Archives: Reflection Journals

Reflection Journal #11

This is it! The final blog entry. I cannot believe that this is the last one. It is a bittersweet feeling. I have enjoyed the concepts that have been taught in this class, as some of the topics that were discussed have really given me a broader perspective on group dynamics and leadership. Here’s my top three concepts that will be useful in my future career in business, were enjoyable to learn about, and were really intriguing.

  1. Prisoner’s Dilemma Game
    • This social interaction concept between two or more individuals was really interesting to learn and discuss about. The concept is used in not only psychology, but economics and politics as well; it is very versatile in its conceptual use. In the example below, it is obvious that it would be of the best interest for both participants to cooperate, as this equally gives them the least amount of time they would have to serve in jail. However, due to our selfish tendencies we have as humans, it would be of better interest for one of the prisoners to confess and the other to stay silent, and then one of the prisoners go free. This great example of game theory was perfectly executed in the game we viewed in class, Golden Balls, where one of the participants backed the other in a corner and came outright with his stance, no matter what the other had thought. This would be useful to me if I ever decided to commit a crime and have a partner during this crime. It would also be useful if I have a career in economics or politics. This concept is just a part of the conflict chapter that I thought was very interesting, as it requires a lot of cooperation and mutual trust.
    • prisoners-dilemma-graph
  2. Bystander Effect
    • The rape and murder of Kitty Genovese was the perfect, and rather morbid, example of the bystander effect. While this woman was being attacked and raped in her own home and there were witnesses around, most bystanders took no action. Instead, they thought someone else would take action, as they did not want to get involved. While this attack went on for many hours, not a single soul out of the 38 witnesses said a thing. Because the witnesses thought that there were others that were capable of helping in the situation, they did not act. If it had just been a lone bystander, he or she would have been more likely to help as a single person feels like they had a duty to act accordingly. I’ve even seen this countless times before. The situation wasn’t as brutal as the Kitty Genovese case, but it was when a student was asking for help on their homework and no one helped that student due to the feeling that someone else might help them. This is just another example of this effect. Social influence at its finest. Another time that I have seen through this was when I witnessed a carjacking at Phipps Plaza near Lenox Mall. There were plenty of witnesses to the carjacking, but no one called the police due to the fact that the assailant had a lethal weapon. It isn’t necessarily something that can contribute to my success in the business world, but it is still a useful concept to touch on.
    • bystandereffect
  3. Babble Effect
    • I feel like this one pertains to me the most. As an avid talker, I can relate to this one hundred percent. This is the tendency for individuals who talk more have a higher chance to emerge as leaders in a group setting as opposed to those who do not talk as much. I have seen this firsthand in my classes that have group projects, particularly last semester in my Honors Principles of Microeconomics class. We had a group project report on a business that had to be a minimum of 20 pages. At the beginning of the semester, I was nominated as our group’s project leader due to my copious amount of ideas I spewed out at our first group meeting. This led to me doing the majority of the work as far as drafting and editing goes. That class taught me that quantity matters more than quality through my immense amount of discussion and the fact that I drafter 15 of the 20 pages single-handedly. This would be the most useful moving forward as I now know that I can always talk a lot and move up in leadership capability within a group. This would be great during the brainstorming stage on a marketing or business team, as the more you talk, the more you contribute, according to the babble effect.
    • perfect-world-clip-art-communications-zra3oe-clipart

All of these psychological theories and effects I have learned throughout this course on group dynamics has changed my perspective, as the theories discussed were intriguing, interesting, and outright fun to learn about. Some of the theories will also be useful in my prospective future career and leadership position in the business world.

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Reflection Journal #10

Conflict is everywhere. Conflict is inevitable. To approach conflict that might arise from any given situation, I tend to be individualistic about the process. By that, I mean that I am pro-self and only concerned about my own outcomes, unless it is conflict with someone with whom I love or am related to. Even though this may seem selfish, it is who I am. In other situations, however, I am more altruistic in a sense that I want to help others who are in need. For example, if I got into an argument with someone who really relied on me and needed my help, I would still help them out regardless of my emotions or feelings towards them because I want to help others succeed.

To negotiate and handle conflict, I come by a hard bargain. I would take extreme positions and make tiny adjustments here and there to compromise with another. This will ensure that I would still benefit from whatever the conflict might entail, even if I have to make slight changes to my stance. The book describes that these type of people are ‘take it or leave it’ or ‘this is my final offer’ type people, and I can resonate directly to that. This is basically a technique that directly relates to entrapment, kind of like the man on the Golden Balls episode, who came right out and stated his stance and thoughts without hesitation, even though he received backlash from others. Even though I do drive a hard bargain, it is still a compromising position on conflict instead of a fighter. I do tend to get heated sometimes and can shift my stance from compromising to fighting, but only in extreme circumstances in which I am passionate about. It’s my way or the highway.

