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Chapter 13- Relationships with Friends

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Like most people, I like having friends. I like being able to connect with people that have similar interests and I like to share experiences with them. Doing that gives me a sense of contentment that I rarely feel when I am by myself. However, a problem I have experienced for most of my life is anxiety, both general and social. With that in mind, it is often hard for me to make friends beyond a few people, and I end up being quite close with them as a result. Even though it doesn’t do me much good, I envy people who can be friends with everyone and anyone. To me, it just seems like it would take such a massive amount of energy to be able to achieve that. I guess in that respect, I am glad that I don’t have the energy to do that. It allows me to learn my limitations and keep me grounded. The friendships I have are referred to as agentic friendships, which involves being friends, but we often have other things we view as more important to take care of before we see each other (chapter 1...
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Chapter 12- Relationships with Family Members

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  One of the most notable things that I have observed throughout my life is that families come in many different forms. Growing up as an only child, I was used to the concept that families consisted of a mother, father, and a child. Then at some point I learned that families sometimes have more than one child and that the original couple does not always remain married. Beyond that, I learned that sometimes couples don’t always consist of a man and a woman and that they can be same-sex or gender. While all of these families are different in some ways, the commonality is that when they have kids, they all have their own unique way of parenting. I learned recently that family is pluralistic, which means that there is very little preventing us from what we talk about together and that there is no pressure to act in a certain way and we can be ourselves around each other (chapter 12, pg. 335). Growing up with lifestyle, it was surprising to learn that many of my friends and classmates t...
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Chapter 11- Relationships with Romantic Partners

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  I am just going to start off by saying this, I have never had a serious romantic relationship. I can also count the number of times I have ever had a serious crush on one hand. To make a long story short, romantic love or anything related to it is an alien concept in my eyes. It isn’t to say that I don’t experience things like attraction, it’s just that it is so infrequent that it often has left me feeling more confused than anything. The times I have felt love for someone, it was usually with someone I was really close to, someone I had shared many experiences with. Although, I guess it is not appropriate to call that true romantic love as I never felt the need to “be” with them. I suppose the type of love I tend to feel is known as companionate love, which basically involves me having to be close to the other person in most aspects of my life (ch. 11, pg. 290). That being said, even though the class is ending, using the information given to me so far, I hope to become more awar...
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Chapter 14- Relationships in the Workplace

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  In every culture, there is at least some belief that jobs,  and work are important. I agree with this in every possible way. However, one of the things about jobs that has been difficult for me to understand is workplace relationships. Maybe this is just immaturity speaking, as most of my socialization came from going to school, but some of the things that happen at jobs are confusing. In a weird way, people who work together are like family and friends but not at the same time. There’s such a high turnover that one minute someone is there,  and you get along really well, and the next day, they quit,  and you never see them again. I guess the best way to describe this type of relationship is just what it is, a workplace relationship. To put it bluntly, it is a relationship on the site from which you go to work (ch. 14, pg. 384). It can be many things, but the common element is that it originates from a jobsite. Personally, some of my current best friends are from m...
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Chapter 10- Managing Conflict and Power

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From the time I started high school to the day I turned eighteen, I started to exercise my ability to make decisions. I figured at that time that I was smart enough to judge whether something was a good decision or not, so I had the idea that I should have been able to do what I wanted. There was a little problem, however. My parents did not share my view. They believed that only after I turn eighteen would I gain some freedom. I asked why, because as someone who was close to adult age, it seemed reasonable. They simply replied with something along the lines of “because I said so.” That point onwards has brought to my attention the concept of power dynamics. As the parents, they believe that they can tell me to do whatever just because they gave me life. Even now, in my twenties, they still do this. Well, I think that will change. As I get older, it will start being less acceptable to order me around. Just today, I learned of another concept known as structural improvements. This when ...
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Chapter 9- Communicating Nonverbally

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  One of the reasons why I find language and overall, communication, to be so difficult to grasp, are due to the many facets that are involved. The fact that communication is mostly done through nonverbal methods only really sunk in within the last few years and to me, that’s scary. For one, I have never been all that great at reading people. Many times, I have interpreted something to be a certain and it ends up being something different. This happens a lot with my mother. I would not be surprised if someone reading this think, “Dear lord, how do they not know their mother by now.” Well, I do, but the misinterpretations tend to be out of love. From experience, I know my mother is a talkative person. When she starts talking about a particular thing, she keeps going until she is finished. This leads her becoming quiet, which to me and my father, is bad. We start to think something is wrong, so we ask, and most of the time, she is fine. I think most of my misinterpretations come from...
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Chapter 8-Communicating Verbally

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  One of the most interesting parts of my day comes from going outside and listening to the conversations that go on around me. I don’t mean in an eavesdropping manner, but just as background noise. It adds something to the day in a way. One of my favorite reasons for that is how it allows me to freshen up my understanding of the dialects in my town. Dialects are essentially when people speak a particular language and add a little uniqueness to it that stems from a deeper part of their culture (ch. 8, pg. 205). To me, learning about dialects provides me with what I love the most: knowledge. I love to learn about new things, regardless of how important it is. You could tell me a fact about how a certain food is made and I’ll feel better than I did before because I learned something. Anyways, one time when I was out and about, a conversation really caught my attention. They were speaking English, but many of the words said were unfamiliar.   It affected me so much that when I we...
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