Miriam Flores

Comm 2110-004
Personal Change Project
Date: April 23, 2017

This paper outlines my person change project. My goal for this assignment was to improve my
listening and communication skills to enhance my connection with the students I work with. I
wanted to be seen as someone who could be trusted and was there to listen and give advice.
I applied several strategies from the text such as becoming motivated, being other oriented,
showing social support, being responsive and understanding others. During this project, I caught
myself failing at the strategies whether is was because I forgot but then was able to apply them
correctly afterwards to improve the way I was communicating with the students. My connections
have become stronger because of the motivation that I have from knowing that this is a change I
want to make working with students. I still have some need to advance but as I continue to
practice and apply strategies to future conversations I will become more familiar with time.

Unwanted Communication Pattern

I have the habit of interrupting during a one-on-one conversation and giving up when a student
does not seem to respond when trying to talk to them. During Conversations when someone is
speaking and brings up a topic that I am able to relate to I feel the need to share my story. I have
noticed this happening many times and have become so used to it that it has been hard to stop.
Due to this situation it has caused a communication problem. Interrupting and the lack of
motivation to talk to students had lead to change of subject in the conversation leading to never
letting the person finish their side of the story. This is a listening and motivational skill that I
have had to improve.

Here are two examples:

- One situation occurred when I started working at East High School. It was my first day and I
had no idea how student were going to be. I tried engaging with the students and approached
them in a positive manner. I would sit down and introduce myself, ask them what they were
working on, and if they needed help. Their facial expressions did not show that they were
convinced that I was someone they could trust to talk to and they would deny the approach in a
rude manner. Giving attitude and responding with one word answers was how they showed they
did not want to continue the conversation. I approached many different students through out and
they would all deny conversation differently. Another student I approached denied me by
responding no thanks, and then pulling out their headphones. With all the attempts and being
denied by the student I did not see the point of continuing to try so I would give up for the day. I
would say that this example goes with the lack of motivation I had.

- Another situation that I have had has to do with my habit of interrupting others. That same first
week that I had been working at East High four days into the week 3rd period came along and a
student who I knew from outside of East walked in and she came up to me with excitement. We
sat down and caught up. I decided to take that time to see how she was doing in school so that we
could stay on a school appropriate conversation. Thirty minutes into the conversation she started
talking about how she wanted to pursue a career in the medical field as a pediatrician and right
there I decided to interrupt by bringing up my sister into the conversation. I said Are you
really? My sister is planning on doing that aswell and is deciding what schools she wants to
apply to. You two should meet each other and can maybe help eachother out. As I finished with
my question the conversation started going on a different pathway. The student replied with
Nice! What school does she go to? After that the conversation went a different route and now
we were talking about my sister instead of catching up. In this situation I feel like I could had
listen more to what the other person had to say and wait for them to finish their part.

In both situations I could not manage to have full conversations from the lack of effective
listening and motivation I had. In the first situation my lack of motivation made it so I would
never start a conversation with the student and building a trusting mentor relationship. In the
second the lack of effective listening I had lead to not letting the person completely finish their
side of the conversation. This made the student leave of important information that they might
have had that they wanted to share.

Strategies
When deciding what communication habits I wanted to change, I decided that to apply the
following strategies to my daily conversations with not only students but other people as well.
The experience I was going to have with the change would be that I would build strong
mentorship, effective listening, and motivation skills.

One of the first strategies that I felt would be a big impact in helping me with one of the bad
habits was becoming motivated (Beebe, 2008, Pg. 25). From my experience, I saw that instead of
giving up when approaching students I had to put a bit more of my effort and approach the
students different ways until I was able to gain conversation. Our Interpersonal communication
text states, you must want to improve and you must have a genuine desire to connect with
others if you wish to become a competent communicator (Beebe, 2008, Pg. 25). I felt that by
using this strategy it would help me understand that the desire of wanting something comes with
effort that will lead to bettering not only my communication skills but also myself.