Image result for my way or the highway

I know this may seem selfish, but I have certain reasoning on why I am this way. Throughout my experiences in group settings, I usually sit through and listen to everyone’s stances on an issue before rendering a final thought myself. Most may not know it, but I do take others’ thoughts into consideration instead of just thinking of ways to counter-argue. In my thought process, once I think all these things through, I render a stance that has qualities of everyone’s positions even if the stance is different from others, unless they are just outright silly and irrelevant. It may seem I am playing devil’s advocate by doing this, but I am doing it for the good of the group. Offering a realist and pessimist view on things will ensure that we keep things real and not aim for ideal standards that are not plausible. For example, the Disney trip that our cohort tried to plan was something that was ideal, but not in reach with our cohort’s current state. At the meetings, I would keep things real and mention things that some didn’t want to hear, like the plausibility of us actually learning anything at Disney, or the fact that we would spend most of our time driving and not learning leadership skills. With these things in mind, it offered our cohort issues that we easily skimmed over, due to the fact that we aimed so high for something that was so expensive. I promise, when I am being pessimistic or realistic, I am not doing it to harm anyone’s feelings. I am offering my realist stance to provide ideas that are within reach.

This way of approaching conflict might have received some backlash in my previous experience in group settings, and it might have even broken some friendships. However, it has been useful to me in the majority of these settings. If I were to change the way I might deliver my realist view; one caveat to change would be my delivery. I seem to come off as bold and harsh, and that would be one thing I would like to fix, as it would help me not come off as someone who doesn’t care about others’ feelings.

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Reflection Journal #8

For my infographics, I decided to look up designs that have a pathway involved in the layout, as our research on the social isolation of youth and its attribution to adulthood is a continuing cyclical pathway. “The Carbon Budget” design is a good design as it discusses the importance of carbon and how it affects our warming patterns, and our group could find a template based off of this design as we want to have a pathway example moving through our infographic. This depiction represents a timeline as well. It is also very simplified as far as content, as it has little snippets of information at each point in the path. I like how the end of the pathway opens it up as a call for action, which is also something we want to discuss in our presentation. One of our sources is a source that talks about the importance of therapy and behavioral research to prevent inadequate adult behavior in group settings as a result of childhood social isolation; and I believe that a path design would be the best way to go for our project and presentation. This infographic is not only good on design alone, but the information presented on the actual piece seems to be accurate, and the image also has its sources listed in the paragraph at the top before the infographic is actually presented. Our infographic doesn’t necessarily have to encompass the problems of carbon usage, but this example still serves as a good design due to the way it is structured and the consistency of accurate content.

(Click on the picture to be forwarded to the link of the source)

What I see as a bad infographic is one that has inaccurate information. This is seen directly in the infographic I selected below. This image is discussing the way baby boomers describe themselves, and the information makes it seem to the reader that there was a sample size of 243%, even though the max it can be is 100%. Also, the design is flawed as the 61% ‘willing to learn’ category looks larger than the 78% ‘people-savvy’ category on the image of the person. If they had the information add up to 243%, those who made this infographic should have stated that the people that were researched could choose more than one choice, thus the reason why the percentages add up to 243%, instead of just leaving it as is. Apparently, this infographic had been used to visualize the results of a survey. Instead of this depiction, there should have just been multiple charts, as that would have been a better way to utilize the data. I mean, come on, the title of ‘How Baby Boomers Describe Themselves’ isn’t even centered; and why is ‘Baby Boomers’ bolded? This stylized method of representing this data visually is just an eyesore. is In addition to that, the little side notes under the ‘tech-savvy’ and the ‘creative’ just seem sporadically placed just doesn’t look right when looking at this image. I deemed this to be a bad infographic due to the inaccurate information, poor design flaws, impotent style, and senseless simplicity.

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(Click on the picture to be forwarded to the link of the source)

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Reflection Journal #7

When I applied to be in the LEAD with Honors cohort, I expected to have guidelines, structure, and design already planned out for us for our four year journey. While we do have some of that, such as our course structure, the way we govern ourselves was just messy and sloppy. Because of this course, however, we were able to answer questions that were all on our minds at our monthly meeting this past week. With that being said, had there been structure before we joined the cohort, we would have been able to have better group performance instead of wasting away all last semester on what our structure was going to be. Because of our sloppiness and indecisiveness last semester; this is most likely the direct reason we saw a decrease in membership by nearly 20%. As of now, we lost almost 30% of our original members, and the numbers are just going to keep dropping. It might be inevitable, or it might be something else that we need to discuss to make sure it doesn’t happen again for the future cohorts.

