Interpersonal Communication has very many different concepts surrounding it. Our group feels as though the idea of being open when conversing and especially when “nexting” is very important. Through out our class Sports08 has used “openness” as a tool for interpersonal communication. The idea of being open gives a conversation a flavor, and makes for a better conversation. Typically the people involved in the conversation leave the conversation with a better feeling as opposed to having a conversation with out being open, and using openness as a form of “nexting.”
Sports08 shows different examples of being open through out his posts. For the lecture “Continuing to Converse” (July 31, 2008 ) Sports replies to the lecture and connects his reply to John Robinson’s book “Look Me In The Eye.” Sports is fairly open through out this whole comment, but there is one part of this comment that stands out with openness. In reply to John’s challenges with autism, and how he was able to overcome so many obstacles Sports08 writes: “I have certainly had challenges in my life with communicating, as I was in fifth grade and was diagnosed with a language processing learning disability.” Sports is openly telling the class that he has a learning disability, but more so he is telling this in a communications class, and describing that his learning disability is revolves around communicating. Sports motivation to write this seems to come from being able to add personal experience of his own to relate to John’s personal experiences that he discusses through out his book.
In this lecture Stephanie brings up a very important case, that there are people who do intend on influencing a conversation. Stephanie says “The point is that we are always and forever joining conversations in the middle, and there are a lot of people who want to influence how the conversation turns out” (Stephanie Kent). Here Sports was joining in a conversation that was revolving around Robinson’s book and Stephanie’s lecture. Sports made the decision to be open in his comment, where as he could have replied and left out all personal experience and not brought up any personal information; if this were the case his response would have been much less interesting and his point would have been less clear.
Sports goes on to say later in his response “[...] I used to be rather pessimistic, therefore I would often anticipate the worst in circumstances that I should not have.” This quote was in response to Stephanie’s discussion of anticipating the worst, from the lecture “Audience: To Imagine or Ignore?” Stephanie explains to the class that “anticipation can be divided into two broad categories, which I will call “negative” and “positive.’” Sports explains that he used to be pessimistic, and would anticipate the worst in situations more so than he would anticipate in a positive way. Sports explains that he has learned since, and now he tries to be more positive: “I have since tried to always anticipate the best, even in a negative situation I try to find some positive that can come from it.” Here he tells about himself and how he has tried to improve himself. He then says “It is so much easier this way, than always anticipating the worst.”
Sports uses openness to make his response very colorful. With out the personal experiences and the way he is open this response would have been dry, and less interesting. Sports formulates his response and makes his points, by using personal experiences and referring to himself to back up these points. Openness is a skill that really makes interpersonal communication more interesting, with out it conversations can are much less personal and with out much flavor. Openness is essential in building relationships, and relationships can not be possible with out interpersonal communication.
