Final Reflection on Communication

    The goal of communication is tricky because it’s an abstract thing, a concept. This makes people apprehensive to it as a subject to be studied, because it isn’t a tangible thing that you can see or feel. So why have communication as a main goal of University Studies? The plain and simple answer is to be able to learn new ways of, well, communicating. Writing, speaking, pictures, artwork; all of these things are various ways of communication. It can be something you are good at, something you are bad at, but that is alright; the goal is to find these things out. I used a collage to illustrate how I felt like everyone fit into the federal budget. I was using visual components to convey my message, and it was something I had previously not tried. This class has opened up new ways of communicating and has shown us how to do them.

            This learning about the ways of communication helps us in two ways. Most people can see that it helps us develop our previous modes of communication for use in a more formal setting (such as college), but in a broader sense I think it helps us to realize that the way we communicate matters. How we appear to people is largely based on how well they understand us, and they are only going to be able to understand us if we effectively communicate with them. In a book report I did for my portfolio I quoted Joseph Conrad when he (as Marlow) talked about Mr. Kurtz’s ability to speak being the characteristic gift about him. What we see through our focused look at our abilities and ways to communicate is just what Conrad is talking about; that communication is a presence unto itself. The ability to communicate effectively or lack thereof will be one of the main things people will recognize about you.

            A big question when studying an abstract goal such as communication is “How is this going to help me in the real world?” or “How can I use this outside of the classroom?” In this case we have seen that communication has been one of the defining characteristics of people since language was invented, but one of the things we can note from our study is the need to speak to different people in different ways. People communicate differently, and that is a good thing, because if we all communicated in the same way there would be very little creativity in the world.  In my first reflection about the Childpeace visits I remarked about the kids’ ability to communicate on an adult level. This means that I need to speak to them on the level that they wish to be communicated with or else I will not be able to engender the sort of cooperative feelings I am trying to get. This changing level of communication is true with everyone, and the focused study of communication allows one to see these situations and respond accordingly, which is a key component in communicating effectively.

            One of the things that really baffles when it comes to communicating vast amounts of seemingly drab information is how to do so without losing your audience’s attention. One of the things we learned when we did our quantitative literacy projects in the first term was how to incorporate different styles of communication into one single presentation, in that case it was a report and a visual aid, but we have also learned how to relay information through collages, presentations both PowerPoint and otherwise, research papers with visual elements to them, and many other combinations of communication. The whole point is to get information across, so if you bore your audience you have failed in your attempt. By having communication as a main goal of this class we were able to look at its inner workings more closely and realize this fundamental principle of communication.

            So why have communication as a goal of University Studies? In order to see that there are different ways to communicate, different levels of communication with people, to realize that communication is one of the defining characteristics that people remember about you, and to see that you can combine many different forms of communication to form one coherent presentation.