Communication.

I really enjoyed this week's topic of conversation. Being an extravert, open communication is something that I highly value. The activity we did where we played a peer mentor and a student was very beneficial because it allowed us to have some experience in this type of setting. What I mostly enjoyed about this activity was that the questions were not questions that could have been easily answered. It really made us think about the answers and connect with the student on a level that we might have not been at before. The situations we were given also made us broaden our horizons on whether we were best fit to answer that issue or if we needed to refer the student to someone else who could better help solve the problem. 

I also enjoyed the discussion we had comparing and contrasting advice giving and interpersonal communication. I had a good idea of how they were related but I was having a little difficulty contrasting the two. After the venn diagram activity, I strongly feel that I am capable of determining the difference between the two. If I had to choose between the two I think I definitely have a preference for interpersonal communication over advice giving. I say this because once again, having a personal preference for feeling, it is important to me to make those personal connections with people. Since interpersonal communication is highly based upon using energy and feelings to help connect with a person in order to help solve their problems this method of communication and problem solving fits best with my personal preferences according to the Meyers-Briggs Personality Test.

Hopefully next year I will be able to use this method of problem solving to assist at least one if not more freshmen through experiencing a "troublesome" period of their life. 

Ch. 3 Enhancing Cultural Proficiency

After our discussions in class last Thursday I went back into chapter 3 to do the blogging prompt activity on page 80. Here, factors that may contribute to your culture are listed and you are to pick a couple that you think have an influence on your life, but the one that I want to mainly focus on is tattoos.

I know that tattoos have become popular more recently and not everyone is for tattoos. Some believe that your body is a gift from god which is made perfect and to get tattoos is like disrespecting his gift and "saying" it's not perfect to you. Although I can relate to this view point and see where others are coming from I still appreciate what my tattoos have allowed me to do as a person.

I personally have three tattoos, while others may think that they are tacky, these tattoos are not just some random design thrown on my body due to a lost bet. They are an important piece of my life and looking at my body and seeing these tattoos is now who I am. They are a part of me. Every one of them has a specific meaning to me and they are daily reminders of who I am, where I have come from, the support system and strength I have which allows me to make it through difficult tasks as well as daily life.

When people ask me about my tattoos I love to explain why I have them and their meaning because it allows me to become more personable towards this person while discussing pieces of my life with them. I also feel that they are conversation starters! Haha. I'm not saying I need them in order to start a conversation (because we all know I can stir up a conversation from nothing!) but others who may not be as outgoing may see this as an opportunity for a good conversation. My tattoos allow me to really express who I am and to share my traits, qualities, and past with others.  Many people still might not be able to see their importance to me or why I did it, but to me they are a huge part of who I am and being able to share my stories with others may help them understand why my tattoos are of so much importance to me.

Couldn't Have Been More Accurate. MBTI II.

I was really shocked by the outcomes of this test because when reading through the information in our packet I really felt like someone who had known me my entire life sat down and wrote this packet on how I act and feel. I am an ESFP. Extraversion, sensing, feeling, and perceiving. After looking at the subcategories in each section, I feel very confident that this type speaks exactly who I am.

Extraversion:
All 5 of my facets under extraversion are all on my preference of extraversion. Not only are they on that side, but they are all way way way on the side of extraversion. I know many of you are probably thinking "haha, it took you long enough to figure that out!" but even though this is what I had known and probably realized I didn't know what it meant for my personality type and how I needed to embrace/change it. This being said, I do have preferences for people to genuinely interact and get to know each other, find it easy to express my feelings and interests, am easy to get to know, TALK A LOT!, dislike being alone, like being in groups, like to communicate face-to-face or voice-to-voice, learn better by doing, hearing, and asking questions than by reading and writing, I like being where the action is and I feel that life is meant to be exciting! Also I do have a problem of getting bored so I make things happen and try to engage others in activities.

Sensing:
Under the sensing category I did have a couple out of preference facets and when I look at them I can't help but laugh because I know they are all so true. I am not very concrete or realistic but I am abstract and imaginative. This meaning that I am curious about meaning and implications, I can over interpret facts and finding meaning that later proves to be unfounded, and notice details conscientiously but may sometimes find them irksome. I also like to apply my resourcefulness to specific problems but do not really enjoy imagination for its own sake. All of my other facets do fall within the sensing side of the category. Practical, experiential, and traditional were the last three and experiential and traditional pretty well top the charts. I learn best from direct hands on experiences, I focus more on past and present then the future and this may not always be a good thing! Traditional basically means that I really like to identify with what is familiar and I am very comfortable with things that are tried and true because I know what the outcome will be.

Feeling:
Empathetic, accommodating, accepting and tender were all the facets that were included in preference. Questioning on the other hand was out of preference but I think it really does apply well to my life. Empathetic basically means that I make all of my decisions based on the feelings of the group, and what their moods/reactions to decisions will be, and weigh positive and negative feeling of a situation in order to make a decision. Compassionate meaning that I trust my own values as a reliable basis for decision making and am in touch with both mine and others' feelings. I also am influenced by my likes and dislikes in decision making. The questioning part of me which was out of preference, means that I like to focus mostly around people and values and I use these questions to help draw out others' feelings. I can be skeptical, confrontational, and outspoken, but my questions are sometimes misinterpreted as oppositional or contentious even if I am not trying to make them come across that way. Having an in preference for accepting and tender allows me to focus on the good in people and situations but also expect others to respond with kindness. I also really genuinely want people to like me, I give others the benefit of the doubt, see lots of ways to arrive at an agreement and want everyone to feel good with end results!!

