Tag: public relations

Interpersonal Communication

For the first time at JMU, I found a 9:05 class that keeps me truly awake without any head-bobbing or heavy eyelids.

Introduction to Interpersonal Communication with Jennie Rosier. To be honest, at first I chose this class because I needed another 300-level SCOM class to fulfill my graduation requirements. However, I am beyond happy with my choice in picking this class.

The class started with discussing the personal self and then moved onto attachment styles in children and adults, experiencing and expressing emotions, communicating non-verbally, communicating verbally, and listening actively. Currently, we are discussing relationships with romantic partners and I have never learned so much about relationships in my entire life. In fact, I’ve never learned so much about interpersonal communication during my time as a SCOM (School of Communication Studies) major.

Jennie is real. She uses anecdotes of her own family to help explain the concepts we are talking about. Not only that, but she is also incredibly passionate about what she does. It is obvious in her teaching style and her demeanor every morning. I wish I had discovered her classes earlier and not as a second semester senior because I would have definitely taken as many as my schedule would have allowed.

But the class isn’t just useful and fun for me, it’s also incredibly useful. As a future PR professional it is important to know how you are communicating with others non-verbally and what unintentional messages you may be sending out during a meeting with a client. Of course knowing how you are communicating verbally is important as well and I believe I have learned valuable advice and lessons from taking this class.

If I could give any SCOM major any advice it would be to take Intro to Interpersonal Comm with Jennie, not just because she’s an amazing professor, but also because the class is incredibly useful for whatever field they may be going into.

Maximizing vs. Satisficing: Which one are you?

Maximizing vs. Satisficing: Which one are you?

(That is not a typo in the title, don’t worry, I’ll explain.)

I love being a double major. Throughout my course work I have found so many different topics overlap from communications into psychology and vice versa. For my Industrial/Organizational psychology class we had to read a research article I found to be particularly interesting. The article, Doing Better but Feeling Worse: Looking for the “Best” job Undermines Satisfaction, was about maximizing and satisficing and how these choice-making strategies can affect general happiness and job performance.
The article defines maximizing as “to seek the best and requires an exhaustive search of all possibilities.” Satisficing is “to seek ‘good enough,’ searching until encountering an option that crosses the threshold of acceptability.” The example used is when watching t.v., maximizers channel surf and look at all the channels, leaving little time to actually watch a show. On the other hand, satisficers would channel surf until he or she found an acceptable show and actually watched said show.

The research led to show that compared with satisficers maximizers do better financially, but feel worse. Maximizers are more unhappy with their choices after they have made them, even if it is a good decision. On the other hand, satisficers are happy and are not just settling. They are falling under what they consider to be an “acceptable threshold.” The article also states that maximizers might act this way because in the past they have been high achievers with past successes and have learned to expect more of themselves.

As the discussion on this article continued in class, we began talking about how this actually applies in the workplace setting and in real life. My professor brought up social media and how maximizers would be on all the different forms of social media and constantly checking the sites, which in the end only leads to unhappiness. This lead me to think about public relations professionals. Could public relations professionals turn off social media for a day and still feel like they are able to complete their tasks for the day or get projects done?

Soon this conversation led to talking about the 40-hour work week and how stress and overworking are socially reinforced constructs in our culture. I remember being in middle school and just doing my homework to get it done so I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. But then I got to high school and suddenly it was “cool” to put off doing work until the last minute so you’re up all night studying or writing a paper. In college it seems as if people are competing for who got less sleep or who has more work to do. My professor made a great point, you never hear anyone say, “You know last night I got a great full nine hours of sleep and I woke up feeling really refreshed and had a great start to my morning and I don’t need any coffee today!”

 

Our culture values spending more time at work and you are considered a better person if you work longer and harder hours. However, working long hours in the long run causes productivity to go down and people are likely to “burn out” faster. This entire discussion gave me a lot to think about for my future career. The public relations world is often never ending, with taking calls and checking emails at home.
It is readings and discussions like these that make me so grateful to be studying both psychology and communications. I feel that having this knowledge about maximizers being unhappy will help me to remember to not become fixated on what could have happened if I had made another choice or picked a different job.

Along with the reading we also had to complete a survey and score ourselves to determine which side of the scale we fall on. The higher the number, the more likely you are to be a maximizer. I scored a 3.5 which I feel is pretty accurate of myself. While I have high standards for myself and work hard, I don’t overstress myself to the point where I am only worrying about the options I should have chosen instead of the one I did choose.

So what do you think you are, a maximizer or satisficer?

Back in the game

Lately I’ve been on a writing kick. Of course I write for classes all the time, I am a public relations student after all. But I’ve been getting back into the habit of writing for my own benefit. Reading through my old journals have been a big source of inspiration, even though my personal journals contain mostly jumbled thoughts and ramblings. It feels good to open my journal to fresh pages waiting for my ideas.

This blog is the same way. For some reason the blank blog post is scarier than a blank journal… but it still has the same effect as writing in a journal. I’ve started paying more attention to how other writers express themselves as well. Especially journalists in various mediums- newspapers, magazines, online news sources, etc. The more I read, the more I pay attention to the little details.
I have this urge to devour as much information as possible and to read everything. But that’s a good thing, it’ll keep me busy for a while.