Week 16 Post 3

Over the course of the entire semester, I learned many things that helped deal with and resolve conflict.  My favorite concept that I learned over the course of the semester was the S-TLC System. Although this system seems fairly straightforward, it is something that can be extremely helpful during a time of conflict. I have been in a few conflicts since learning this concept and just thinking about the 4 steps helped me resolve my situation in a positive manner. While working on my workshop, I also learned a lot about dealing with conflict that occurs within families.  Another chapter that was really helpful to me was the chapter on managing anger. This applied to me because I will sometimes lose my cool during certain situations. I was able to learn different techniques on how to deal with this anger and keep the situation under control. This class has been very helpful as it applies to everyday life and will certainly help us deal with different conflicts that we come across in the future.

Week 16 Post 2

Over the semester, I really enjoyed taking this class.  It helped me become more comfortable with something that I previously liked to avoid, specifically, conflict.  I enjoyed doing all the projects in class and thought they were very relevant and helped expand our learning.  My favorite part of the class was the conflict workshop. I learned so much about conflict within family life.  It helped me grow as a person and I was able to share it with a few family members.  I thought all the content of class was great.  I enjoyed doing the discussion posts because they really highlighted the important aspects of each chapter.  Also, responding to other people’s post was helpful because we were able to interact with different classmates.  This is something that is usually difficult in an online setting, but it was flawless in this class.  The only thing I didn’t enjoy in class was posting my video to YouTube.  The quality wasn’t that great and it was sort of a hassle due to my inexperience with posting videos. I would recommend this class to other students because I felt it was a really complete class. I learned a lot and the teacher was very respectful and helpful. All the deadlines were fair and I had plenty of time to complete assignments.

Week 16 Post 1

I think that people tend to have a negative view of conflict due to the fact they don’t know how to handle it.  When individuals aren’t educated on conflict, I would bet that most of their experiences with conflict turn out negative.  That is why this class has been so helpful.  Being able to learn about different strategies to create positive resolutions after a conflict in normal, everyday situations has been beyond beneficial. I believe that the more comfortable be are when dealing with conflict, the less they will fear it.  It might take a while to get over that barrier, however, when one does, they will be able to stay calm and collected during the tough times.  People that are stubborn about conflict or try to avoid it will never be comfortable when it occurs.  Conflict is something that is inevitable and once people realize that, they will be better off.

Week 11 Post 3

The concept that really stood out to me from Chapter 12 was overblown conflict.  Overblown conflict is defined as "when one exaggerates a conflict concerning a relatively unimportant issue. The parties seem to invest far more emotion and energy than the situation deserves" (p. 215).  This is something that occurs a lot in my life, whether from friends and family or myself.  I know many people that live stressful lives and tend to explode about issues that really don't deserve much time or  thought.  I was happy to see that this was actually a concept because I view it often.  I can't tell the class how many times that I hear someone complaining or snapping because of something that I consider very stupid and unimportant.  Reading the example in the chapter makes it more clear as to why these types of conflicts occur. It mostly has to do with bad timing.  This bad timing can cause one side of the parties involved to receive and unwarranted response.  The author states that overblown conflicts are usually settled when the person who does the ranting apologizes and makes up an excuse to explain his/her behavior.  This is usually the same in the overblown conflicts that I participate in or view.

Week 11 Post 2

I work for a painting and construction company so there are always new employees coming and going.  One day, a new employee came to a job and introduced himself.  He seemed nice and was a pretty big guy, so I expected that he would be a good worker.  As the work day went on, he was working at a crawling pace.  He was doing half as much work as everyone else, so I told my boss about him.  I thought that because of the lack of effort he was putting in, he was a bad worker.  My boss ended up confronting him about it and he was only working so slowly because he had broken his rib a few days before while on vacation.  This caused a conflict between him and I that had to be taken care of.  An attribution that has helped me is when my girlfriend gets cranky; I know that she is bored.  I will usually take her out to dinner or plan something fun and this solves the problem.  She just needs to get out of the house and relieve stress.

Week 11 Post 1

When doing the search on the three terms, I used the Google search engine.  When searching for "forgiveness",  results came up as sites that defined what forgiveness was, YouTube videos of songs called forgiveness, and religion and psychology sites regarding forgiveness.  When searching for "reconciliation", results came up with sites that just defined the term.  I noticed that there were a couple different definitions for the term.  When I searched "revenge", I got a bunch of sites that were dedicated to a TV series called "Revenge".  They varied from Wikipedia pages to social network sites dedicated to the show.  When searching them all together, "forgiveness" still brought up the most results.  I believe that is because it is the term that effects our lives the most out of the three.  It is very important in helping heal relationships.  It's a word that affects both the person doing the forgiving as well as the person who has been forgiven.  It is a powerful word and that is why you see it used in so many different ways.