Course Takeaways

I got a lot out of this course and I would recommend it to anyone. I grew emotionally a lot from this class. I am a recovering drug addict and this class taught me a lot on how to deal with my addiction. The number one thing I got out of this class is how to be a good listener. Before this class I always thought I was a pretty good listener, boy was I wrong, I was not even close. There is a big difference in hearing someone speak and listening to someone speak. I learned that body language plays a big part in it. My communicating skills have improved a lot. I also learned how to resolve conflicts that right way and I plan on to keep using these skills the rest of my life. I never knew there was a correct way to argue. I thought I was just suppose to yell and scream until I was tired of yelling and that was the end of it. This class humbled me, and it caused me to do a lot of soul searching and self-discovery. It's funny because I treated this class almost like a hour long, twice a week therapy session, the only thing lacking was a couch for me to lay on. There was so many things I learned about myself from the activities I did in the work book, especially the ones where there was like 15 to twenty statements or questions and I would have to answer yes or no, or on a scale how much I agreed with it. At the end of the exercise there would be a scoring technique and depending on the exercise it would ask how many times did you say this or how may times did you mark false. Then there was a scale and depending on which exercise a score of 1-8 meant something and 9-14 meant something else and 15-20 meant something else as well. In a lot of these scoring exercises they were pretty much on point in what score represented about myself, a lot of times it shocked me as well. I would sit there and say to myself wow how do they do that and know that about me, and in some cases I would get mad, but like the old saying states "sometimes the truth hurts." But anyway in all I really enjoyed this class and looked forward to going to it every week and seeing how what my life has instore for me with these new ideas I have learned from this class. The name of this course fits it perfectly.

Personal Journal 9.4

Most of the conflicts I have in the home environment which would be a conflict with either my parents or my girlfriend are usually dealing with emotions more than anything else. My girlfriend and I have had conflicts over our baby that will be here in about 4 and half more months. She gets frustrated and wonders how we are going to pull it off and be able to support ourselves and the new baby. The good thing is our disagreements are civil. We sent down and talk it out, we do not yell at each other and we do not get angry with each other. I use a lot of the tools I learned in the book "Everybody Wins" by Gary Chapman which is my term paper book for this class. We are on the ssme page now, because we sat down and talked it out and came to an agreement. We are taking it one day at a time. We know it is not going to be easy and especially at first. But I told her I am going to make every sacrifice possible to help us raise this child and she knows that she has to also. That made her very happy. The conflict I have had with my parents is pretty much the same thing or at least in the same category. They have told me that we are not ready yet and that it is going to be very hard for us to raise our child, but now they are supporting us. I worked this conflict out by showing them in the past four months that I am going to be a good dad, that I have done a lot of growing up here recently. I have told them that this is the most important thing to me and that I love Jill and we are going to get married. They believe me and are on board with us now because they have seen all the changes I have made in my life for the better in the past few months. That is how a lot of conflicts get worked out is by actions. The old saying "you got to walk the walk if you are going to talk the talk," which pretty much means I got to back up everything I am saying. I was in a conflict at school in some group work we were doing outside of class one day. It waa in my physical geography class, there was four of us working on our lab manual. We could not agree on some of the answers for this lab manual, we were not throwing blows or anything just a disagreement. So, what we did to resolve it was first we all just took a step back and took a ten minute break. Then when we came back to get to work we mapped out a game plan. In this class we can turn in one lab manual and put all of our names on it and we all receive the same grade. We broke it up into four parts and then when we were finished we checked all of our answers and we said if there was a problem that we could not agree on an answer for that we were going to leave the answer that was on there from who ever worked on that problem. If it ended up marked wrong that we had to live with it. I have realized that the bigger the group a lot of times the harder it is to come to an agreement on a conflict, but in the end whether it is a group of two or a group of thirty-two if I want to come to an agreement on something I have to be civil about it and listen to all the parties involved.

Term Paper Blog #4

The tools and informattion I have learned from this book is an ongoing process. The main concept in this book is to teach a person how to resolve a conflict with your spouse or anyone for that matter without arguing. It has shown me to listen not just hear what the other person is saying but truthfully listen. I still make mistakes I have caught myself trying to fire back at the other person before they are finished talking. But that is the key, that I am able to catch myself and make those certain adjustments where it doesn't happen again. This book has shown me that I do not have to agree with the person I am having a dispute with but to take in what they are saying and come up with a compramise. I intend to use these techniques the rest of my life and I would recommend this book to anyone. I have learned a lot from "Everybody Wins" by Gary Chapman.

Personal Journal 8.3 "How Do You See Your Money?"

Money to me is a necessary evil. It is what makes the world go around, I must have it but it can cause some people in general to act funny when it comes to money. My financial goal is to first get out of debt and get my credit score up where I can be stable. Since I have a baby on the way I want to be able to provide for my girlfriend and the new baby. If I had a 100 dollar bill in my wallet I would put 60 dollars of it in my checking account, twenty dollars of it in my savings account and the last twenty in my wallet. When I think about paying bills I feel anxiety. One thing I don't understand about money is how to budget it. I do an okay job at it but there's room for improvement. Planning for retirement is very important to me it is something I want to get an early start on. I worry about not having enough money for bills when the baby comes in 5 months since I am still in school and have not started my career yet. I have job now but when the baby comes it is a whole new ball game when it comes to money. Really the only thing money helps me enjoy is when I get my girlfriend something and see the smile on her face. I do not need money to enjoy the company of my parents and my girlfriend.

Term Paper Blog Entry #3

I love the book I chose, "Everybody Wins" by Gary Chapman. I really have learned a lot from this book. It is a short book only around a hundred pages, so I have read all of the book. This book has showed me to be patient when I am having a disagreement with someone or just talking about something important with someone. I never really realized this but in the past when I would be talking with someone I was not truly listening to them. I would be thinking more about how I was going to respond more than taking in what the other person was saying and a lot of times I would even interupt them. The other night my parents and I were having a serious talk about the new baby that is coming into my life. My dad was telling me some changes that I need to make and things like that. I really listened to him took everything in that he was saying. I showed him respect in the sense that I repeated in a broad sense the topics he and my mom brought up, so they knew I was listening. My progress is actually going faster than I expected. It seems that I am sincerely using these tools from this book in my life. I believe that ever since I found out that I am going to be a dad I look at things in my life different anyway. I have not had any setbacks yet. I am sure I will though somewhere in this process because that happens. The important thing is though that I catch the setback when it happens and grow from it. Even though I am picking some of the things in this book and using them in my life a little faster than I thought, it doesn't seem really harder or easier than I expected.