Week of December 3 - December 9: #3

Throughout this semester, I think that the one concept that could be further discussed is group communication. It was pretty hard working with people I've never met or even seen. Just meeting up with them was somewhat difficult; everyone had their schedules planned out and was busy most of the time. I think that one of the things that would have helped us a lot was if we had discussed how to properly act in a group and how to share the decisions we make. Although it may seem as if it's not related to this class, I believe that it is because we will have to work with others in the future. We may be critical thinkers, but critical thinkers do not think alike and have different opinions. I think it would have been nice to discuss the chapter in the O'Hair and Wiemann book titled "What makes a good group?" I found a lot of things helpful in that section.

Week of December 3 - December 9: #2

One of my favorite things about this class was blogging. Blogging is not a new concept to me; however, blogging for class was! I really enjoy having new topics to discuss and blog about each week. What made it very interesting was being able to discuss the topics with the other students in our class. Because of this, I have learned a lot more. Having to remind myself to blog each week has taught me to depend less on my professors; because they remind you online, you have no physical reminder. I think this is a great thing to carry with you in the future. Not all professors are going to remind you that a test is coming up, or homework is due the next class meeting. I have learned a lot, especially by meeting deadlines no matter what happens during my week. My least favorite thing about this class were the group projects. I found it very difficult to find a mutual meeting time with my group members; everyone was always very busy. When it was time to submit the essay, it was hard asking everyone for their parts because it always seemed as if they weren’t prepared. I think this class would be a little better if there were less group projects. I think it helps with working together, but I think there are more negative results than positive.

Week of December 3 - December 9: #1

Something that I enjoyed learning in this class over the course of this semester was about advertising. It was interesting to see how advertisements can be deceptive in different ways. I learned about some common fallacies that happen during advertisements and also how marketers use different tactics to get a consumer’s attention. This shows us that advertisers analyze how society makes decisions about things and uses that to get what they want. This helped me analyze the different ways that advertisements may attract me, thus using that to decide whether or not I want to purchase that item or do what it says, for example. I have also learned that advertisers use celebrities to endorse certain products, causing people who like the celebrity to be attracted to the products that they are advertising. I have definitely been that person that bought something because it was attached to a celebrity I liked. Now I know that the celebrity may not have even used it before!

Week of November 12 - November 18: #3

One concept that I found interesting in the Boss text was empiricism. (I found this under the "Assumptions Underlying Science" section on page 369.) This is exactly the belief I used to judge my coworker (mentioned in my last post). Empiricism, as defined in the text, is "the belief that our physical senses are the primary source of knowledge." As much as we all don't want to think that we do this, it is one of the most basic assumptions of science. I think that we just automatically do this because it's an instinct we have to protect ourselves. For example, we may see someone sketchy walking down the street. It is possible that they could be very friendly, but we wouldn't want to risk the fact that they could harm us so we would probably avoid them the best we can. Another example is the opposite; if we see someone nice and friendly, we probably would approach them and say hello.

Week of November 12 - November 18: #2

I recently started working at a retail store early in September and I had to be trained to use the cash register (along with seven other employees) a week after I started. I remember that there was one female employee that seemed to be somewhat rude to me. She had to share a cash register with another employee next to me and was taking up all the space (there is very little room at the counter). She appeared to be extremely standoffish and had a very sour look on her face. However, as I worked with her more, I know now that I just interpreted things wrong because I used her physical attributes to cloud my judgment (empiricism). She could have been having a really bad day, and I used that to define her. I realize now that she is a lot of fun to work with and is someone that I can relate to. Once I found out actual facts instead of just random guesses about her, I now know what type of person she is. Even though she left our store now, I now consider her my favorite coworker.

Week of November 12 - November 18: #1

"Today will be a day to remember -- full of romance, intrigue, secrets and even one or two dramatic revelations! You will be in the thick of things right away, first thing in the morning -- so make sure you get a great breakfast and are prepared for some roller coaster hours. You are a featured player in this daytime drama, and whether or not you are the hero of the story is completely up to you. If you want to stir up some trouble, go for it! You are ready to deal with the fallout." (Shine from Yahoo!)

This prediction is very inaccurate. It does not come anywhere close with describing how my day went because it was very uneventful; I went to work early in the morning for 4.5 hours, arrived home, then took a three hour nap. I think horoscopes are very generic and can mean a lot of things to everyone. It depends on who you are as a person and how you interpret the things that life gives you. You could be looking for all the true things in a horoscope, but I think that it's very random and could definitely be coincidences. Yes, this prediction is falsifiable. There are many things that could happen leading to the inevitable conclusion of this horoscope being false. One example, as I already gave, was describing my entire day. It did not include any romance, secrets, or dramatic revelations. Perhaps it would have been a better prediction if I ate a "great" breakfast, or if I stirred up some trouble.

Week of November 5 - November 11: #3

One section that I found quite interesting was Credibility of News Coverage. I found it very sad that the news media seems to only tell us information that keeps us watching. It seems that half of Americans don't trust news coverage and many believe that they are biased. There is no way of finding out if that's true, but we do know that they get more money if there are more viewers. Sadly, there are people out there who don't care what they have to do receive better benefits. This section also goes on to talk about reporters exaggerating specific details in a story or even taking certain parts out to keep the news interesting. This is not fair to people watching the news - they want to watch it so that they can get real information. People actually want to know what's going on around the world and if news reporters can't tell them that, then who can?