To maximize group performance, we will need to have someone just draw the line and take a vote on something, rather than bouncing around an idea for 45 minutes at each meeting. I know we want to have all our ideas on the table, but when we just keep brainstorming without deciding on what we want to do, it can drive a lot of attention away from our main focus during our meetings. We already have a leader during the meetings, but we need a monitor to make sure that we decide and come to a consensus instead of just leaving ideas in the wind and moving on to the next segment of the meeting. Also, there just seems to be a lack of interest among about half of the cohort, as some never contribute to the overall discussion and just choose to stay silent. That may be their personality, but personally, I would like it if we heard everyone’s ideas, instead of just staying silent and going with what the majority decides. This may be me playing devil’s advocate, but I feel as if it is necessary for our group discussion at our monthly meetings. Also, we seem to still be fuzzy on our group roles and assignments, and clear rules should be laid out accordingly to each position, so we know what to do to facilitate a better structure. Ineffective team meetings, role confusion, lack of interest and participation, and unresolved issues are all problems that we face in which we need to overcome to become an effective cohort.

For the next cohort, I’m glad that their structure will be a little different than ours, as their HON 1000 class will be a minimester. That would have been the best thing for us last semester, but there is no reason to dwell on past issues. The course structure for the next cohort is already better, and I feel as if they will probably have a better structure overall for both curricular and extracurricular purposes. We just need clear roles and effective team meetings in which I believe will enhance our group performance.

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Reflection Journal #6

I have really enjoyed this class this semester, and it is a larger improvement than the previous class, HON 1000. The previous class was a waste of time and credit hours, and honestly, it should have been just something that was extracurricular instead of me wasting my HOPE coverage on it. Besides that harsh realization, this class has proven great change for the LEAD with Honors cohort, and gets us to think critically about our group dynamics as a functional cohort. With that being said, I believe that the lecture material that is being covered in this unique classroom style is intriguing and interesting, while also serving as a function of real world application to the direction of what we want the cohort to move towards. Tying lecture material and information covered in the book is to our cohort is something that is indeed working. The biggest issue I have with the setup of the course are three things.

The first is the classroom setup. Last semester, in the College of Law, we had a Socratic setup in the room, where we were in a big square, with the front being the center of attention. With that being said, I hope we could have the same setup for our classroom in Classroom South. Instead of the long, horizontal setup we have now, might I suggest we center the room in a different direction than normal. The other main concern I have is the way we setup the quizzes. The quizzes overall are not too difficult, its just that the questions on them are such nit picky that, when reading the book, I tend to forget the certain information. A lot of the questions on this past previous quiz were all subjective to interpretation, which is something I noticed in regards to the previous quizzes being more objective. I do agree that we need some form of grading scale to test our knowledge of the course material, but if the quizzes were less subjective to interpretation, that would be great. Questions such as “what would be the general outcome of the jury vote if it was 9-3 in favor of guilty” with one of the answer choices being “cannot be determined” is too subjective. This is because after reading many pages in the book in regards to how if few stay consistent, they can swing the jury vote, my opinion would be that the answer should have been it cannot be determined. I would say, quizzes such as true/false and questions that come straight from fact are the best way to word the quizzes. Finally, I do not like how ambiguous this group project is. Personally, I would like to know what this group project entails so our group can start working on what needs to be done, instead of waiting for these assignments that serve as ambiguity to the entire presentation of an info-graphic.

Besides those caveats, I do like how the lecture material makes us think as a group. I feel as if this is the best part of the course, and will definitely serve as a reminder on what our cohort wants to do in regards to the promotion, advocacy, and direction in which we govern ourselves.

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Reflection Journal #5

Since we are such a new cohort that is still under development, my partner and I felt that there were not many norms associated with the cohort. So as far as a request to have any change to the norms, I feel as if our new structure that was just established was made too recently to analyze the norms that come along with the structure.

