empathy

Have you ever tried really listening to your partner?

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(319 words)

Has there been a time when your partner says you are shouting but this is only because they are not listening to a word you are saying? Listening skills are what is needed for a couple to make their relationship last. There may be times in the middle of heated discussions where the partner is taken over by emotional hijacking. An emotional hijack refers to a situation in which the amygdala part of the brain takes over. This is the emotional part of the brain and regulates the flight or fight response. This hijack prevents us from making sound, rational decisions.

The art of listening is for the partner to ignore their impulsive feelings or their want to rebut any comments made to them. The partner needs to recognise that they do not need to react like it is a full-on attack on them. If they feel it is a direct attack, in the middle of this tension, the partner then finds it difficult to acknowledge what is really being said. Thus, by missing the main point of a dispute they only hear the perceived insults and negatives. This leads to further times when the partner will interrupt and pay less attention. Therefore, non-defensive listening highlights empathy while also actually taking time to listen to the message and the feelings in what they are being told. This means being calm where the partner is able to mirror the feelings of their other half. 

Of course, the feeling of empathy will deteriorate the more the strong feelings are allowed to rise. The partner needs to allow the other to fully express their complaint without allowing it to move to an attack on them. The partner needs to see the situation from another perspective. Above all, there is room to apologise where the partner can say they are wrong because they have recognised the clear message and emotions from their disgruntled partner.

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What salient aspects of XXXXX University and the students that attend do you see as a contradiction?

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(895 words)

The topic that I chose to cover in my research paper was etiquette at an Asian University. In a lecture room with a vast array of cultures and backgrounds, some students seemed to have a different understanding of how to act in front of a professor delivering their lecture. During this project, some of the observations really opened up my eyes to the misbehaviors within the study environment resulting in astonishment at the results.

According to Wikipedia, etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group. My simple definition was: the way you are expected to act in a particular environment. My conclusion based on the findings of my research is that the word “etiquette” was left out of the university’s code of conduct and some of the students’ minds on campus.

To begin this project, I first had to come up with a list of the acceptable characteristics that would be deemed appropriate in any university’s rules of appropriacy, otherwise, I could not argue that the behaviors found in my results were questionable. I called these the “top 7 rules to create a peaceful classroom.” In many respects, these were not hard to propose as they had already been observed. These are as follows but not in any particular order;

  1. Not eating and drinking in class
  2. Not talking when someone else is speaking
  3. Not arriving late/leaving early
  4. Not addressing the Professor inappropriately
  5. Not answering a phone call, or habitually texting
  6. Not Sleeping, or laying your head on the table
  7. Concentrate on the lecture

Gathering information for this research project was done in a variety of different ways such as personal observation, controlled survey results, one-on-one interviews, and group discussions.

For the first part of my research, I counted and tracked the number of times the professor had to say “shhhh” to the class, or tell some students to “please be quiet”. This was tallied for the 3 hours before lunch, as well as 3 hours afterward. Before lunch, the class size was significantly smaller (by almost 33%) but still brought in 17 “shhhh” compared to 22 after the break. Every time, except twice, this was directed to the back tables in the lecture room.  Although I made a variety of intelligent guesses as to why fewer people would command a higher “shhhh” count, none of them could claim to be 100% accurate. The seemingly most appropriate outcome for this result was based on calculating the results on a Monday after a weekend. Students were most likely talking about their weekend activities, and catching up on each other’s lives. However, a certain ignorance was notable as well as the lack of propriety.

In the second part of my research, I sat and monitored the different tables and the groups that formed together. This was a very interesting observation for me to take part in, and I noticed a lot of similarities between friends. At one table, I counted 8 Iphones on show. At another separate table were 6 girls all wearing uniforms, and at a different table 5 people all listening intently taking notes while the professor gave his lecture. The idiom I based on the congregation of students was “birds of a feather flock together”. I concluded that this plays a very important role in the etiquette of this university class. I believe that if I separated the groups into different tables, the results of my first observation would not have been as meaningful to my research.

For the final part of my project, I created a 15-question survey asking various questions regarding personal opinions and facts about students here at the university. On the top of my survey was a 7-sentence paragraph with detailed instructions that were meant to be read before filling out any information. This was a crucial paragraph to read and without reading it people would fill out the wrong information which would yield inaccurate results. Out of the 35 questionnaires that we passed out only 2 people read it and followed it exactly.

A few other interesting observations that I made whilst gathering information were;

  1. Students that wore the university uniform were hardly ever the ones to practice proper etiquette.
  2. Students that sat in the back of the class, were the ones that had the worst test scores overall.
  3. The majority of students that showed up late, were also habitual talkers.
  4. The tables in the back had more students sitting at them that 7 tables up front.

Conclusion

It is recognized that in some countries certain etiquette is often overlooked and study habits are non-existent.  A lot of students that study here at the university are fresh out of high school and underestimate the value of solid and uninterrupted university education. Some students appeared to have been, in their life, surrounded by many influential models, such as friends within their peer group, teachers at school, and the school environment. These models provided them examples of behavior to observe and imitate albeit not to the established appropriate behaviour expected in a learning environment. Given more time, I would have liked to do similar studies at other international universities, as well as survey the rest of our campus that does not enroll foreign students.

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