Perceiving:
For perceiving I did have one in the midzone and one out of preference facet. Systematic-casual was my midzone and this means that I like a general plan but find too much detail to be inhibiting, and I don't mind interruptions as long as I don't have an agenda in place to mess up. I am planful, but this is an out of preference facet. Being planful makes me prefer broad plans because I like to have general plan but work out the specifics on how to achieve it, and I use plans to provide directions but these plans have to be flexible to follow. My highest in preference is pressure-prompted. This means that time pressures do help me do better and I easily get bored when not doing something. I need to know just how late I can start to actually meet deadlines, even though this is a bad thing, on the bright side it does allow me to have excellent timing and some planning skills! Next is scheduled-spontaneous this means that I prefer to have a moderate amount of routine in my life because it can provide some predictability and ability to respond to some opportunities. This being said, I do appreciate a routine with work and school but at home a routine is confining and I like to be spontaneous. The last facet under Perceiving is emergent and this was an in preference fact. Being emergent means that I plunge in without detailed plans, I like to wait and see what happens, and then "wing it" which I often do in homework and I tend to operate in a non-linear way and am able to switch sides in mid-argument.

I am really glad we did this because I feel as though this report really fits my life to a t and I am curious in how I can use these facets to help fit my personality in with others and how I can modify my personality to work best with myself and others. Also, I would like to do more reading to understand how my best attributes can apply in my work and career path and what attributes need to be worked on or modified in order to be the best that I can be in my field.

Leadership. What does it take?

At first I was a little concerned about these two conferences. Not because I didn't want to go but because I was intimidated by the title of these opportunities. I was nervous about not being able to correctly contribute my thoughts to our discussions, but I knew that this was going to be beneficial even if I had just sat and listened.

Mid-Year Institute:

At the Learning Community Mid-Year Institute conference I attended two sessions. The first, called "Habits of Thinking", was a session in which we examined different traits thats are important for peer mentors to have and how we can incorporate those thinking habits into our daily lives to help improve our mentees. After lightly discussing all of the habits of mind that we had to choose from, our group decided to really focus on responding with wonderment and awe. I thought it was very interesting that out of empathy, communication, persistence, emotions, humor, creativity etc. that responding with wonderment and awe was the key one we wanted center. It also intrigued me because I found this one as a habit that most would not instantly think of when discussing leadership and mentees but after our discussion I realize that it is in fact very crucial.

To mean responding with wonderment and awe means that one is able to step back, just breathe, and really feel and take in all aspects and degrees of the situation in order to generate a truly empathetic response. Even if no response is needed I still feel that being able to just sit back and think about everything that has been accomplished that has made the current situation possible. This aspect is very important because it allows you as a mentor to see different perspectives of each and every situation. Having this habit allows you to stay humble and gives you the ability to utilize every one of your senses to fully experience and express the possibilities. In order to incorporate this into my everyday habits of thinking I would start by physically taking the time to just sit and think about how I got where I am and trying to include my senses in decision making allowing myself to stay humble and personable.

The second session I went to was purely on strengths. I had heard of this but wasn't entirely sure of what it consisted of, but I had learned that everyone has top 5 strengths that go along with their personalities and being able to make use of your strengths and they can interchangeably work with the strengths of others allows one to collaborate. When doing group activities it is important to have diversity within the group because having a lot of similarities might make an activity easier or better but it will not produce the best results. Knowing your own strengths allows you to also be able to find your role within a group setting and even using different strengths of yours to make the group more well rounded. I feel that I would like to find out my own strengths and learn how to fully utilize them myself.

I.S.L.E:

I was very fond of the keynote speaker at I.S.L.E and I actually enjoyed this conference a lot. I loved how he turned his key concepts into applications through showing us them in action in some of our favorite movies of today. He did leave me with a lot of quotes that I had written to always keep reminding myself of. In my apartment, I have a wall that is completely covered with a collage of quotes and he gave me so many that I will probably end up filling up the entire wall. Some of my most favorite are:

"Leaders don't wait for things to happen, they make it happen."
"In order to create harmony you have to have diversity."
"If two people are the exact same, one is unnecessary."
"Great leaders focus on the internal victories instead of the external rewards."
"Human Beings are just like wheel barrows, you only go as far as you're pushed."
"Give people room to fail, anything worth doing is worth doing badly until you get it right."

I have learned so much from him alone at this conference that I am very glad I decided to attend the keynote speaker. I will always keep my notes on how to be a good leader with me because reading them on a daily basis and seeing them often will put belief into my head that that is who I am. I also really wanted that book he was selling butt they ran out.. SHOOT!

After the keynote speaker, I attend the UZOO session. This session taught us about what personality type we are and how "predictable" our personality types can make our actions. First we tallied up our scores and then the highest 2 or 3 people from each type was sent out into the hallway where we had to come up with an event. Any event you could think of. Then while we were outside the students inside were being taught about what personalities will come up with which kind of event just because of the nature of the personalities. I found this to be super interesting because I didn't realize how predictable our actions really are and how we can accomodate our personalities with others.