Thank You!

It is so nice to be at a point in this journey where I am starting to form relationships with many of my colleagues.  It will be interesting to see who I will see in my particular specialization now that we are already at that stage!  I would not be able to have had the same learning experience without the discussions that we have been able to have throughout this course.  I have enjoyed getting to know each of you better, as well as getting to know some of you for the first time.  Each of you have given me better insight to the subjects we have been learning that I would not have been able to gain by myself.

I hope that each of you have positive experiences in your future classes and that you are able to achieve all that you want to when you graduate.  It is such an accomplishment to have gotten this far and I know that we can all reach the end! Thank you to everyone and I hope to learn with some of you again.  If you would like to stay in touch you can reach out to me via Walden email or find me on Facebook.

Adjourning Teams

Out of all the groups I have been in, the adjourning stage has always been the hardest if the group was high-performing.  I was always relieved when I was able to say good-bye to group members that were frustrating and made whatever task we were working on harder than it should have been.  There was one job I had in college that allowed me to have personal goals, as well as work on team goals each day.  We had team leaders who were constantly encouraging us to do better and there were incentives for when we did well.  We did a lot of activities to get to know everyone and the leaders were all organized and truly cared about what they were doing.  I really enjoyed working with everyone and when the time came for me to quit the job I was very sad.  I left because my school schedule conflicted with their hours, but found another job that was similar, but there was no sense of teamwork and the leaders at this job clearly did not care about how well we did as a team, nor how well each of us did personally.  It affected my own job performance because  I didn't feel connected with anyone and didn't feel like it mattered how well I did.  I was not upset when I was able to leave this job and I no longer talked to anyone from this office, unlike at my old office when I still talked to a lot of the people I worked with.

I am not sure how adjourning this program will be for me because I have not had the opportunity to meet anyone in person and each class has had different people.  I have enjoyed getting to know a few people better that I have had multiple classes with, but I do not feel I will be terribly upset when I am finished and no longer know what is happening with my classmates.  I have had a positive experience with everyone I have had classes with and hope that everyone is able to pursue the goals they have after graduating.

Conflict and Communication

I am currently working for my dad's real estate appraising company because of the flexibility it provides and the necessity to pay for school and so there are not a lot of ways for conflict to arise there because I don't typically work with anyone besides my dad.  One personal conflict that I have recently been having with my husband is in regard to his driving  I have always thought that he was a really good driver, but lately every time he drives I find something that he is doing wrong.  He has become very irritable with my comments and has begun taking everything much more critically than I intend.  I still prefer for him to drive us places, but he has started to resist driving.  I have recently been much more aware of the things that I say to him when he does drive.  It is easy for me to say whatever is on my mind without really thinking about the feelings of whoever I am speaking to. Being slower to speak is something that I have been working on with the people I am close to because it is not my intention to make anyone feel badly about themselves.  I have also realized that it helps if I express my appreciation to him when he does drive so that he can feel that I am grateful for his driving and concern because most of the time his driving irritates me is when he is being cautious or braking quickly for safety reasons.  Understanding that his intentions are always good helps me to speak kindly and avoid contention with him.  I definitely feel that striving to live the principles of nonviolent communication can help my husband and I avoid any contention and conflict that has arisen and will allow me to avoid having any annoyances towards my husband when it comes to his driving.