Second, I wanted to imply more effective listening (Beebe, 2008, Pg.120-125). The following
outlines some skills that go along with listening.

1. Understanding (p. 121). This technique allows me assign meaning to certain sounds that I
select and which I attend.

2. Remembering (p.122). It is important to store the information into our brains. Our brain
has both a short-term and long-term memory process. This technique helps me remember
important events, information, and specific details from conversations.

3. Responding (p.122). This technique shows the other person that I understand the message
and that I am listening.
Using these strategies would allow me to better in my conversations. I would work towards
breaking those habits of poor motivation and listening skills in order to gain a mentor
relationship. When approaching a student I wanted to outline possible questions or follow up
questions that I could ask if a rejection came up. Of course I would stay aware if I was going
over the limit. After getting into a conversation using the techniques above would be the second
step. Implying these would help me out, because the student would notice that I as a mentor was
not only there because I was getting paid but because I wanted to be the support system that they
needed especially from a mentor, and a person of color.

Constraints
When thinking about the techniques being implied during this project it did not come to mind
that some constraints would interfere. I came across a few constraints as I attempted to change
the communication behaviors I had. Having to interrupt all the time during conversations with
personal relatable stories, It was hard to get rid of the habit from one day to the other. I caught
myself several time interrupting with different students aswell with my coworkers. Some
students would stop talking to me or put in their headphones. Other student intended to finish up
what they were saying and from their non verbal expression it was easy to tell that they were
annoyed.

Another constraint that I came across was getting students to actually like me and talk to me
because of the person I was and the advice I was able to provide for them from my own
experience. Many of the student only sarcastically nodded their heads pretending to care this is
one of the difficulties that I came across constantly when approaching the students. I also would
face students asking for other mentors. Many of the students already had their preferred mentor
that they usually asked for help so I found it difficult to find students who could build a new
mentorship relationship with me and ask for help. Lastly, my level of vocabulary was a big
constraint during this project. The lack of practice that I had growing up throughout high school
and beginning college lead me to struggling in many situations when using advanced vocabulary.

Implementation
When I began to try the change of my bad habits of interrupting and listening the first thing that I
thought that I should work on was my motivational skills. Giving up was no longer the option if I
wanted to better the ways I approached students. I also had to continue trying even after a
rejection in order to move past the constraints. Rejection after rejection I decided to think about
different ways I could approach the students instead of always approaching them with asking if
they needed help because that only lead to the student responding with no. Some of the different
questions I came up with were ones with follow up questions that were able to keep the
conversation going. An example would be Hey, I just wanted to ask about your plans after high
school, do you have anything planned out yet? Are you going to college? Taking a year off? I
felt these were good starting questions that had successful transitions to the follow up questions
in the conversations. At times using these questions to start a conversation with the student did
not work as planned. So I would start with a question relating to something they were doing or
that I noticed they had an interest on.
Another way that I was able to improve my conversations was by using the listening skills used
in the textbook (Beebe, 2008, Pg.120-125). Three that I chose to work on were understanding,
remembering, and responding. As I started to imply these strategies I decided to practice one by
one. Understanding was the first on my list because it is important that during a conversation we
know what is being said. Understanding is the process of assigning meaning to the sounds you
select and to which you attend (Beebe, 2008, Pg.121-122). From my personal experience during
conversations I have struggled with understanding the message or points the person is trying to
get across because I was not familiar with many vocabulary words. My lack of understanding
certain vocabulary words was not that I was unintelligent, it just meant that I did not use them
constantly or at all growing up. It could have also been that it was a topic that I was not able to
learn or had no interest in such as U.S. history. Going to college was a struggle because I did
come across many different vocabulary words from higher level courses so I found it difficult for
myself to catch on during conversations or lectures. I had a conversation with a student a month
or so ago and they brought up a political topic that I was not able to understand at some points. I
had never really practiced the vocabulary because it was not a subject that I had much interest
on. This was one conversation that I had to transition to another mentor unfortunately. As years
have passed I have started adding to my vocabulary and with my experience even though I still
have more to learn I am able to help with what I have already advanced.

