What I Have Learned

                I learned so much over the course of the semester.  One theory that I have learned that is unforgettable is the S-TLC method. This method is useful in any situation and I can definitely say I use this method every day of my life.  Other information I learned in this class are about anger-ins and anger-outs. Learning about anger-ins and anger-outs has helped me realize why some people act the ways they do when it comes to conflict. It has also helped me understand why I act a certain way when I encounter conflict as well. This is helpful because it I am able to figure out ways to approach people when in conflict and how to deal with myself. What has been essential is learning how to walk away from conflict when conflict is heated. Sometimes it is best to take a walk and really think about the situation. This had definitely helped when I encounter conflict. This whole class has been a learning experience and it has changed the way I view life.

Summarizing Class

This class is by far is the best class I have ever taken at San Jose State. I did not think I would learn as much as I did because of the fact that it was online, but I was wrong.  I enjoyed how convenient it is because everything is online. I also loved how we responded to classmate’s post and they responded to mine as well. It made it feel like we made a connection even though we have not seen each other.  One of the strengths of this class is our text book. Our textbook is interesting and easy to read which made the class fun. Another strength is definitely our professor. I am not just saying this because I know she will read this, but she seemed very approachable and friendly. I have not come across many professors like that in my college career.  I feel there are no weaknesses to this class and I would 110 percent recommend this class to former students.

Chapter 16, Question 1

When people think about conflict, I believe that emotions come to mind. For some people, expressing emotions can be very difficult.  People think about the process it will take to solve the conflict and that can be scary. People also think of conflicts as just problems and not solutions. In order for there to be a solution, there has to be problems.  In reality, conflict is a good thing. It gives people the opportunity to express how he or she feels and why. This way, both parties are able to work on the issues that create the conflict so it hopefully does not reoccur. We all encounter conflict if we like it or not, therefore learning how to deal with conflict benefits the way we act upon our next conflict. People need to start thinking of conflict as a learning lesson and not just problems.  If this message were carried out, I believe that people would not be so afraid of conflict and he or she would figure out the best solutions to solve their conflict. I believe they would not be so afraid of it because taking conflict as a learning lesson is much easier than taking it as a problem.

Chapter 10, question 3

                Revenge is one subject that had a lot of results when I searched on the internet.             I feel that whenever someone is mad, that person always thinks about revenge. Yes revenge sounds like a very hateful thing although; it is very natural for people to feel revenge when he or she is angry. Although some may feel revenge is a temporarily feeling, sometimes it is not. For example, I have two friends who do not get along at all. They always do something in spite to try and get at the other person. This has been an ongoing cycle for the past couple of years and it does not seem like anything will change soon. Just like chapter 10 mention it is an ongoing cycle.  They both have a very aggressive behavior which does not seem to help the situation what so ever. Sometimes people are able to reconcile and in other cases people cannot.

Chapter 12, question 2

                Last month it was my 22^nd birthday.  I complained the last couple of birthdays that my mom never did anything special for me. This year I complained to my sisters that I was pretty sure mom was not going to do anything special for me this year as well. The day before my birthday, my mom asked what I was going to do to celebrate my birthday. My response to her was, “I don’t want to do anything, it is not like we ever do anything special on my birthday anyway”. I had always felt that if I wanted to do something for my birthday, I had to plan it myself.  I made her feel really bad and I could tell she was a little down by the tone of her voice. That same day, I came home to a very big home cooked meal and my sister who came from out of town was there as well. I felt really bad in saying my mom puts no effort into my birthday.

                There have been times when my mom gets upset when a chore around the house has not been done. One day she was very upset to know that the bathrooms had not been cleaned when she arrived home from work. What was clean was the kitchen. As she was yelling she asked, “Who cleaned the kitchen?” Not knowing if he did it or not I answered “Francisco”, who is my step dad.  It turns out he did clean the kitchen and good thing he did because if that wasn’t clean along with the bathrooms, my mom would have been mad the whole day.

Chapter 10, Question 1

                Letting go of feeling of revenge is easier said than done. As I looked up forgiveness on the internet I found over 56,100,100 results. Most of the result that appeared consisted of religious websites and quotes from the bible. I feel that forgiveness is one of the main teachings in all religions. The religious websites contained ways on how and why to forgive others. Forgiveness and reconciliation go hand and hand. When one forgives, one is able to reconcile a relationship from the past.  The search result for reconciliation also featured beliefs from all religions. Catholic and Buddhism are the two main religions that appeared when reconciliation was searched.  When I searched revenge, it was a completely different story. There were thousands of television shows and movie clips that resulted. Facebook was advertised as revenge as well. I believe that revenge plays a role in drama. Drama catches the eyes of many people therefore, movies and television shows are called revenge. I was quite surprised to see Facebook advertised as a part of drama. It does make perfects sense. Facebook is drama and sometimes people do get revenge as he or she use social networking.  

Chapter 10, question 3

Forgiveness is such a huge part in living a stress free life. Just a couple of months ago, I was going through the roughest times because I found it very hard to forgive others.  I was very upset with my dad because I felt that he had always failed me when I needed him so, I stopped talking to him for a couple of months.  Then, I had a huge argument with my mom which led me to move out of my house. I was not talking to both of my parents and I felt so horrible. I stressed me out so much that it had a big effect on homework and work. I was not able to function the same and I would start crying out of nowhere. I learned that even though someone may not say sorry for what they did or said, I sometimes have to forgive them anyway just to live a healthy life.