Sunday, May 6, 2012

communication theory is a way of life


When we first started this class, I was nervous yet excited. I had yet to be as excited about any class as I was this one. I am a lover of research due to my previous major and life choices. I helped one of my professors at my previous school do research for the book that she was writing; I also formatted her Works Cited pages for the book. Phi Theta Kappa, international honor society involvement had a large impact on my love of researching and learning. We had to create projects that related to an honors study topic. While I was part of Phi Theta Kappa the study topics were: The Paradox of Affluence: Choices, Challenges, and Consequences and The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril & Promise. I am just a lover of information, which also tied in nicely to my previous major of English & Writing. So, after the first day I was the most excited to do research, although we had done research for previous projects, this class was based on researching, learning, and then creating.

The one thing that I have struggled with for a while is the act of communicating, which may be why I keep choosing careers that cause me to focus on communication; I like the challenge, but also communication is such a fundamental tool that I really need to get better at. The overall focus of this class was communicating and the basics of how to effectively communicate, which was the most amazing thing ever. Basically it was a semester long tutorial about how to communicate, and I feel that I am definitely on my way to communicating better. Before I had incorporated the use of comparisons, but through tropes I learned more about different kinds of comparisons and how they can support or alter my intended message. This leads me to believe that I will be more specific about what comparisons I end up using when I talk to specific people. Sometimes there are the times that one needs to be more abstract or focus on explaining a comparison on a logical, emotional, or ethical way to be more efficient.

Going along with that, what we learned were the basics for design. These basics are what we will be using in all design pieces. Although we may not always be using ALL of the parts of the communication process that we learned, we will use all of them at one point or another in our career. Some of the elements will be used more often than others, but each holds a specific purpose. What this class has really does, is push me more into wanting to research design and design theory. I was engrossed with what we learned. I had some difficulty in creating design based on what we learned that was quality, but I thoroughly enjoyed researching and learning about our field. I really think that in order to understand design now, we need to know about where design and its theories came from. Thus this summer I will be doing more educational reading on design and can’t wait.

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