Furthermore, another communication skill that I felt was important was to remember.
Remembering is the process of recalling information (Beebe, 2008, Pg.122). During
conversations remembering was a big part of achieving good communication especially when
conversations from students were personal stories. These stories could be either about a situation
that they went through or were going through. I chose to focus on bettering my remembering
skills for the reason that I was not cautious of how important it was to remember information.
From past conversations I would remember certain information but I would eventually forget
because I did not think it was Important to do so. Working with the students I was able to
maintain a conversations that sometimes needed to be continued because of the time that was
given during class periods. When I started to remember information from the conversations for
the next time I spoke to the student it was very helpful to continue the conversation. From the
information I had already stored in my head and I could pull out information from the previous
conversation. After a few weeks I was able to see the improvements. Throughout the semester I
got to know several students who have now till this point come up to me for questions and
advice.

Lastly, I implied being responsive to my communication during this project. Responding is the
process of confirming your understanding of a message (Beebe, 2008, Pg.122). One student that
I was able to have a conversation with was taking a photography course. I do photography on my
own outside of school and work. If I had not asked questions from when I started to learn how to
take professional photography to now, I would have never improved my photography skills. This
student came up to me to ask me for my advice on a couple of photographs he had taken. He
asked me Hey, can you take a look at some pictures I took and tell me what you think. This
was quite awkward for me to be honest because usually it would be me asking someone for
advice about my own work. It made me feel good that he asked me but I was not prepared to
receive the approach. When he showed me a few of his pictures all I could think of was what I
was going to say. So after looking at his pictures I decided to critique and make suggestions as if
they were my own photographs. I mentioned to him that he needed to decrease a bit of the
contrast and work with different filters. I also told him different possible angles that the
photograph could be taken to show a different perspective of the object. In this situation being
responsive was useful because this showed the student that I was making an effort to
communicate with him and show my understanding of his photography.

Results
Using all of these skills helped me improve my communication but I was also able to gain
knowledge and awareness. The skills I used work well individually for different situations but
they worked even better when using all three at the same time. I feel that by being more aware of
my actions I am able to seek the different communication patterns such as nonverbal behaviors
that shows that someone may not be interested or distracted. Knowing the ways of catching
someone's attention and being able to conversate without losing their attention. I have also
managed to not let myself interrupt during conversations. If I need to say something I wait for
the person to finish and then I go back to parts where I have a suggestion or connection. This is a
more respectful and professional way. I will continue to use the strategies that I was able to
implement into my daily conversations during the semester as well as other terms that I learned
about.

Mindfulness Interview Analysis

To begin with I am not the best at interviews. So my first critique would be to better prepare for
an interview. I did well with preparing questions but the part where I need to focus on is
knowing what questions to ask when the person being interviewed goes off topic and answers
questions that were on the outline of the questions I wanted to ask originally. During my
interview, I mentioned that I had to make a quick pause and suggest to the student to not think
about the interview as an interview for a job but think of it as a normal everyday conversation. It
might not have been the best idea but we were able to get through the interview allot smoother
and successfully. Another thing that I could work on would be my recording skills. I decided to
video record and unfortunately I recorded in slow motion. Luckily the recording was only slow
motion towards the last minute of the interview. Overall, I think that this interview was a good
learning experience and it gave me an idea of how to better interview for future assignments.

Recommendations
I enjoyed this project and would definitely recommend it to anyone outside of the
communication. I actually plan to take this method of learning and possibly using it with the East
high GEAR UP students. I have learned throughout my years of being in college that if one
learns something that can be passed on to help others one should teach it to others and keep the
information and learning experience going because it is the only way to better the community
more importantly within our communication.

References
Beebe, Beebe, & Redmond. (2008). Interpersonal Communication: Relating to others. 6th Ed.
Boston: Pearson Education/Allyn & Bacon.
East High School, GEAR UP Students (2017)