However, we do have the structure of positions present in the cohort, and I have concerns that I think should be addressed properly. My first concern is that the four chairs: service, finance, activities, and communication; should not have any more authority than any of the respective committee members. For example, the communication chair should not have power to decide what the committee wants. Instead, the chairs simply should serve as a representative voice for the committee. From what I have heard, it feels like some chairs seem to think that they have power to decide what is best for the committee, and I don’t think that is a good structure to have. Also, these positions of leadership do not have any rules, regulations, or guidelines on what to do, so stepping into the position can be ambiguous. Especially with the service and communication committees, they do not have much of an active role or presence as do the finance and activities committees. If we want to equally represent, we have to be equal. However, since activities and finance for those activities play such a big role in this cohort, we could possibly see the merging of two committees into one. For example, service could be merged with activities since we only have three members in service currently and activities have nearly six or seven members. This could ensure efficiency and a clear consensus on the direction of the cohort, and I feel that it would be a big step in the right direction on what we want to establish ourselves as.

In my opinion, the communication committee is a conundrum in and of itself. Why do we have a committee specified for communication? I feel that communication is such a universal term that it should just be of habit that we have communication among each other. I know the communication committee is responsible for creating methods of communication among the members, but communication among one another is a self-governing topic. Instead I believe that the communication committee should be transformed into a promotion or marketing committee that is focused on advertising the cohort to outside sponsors and other potential companies. I believe that this will be beneficial to us as a cohort as well. Communication is something that we all participate in, and having a committee who governs how we communicate is pretty absurd (in my opinion). If we have a problem in the way we communicate, we should just be outright and state what problem we are having, instead of having pluralistic ignorance. This will lead to the most effective method of operating as a cohesive cohort.

 

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Reflection Journal #4

When thinking about the performing stage in relevance to the LEAD with Honors cohort, I feel that because of the way the group is structured and that we are the first ones to actually participate in this program, we will mostly be stuck in the forming, storming, and norming phases. We are already in the second year of the four year program, and I feel as if we are trying to establish ourselves as a cohort mostly, which is taking up most of our time in the forming stage. Since we will have cohorts of the LEAD with Honors program that follows us, we are basically the ‘forming’ and ‘norming’ cohort. By the time we are finished doing all of this, we will probably see other cohorts that follow us do most of the ‘performing’.

The way our LEAD with Honors course schedule is set up is that we take the one hour class in the spring of our freshman year, a three hour course in the fall of our sophomore year, a three hour seminar course and a three hour internship in our junior year, a three hour capstone research seminar and a three hour capstone writing seminar in our senior year. Now let me put this into perspective for you. Since this is a four year program for advanced honors students, this program requires us, as students, to stay for four years. When choosing the cohort members, most of them are likely to have many AP, IB, and dual enrollment credits. For example, I came in with 9 credits and then gained 6 more over the summer, so I am a semester ahead of the average sophomore, and will be a junior by the end of this semester.

Now, with that in mind, think about the way the cohort is structured. In the freshman seminar class, we barely knew each other. Then, when this course comes along, we saw a drop in membership from 30 members to 24 members. I know for a fact that one of my friends dropped due to the way the structure is in requiring us to stay for four years, and also because of the fact that she plans on transferring. Membership retention is a big problem for us already. We already saw a 20% decrease in members. My other thought goes back to when we were discussing about the rewards of this cohort, and what it can offer us. Most said that the internship is the biggest reward. Since the internship is in our junior year, how many do you think we would see drop this cohort by the time that finishes? I feel that membership retention is our biggest problem facing the cohort today, and since we are so stuck in the forming and storming phase, it causes us to see this decline. The information that the book outlined about the rarity of the performance phase did not surprise me one bit.

As you know, I am a pessimist when it comes to this cohort, but only because I want to keep a rational mind when thinking about the development of the ‘first class’ to participate in this program. It isn’t to mean any harm. I know that we are free to decide what we want to get out of this cohort, but to actually align with the performance stage of group development, this idea of the ‘LEAD with Honors cohort’ should have had more time with development, BEFORE letting members join it, because even though it is a four year journey and we are setting a name for ourselves, I just feel like it was too rushed in the process of planning what the overall goal and mission of the cohort is. This is only my opinion though, as I know some other members of the cohort love to take action and love the way it is set up currently, however, I think we can all agree that the structure and the way the cohort concept was drawn up is a tad underwhelming. This, in turn, will assist us in NEVER reaching the performance stage, and we probably will not see the performance stage in action of the LEAD with Honors cohort for years to come.

