our modern culture. Messages can’t be sent across oceans and countries and the ability to interact with people from every conceivable culture is only a few easy mouse clicks away. However, if there’s one thing we all should have learned from Spider-Man, it’s that with great power comes great responsibility. Nowhere is that more evident than the tragic suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi who was outed as being gay by his roommate via the web. Tyler isn’t the first young person, to take his own life because of internet bullying, and unless drastic efforts are taken to educate people that online bullying is just as dangerous and hurtful as bullying offline, he may not be the last.

When I first opened my Facebook account, I was very comfortable with disclosing a great deal of information about myself. My page included my email address, location, relationship status, and pretty lengthy entries as to my individual interests. It wasn’t until I got to college that I began to realize this was a bad idea, mainly because of the fact that I would soon be student teaching. In one of my sophomore year student teaching classes we were told a bunch of horror stories of teachers who had been reprimanded, or in some cases fired, due to content that they had put on their Facebook pages which were discovered by either parents or students. I was also advised to set my profile to private after being hired as a tour guide, since I was now representing the school. Needless to say, my profile was changed to private almost immediately. As time went on, I began to think that it was stupid for me to have all of this information about myself readily available to so many people so I immediately began to delete much of the information I had on my page. I still have a few things up, but for the most part it is things that only people close to me would understand. For example, I have my political views listed as “save the clock tower;” a reference to the film “Back to the Future.”

When I read articles about how much self-disclosure on the internet can interfere with a person’s private life, it makes me thankful that I have drastically changed my point of view on disclosing my own information online. Hopefully, as these technologies become even more widely used, we will be able to develop ways to properly safeguard young people against the dangers that the internet leaves open to everyone.

Listening Styles

I see myself as a People-oriented listener. Growing up, I was always a big reader and I think that contributed to my love of stories, regardless of where they come from. To me, the stories of others have always been much more fascinating to me than talking about my own personal experiences. I don’t know if it would be the best listening approach in all situations, but I think being a People-oriented listener, even to a small degree, can be helpful to create a friendly conversational environment. I often move out of this primary approach while giving tours to family who are visiting Rider’s campus. I become a Time-oriented speaker in those situations to ensure that I can give my tour group all of the necessary information about Rider in the time it takes to tour the campus.

Technology and Interpersonal Communication

I like to think that I create a pretty accurate representation of myself via the internet, or at least a somewhat ideal version of myself. For the most part, I use my facebook account to keep in touch with family members or friends who I am not in regular contact with or for asynchronous communication.

I think the biggest aspect of my personality I try to put forth with the signaling theory is my sense of humor. Most of my comments to friends are jokes about something I overheard or a comment about something they have said to me.

My relationship with social networking is an odd one, I don't really poke people blog, I mostly just use it as a convenient way to keep in touch with friends and family.

Adaption Theory

Conversation 1- For the first conversation I tried something simple with eye contact. Whenever my friend started talking I would let my eye sight wander to something just above her head. After doing this a few times she started turning around to see what it was I looking at. Eventually she gave up and demanded to know what I kept looking at. As far as adaptation theory is concerned, my lack of eye contact suggested that I spotted something more interesting than our topic of conversation which made my friend want to discover it as well so she could adapt to what she thought was a more interesting topic of conversation.

Conversation 2- For this conversation I stepped into the role of the dreaded low talker. As I moved closer to my friend they responded by backing away. Eventually, they just gave up and ended the conversation rather than ask me to stop moving closer. It was interesting to see the difference between the two conversations in that one friend asked me to what I was looking at while another friend simply left the conversation rather than ask me to stop moving closer.

Conversation 3- For my last conversation I tried half listening and one-upping my friend. They eventually got tired of talking to me and also left the conversation.

Intimacy Levels Test

The score I received on the test was a 97 which is above the mean. I think this makes sense, I have always been a very open and friendly so it doesn't surprise me that my score is slightly higher than the mean. I hope that with these behaviors I am putting forward a friendly personality that people feel comfortable interacting with. I don't know if there are any behaviors that I am not portraying that I should, but I'm pretty comfortable with the persona I portray so I'm pretty comfortable with it.