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.  

Week 10 Post 3

When reading Chapter 9 and 10 this week, the main concept that stuck out to me was forgiveness.  I feel forgiveness is essential to helping an individual get over and move on from a negative situation.  It was interesting to read about the different levels of forgiveness.  It made me go back and think about all the different times I have gone through experiences dealing with each level of forgiveness.  The author of the text states that it is difficult for an individual to "see himself or herself as a person capable of harming others" (Abigail, p. 181).  This is why it is so hard for some people to forgive others because they can't come to this conclusion.  Like I stated earlier, I feel that forgiveness is a big part of moving along and not getting stuck in a negative situation.  Forgiveness reflects a sense of maturity and sometimes, an individual has to put their pride aside when forgiving someone.

Week 10 Post 2

The event that I am going to describe is one from the past.  It involved one of my best friends and was pretty difficult for me to handle at the time and something that is always in the back of my mind when I'm with him.  I was dating a girl in high school and things were steadily progressing.  While I was still talking to her, he was also trying to date her even though he knew I was in the process of doing so.  It was hard for me to forgive him because he broke my trust.  It was also difficult because I know that I would never do something so shady to him, regardless of the circumstances.  Our friendship was damaged for a while, but in the end he apologized and we worked everything out.  Even though things are on good terms today, I still will never forget that the incident happened and always have my guard up around him.  It was an unfortunate situation and one I'm still trying to move on from.

Week 10 Post 1

I am a member of the Facebook community and always try to keep my profile clean and positive because I am friends with older family members and friends.  It is important to me to be portrayed as an adult, mature and responsible.  I usually untag pictures and delete comments that show otherwise.  Another reason to keep my profile clean is that potential employers usually check social networking sites before hiring an individual.  A new feature that Facebook has installed is the “remove from timeline” option.  This is a nice tool to remove information from your profile that you are not fond of.  The information is still visible to the person who posted it, so their feelings aren’t hurt.  To me, this is a win-win option.  Social media is an online representation of the self.  We are able to choose who we are and what we like.  It is one of the most popular means of communication in today’s world.  It relates to conflict because a person may lose a job opportunity or friend based on the interpretation of a negative posting.  If a person wants to be viewed as responsible, I believe it is important to censor your page because many people will judge a person based on the information that is posted and visible to the public.