Week Ten Journal

This week we started doing collages, which are a lot more fun that I thought. The point of them was to cut out tons of pictures (well, maybe not tons...) and then to later sort through them all and find the ones that appeal to me the most, then put them all in a big collage. It was really cool because I learned a lot about myself through it. Not only did I learn what colors appeal to me the most, but I learned that I yearn to travel to really exotic and beautiful places all over the world. Overall I really had fun with it, especially adding in little tiny text in random places on the picture. :D

Week Ten - Task Two

I think I have excellent communication skills, with a few flaws of course. My best talent in communicating would definitely be making and playing music.

I'm really good at speaking publically, but I do tend to get nervous, which makes my voice a little shaky and makes me talk quickly if I'm not careful.

When speaking with everyday people, I do sometimes speak too quickly or run my words together, but with practice I'm learning to get over that. Also, I'm very good at making it clear what my intentions are or how I'm feeling.

:D

So, the only thing I really need to improve on is learning to speak more slowly and more articulately.

Week Ten - Task One

Three forms of communication:

1. Written - e-mail, books, notes/letters
2. Verbal - speaking, lecturing, commercial
3. Non-verbal - Facial expression, body language, eye contact

Problems associated with each:

1. Written - You can't really hear how the writer intended the text to sound, so a point may be lost.
2. A lot of times, people can have naturally angry expressions on their faces, but that doesn't mean that what they're saying is intended to be cruel. Also, someone who has a speech impediment may not be very well understood through verbal communication.
3. If someone is really shy, they may not be very good at effective communication because of their lack of eye contact, etc.

How these problems could be resolved:

With all of them, I believe practice and research could enable each to be extremely effective. Such as, learning to write in a way to convince people of a certain feeling, or to learn to be an effective communicator, overcoming shyness or fear of speaking in public.

Week Nine - Task Three

A lot of people have influenced my attitude. One of them would be my mom, who has taught me to express my feelings as they come and to keep a positive outlook even on seemingly negative things. My minster has taught me to represent my highest self in all situations and to see the good things in everything. My teachers have taught me that you can be happy even in a bad situation, and in dealing with customers, how to keep them happy even if they're being difficult.

Week Nine - Task Two

I usually am really cheerful at my service learning. I try to be positive and happy because having a crappy attitude in service learning can make everyone else feel crappy too. At Jittery Joe's I have a pretty positive attitude also. It's very important to be cheerful when working with customers, so that you can maintain a good customer-worker relationship. Also because "the customer is always right."

Week Nine - Task One

My attitude fluctuates, as I'm sure everyone else's does. I highly agree with the poem in the respect that things that are happening to me are 10% and the way I react is 90%. What I don't agree with, however, is that someone should be happy 100% of the time, because that would mean hiding their true feelings, such as if they're just not feeling too well. This relates in my life because I am the kind of person who believes in expressing how I feel at the time. That doesn't mean that if I'm angry I'm going to yell at everyone. There's a fine line between expressing emotion in a healthy way and expressing emotion in an unhealthy way.

Overall, though, I think I have a really great attitude toward my life and my life events. I try to look at everything in a positive way, even if it seems absolutely dreadful, and I try to see the good in all situations.

Week Eight Journal

For week eight, we did a fairly bigger project that involved finding a picture from a magazine and drawing it onto a poster board that's about 24 by 15. I found this project to be particularly difficult, because of what I was drawing, which was a picture of some chocolates that had great detail in the simple shapes of the chocolates. I found it difficult because of the simplicity in the shapes and shading and trying to keep everything on my drawing consistant, like shading and tones, was pretty hard. All in all though, I've learned that I have the patience to finish projects like these even though I didn't think I could. I also learned that if I just sit down and try, I can get a lot done.