Final Blog Question 3

I think the most difficult thing for me to grasp in this course would be the organization of sentence structure in an argument. I unfortunately was one of those children who lost out on learning real grammar based on the fact that spell check was readily available. Since I never really understood grammar principals its difficult for me to pick our more complex sections of an argument. I remember the nouns, verbs, etc but putting it into practice of setting up and dissecting arguments gets muddled for me. Other then that I would say that the wrap up blog that was posted for our class was really helpful for me. It gave me things out of the chapter that were especially important in a summarized version. It pointed out things to me that I needed to focus on more and what our professor wanted us to study from the chapter. Overall I was able to keep up and understand most of everything we went over in this course, which is great!

Final Blog Question 2

As a whole, I really did enjoy this class. However, the down side of the course was the group projects. Every project I was put in a position of others procrastinating and not pulling their own weight. I really disliked how my grade was affected negatively multiple times even though I did my own part of the project, got full participation points, and still the project as a whole negatively affected my grade. It is disappointing that I had to over compensate for others lack of preparation. There is not a great way to improve this issue with group projects, as there is always a “social loafer” in a group, it is just upsetting that the people that do the work get punished. To be more positive, I did really enjoy most aspects of this course. I would say that my favorite part was how organized it was. There was no question what was due, when it was due, and what the requirements were. The due dates always were clear and set up far in advance, and I felt that the course was set up for the students to prepare themselves and to be ready for the week’s work. 

Final Blog Question 1

Since this is my second communications class I have taken, I had somewhat of an idea what we would be discussing in this class. Now, at the end of the course, I am really impressed how much of the information stuck! I think the parts of the course that really stayed with me the most would be about communication styles whether it be cultural differences or sarcasm, euphemisms, dysphemisms, and also the section about lying. I think that these spiked my interest because of how often we run into cases of people using these, or using them ourselves. More basic was the chapters about reasoning and evidence. This was especially helpful as it really helped my analyze my writing during the projects. Hopefully I can harness these teachings and include my new knowledge in my future essays and courses. All in all, I believe that this course really included a lot of realistic knowledge that we can all use in our personal and professional lives.

Chapter 12 Question 3

This whole week we have been evaluating everything we see and hear through the scientific process. When using this process of making a hypothesis and testing and using observations, we might have to change our hypothesis based on what we see. This leads me to my post about criteria for evaluating a scientific hypothesis. I think this is really important because we need a solid and well-reasoned hypothesis to begin with. First we need to decide if the problem we are trying to figure out is relevant. Next we see if it is consistent with other theories that are already tested and established. We also need to make sure our hypothesis is in the simplest for we can put it in. This is important so that there is not gray area, it must be clear. Next we have to be able to test our hypothesis and uncover any falsifiable objections. Lastly we can then decide if our hypothesis can be used to predict other outcomes to similar events. 

Chapter 12 Question 2

Drawing an incorrect conclusion based on observation alone is like judging a book by its cover. Without knowing the substance behind that cover, you will never really know if your observation was right. I think the most extreme example of this would be the judgments we have about other people. For me, I ran into this issue while working at one of my jobs. A new girl was hired and I was in charge of training her. She moved to my town from SoCal, and was extremely wealthy, and extremely spoiled. I was not excited nor motivated to work with her but I had no choice. After training her for a few days, I realized that yes she had never worked hard a day in her life, but she wanted to try, and she was willing to work as hard as anyone else. We are really great friends now! These little facts I learned about her lead me to a really incorrect conclusion. I was able to discover that my observation was misleading by actually getting to know her. My hypothesis was wrong and testing through my experience brought me to a different conclusion then I had originally anticipated.

Chapter 12 Question 1

"Luck will definitely be on your side today! Review your budget carefully, you will find that you have a lot more money to play around with than you thought you did. However, before you run right out to the mall to spend it all, think about that one big ticket item that you've been saving up for. This extra money could go a long way toward getting said item in your hands. Think long term with this windfall. Hold off spending it until it can really be used in a powerful way."

My horoscope today is extremely accurate because I am about to put down a deposit on a car. Budgeting is a huge part of my life right at the moment! However, on most days the Pisces horoscopes do not match up well with me because I generally am not very Pisces-like. Since horoscopes are so vague and try to encompass so many people's lives into a few statements, it creates a lot of gray area and could have a lot of falsifiable events. For example, a person that does not have income, they have no real control of the funds, therefore they could now be lucky in their review of their budget. A situation like this would falsify this horoscope. In my case, this specific prediction cannot be falsified because it discusses saving money, and luck. Both of these topics are extremely broad yet happen to apply to me this time.

Chapter 11 Question 3

This week I wanted to focus on my blog post of analyzing and the interpretation of media messages. I think since the media is a huge part of most aspects of our lives, we should be able to pick and choose what we believe is the truth out of those messages. THiNK gives us steps to follow to analyze the media message we are confronted with to then decide for ourselves whether it is something valuable. These are great tips since there is a lot of biased material out there in all types of media. First we need to consider who created the message, what is the purpose of the message and what techniques were used to attract and hold the attention of the audience. Next, it is important to notice what values and points of view are represented and what your own reaction was to the message. The reaction that you had needs to be analyzed too to decide if it was reasonable and well informed as well. Next we need to think of how others would interpret the message, if it is biased, and if the message has good reasoning and facts. Lastly, the possible effects of the message on individuals and society need to be considered. If we use these steps we are sure to be able to critically think about media and their messages.

On a different note... In the book it says President Obama has 8 million Facebook followers. Now that number is up to 33 million!