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Reflection Journal #3

During my college experience at Georgia State University and with the Honors College, I have experienced many engagements with downward social comparison. Even though it may sound arrogant; because I am with the Honors College, it is a natural comparison process with my friends. The majority of my friends are not with the Honors College, so when I tell them about the great accomplishments that I am achieving with it, such as my UAP job, my participation with LEAD with Honors, and a variety of other social events, I feel like I am more involved than that of my non-Honors College counterparts. For example, my roommate last year was not in the Honors College, but I was. We were taking the same class, which was POLS 1101, except my class was an Honors class and his was just a regular class. When we compared our syllabi, my course seemed less stressful even though the course only had two tests that determined your entire grade. By the way, I made an A in the class. Besides this, I didn’t seem all that stressed because I already knew how Honors courses worked compared to regular courses, and that I was going to do well. This boosted my entire self esteem level and made me feel good about my participation with the Honors College. I also felt bad for my roommate who had to struggle with his POLS 1101 course, to the point where he was not learning the material as well, and just became frustrated with the topic; and was very anti-political science. While he saw me performing well in my American Government course and he was struggling, he made an upward social comparison, which did lower his self-esteem levels a bit, but he took the initiative to ask me for help and strove to do better in the course.

At this point in the semester, the applications for the Honors College had gone out for potential applicants, and my roommate ended up applying. He told me that he wanted to be a part of it because of all the opportunities I was being offered; as well as wanting to receive that quality education where he would actually learn something instead of just studying for tests the day before the exam. I am glad that he made the upward social comparison to how I was doing since it boosted my confidence levels, as well as painted him a picture of what he wanted to make himself known for. When the results came back, we celebrated as he was eventually accepted into the Honors College! Even though we are not roommates now, I wanted to wish him the best of luck with all his endeavors and am glad that he saw an image in me and strove to perform better in school, as well as becoming more involved by becoming employed and serving his community with various civic engagement opportunities.

As for our group project and how our selection process is going, we are hoping to each bring a topic on Friday during class so we can discuss what we want to do. We are just kind of going with the flow as of right now, and we will have a confirmed decision (hopefully) by this coming Friday. I had the idea of correlating studies between children in the relation to college students, we just don’t know what we want to have our topic as. All we know right now is that we want to include children in our project.

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Reflection Journal #2

One group in particular that I can remember that I joined deliberately was the Patton Hall Community Council. As a freshman, you always hear your elders telling you to get involved in your first year of college, so this group was one that I joined to participate and build leadership skills. To be on the council, you had to go through an election process and be voted in by your peers in the building. So, since I was living in Patton Hall, I had to connect with every resident on a personal level in order to get votes and also to get a better understanding of the possible representation I had to bring forth to my potential council. Even though it is not a group that EVERYONE can just join, the way I connected with the group still connects greatly to some of the concepts mentioned in Chapter 4 of our book.

The election process was rough. We had to participate in debates with our fellow competition, and since we are all freshmen in Patton Hall, we were all very eager last year. Bear in mind that I was running for the Treasurer position. The Five Factor Model of Personalities, or “The Big Five”, was something that I could easily relate to with this process. To stand out among the competition, I had to exhibit extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Painting a positive image, I had to show my personality by being:

  • Extroversion
    • Enthusiastic
    • Bold
    • Energetic
  • Agreeableness
    • Kind
    • Cooperative
  • Conscientiousness
    • Organized
    • Efficient
    • Systematic
  • Neuroticism
    • Relaxed
    • Calm
    • Emotionally Stable
  • Openness
    • Intelligent
    • Creative
    • Imaginitive

Without having these traits, there was no way I could have been elective by my fellow peers into the position. Because we were the council for the residence hall, we were to represent the people of that hall and listen to their concerns, while also putting on special programs for the residents. So, for this process of actually being put into the group, I had to fit in with these characteristics as a representation of my group personality. This model can also be seen even when making friends. No one is a careless, sloppy, disorganized, temperamental, and unsociable person (even if they may seem like it); which leads me to believe that everyone can exhibit these traits.

Even on the campaign trail, I can remember exhibiting social anxiety, which is also mentioned in Chapter 4. I can remember during the debate night, I had not packed the proper clothes for the event, so I showed up in a tee and shorts, while my competitors were dressed in fully fashioned suits and dresses. I guess I didn’t get the memo. I became very embarrassed very quickly, so I just did what I do best: I was myself. I didn’t try to paint a false image or representation of myself, and I told the audience that I was NOT going to do that to them either. This is when I believed that I was going to win, and I did–so I guess it isn’t all that bad showing up in improper dress attire.

As for the biggest determinant for me running for and accepting the nomination into the council was just because I wanted to get involved and wanted to gain more leadership experience as a freshman. Even if our group dynamic was off and we did really get along much, we still succeeded in the overall mission: to properly represent the residents of Patton Hall by listening to their concerns and taking action. Because of this journey I partook in last year, I believe that I am much more equipped to serve as not just a leader for others, but for personal growth and development as well.

Patton Council Sign

This is a picture of our first bulletin board that we created. (PS: I’m on the O in “Council”!)

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