Week 3: In-Class Discussions & Speech on Campus and Beyond

Due to the presence of Hurricane Dorian on the eastern coast on the United States over the last week, classes across the whole campus were cancelled including my FYE class. This means that I was not able to participate in any class discussions with the professor and other students last week. Despite this, there is still work to do and information to share. Over the last week, I have conducted research on the topics of participating in class discussions and speech on campus and beyond. Looking over the importance of in-class discussions, I went over a couple articles and sections from a book. The book by the name of They Say, I Say by Cathy Berkenstein and Gerald Graff had a chapter that talked about the importance of building on points or ideas mentioned in discussions. The text emphasized the importance of continuing a discussion in a classroom or a group. When a person wants to do this, they can add more detail or provide their own point of view on a particular idea while sticking close to their opinion while building off the idea mentioned by the person previously speaking in the conversation. In the past, I have been guilty of tracking away from the concepts and ideas that people mention in a conversation. Whenever I don't totally agree with someone's ideas, I want to defer away from the concepts mentioned before which it selfish a bit on my part. I also looked at any article by lifehack.org that talked about essential communication skills that a person does not learn through school. Showing confidence while speaking, listening to what others have to say, asking questions, and acknowledging the opinions of others are some of the important skills that can develop a person as a speaker. Communication is key in today's society because being able to efficiently communicate and relay concepts to other people is the one of the major gateways to success. If you can communicate effectively to someone, you can make people who are listening to your ideas understand and maybe even appreciate and accept them.



After looking at communication in the classroom and the world around us, I dug into the importance of speech on campus and beyond the campus. While communication is very crucial in today's world, making sure you don't say something controversial or offensive is also important. Even though the first amendment protects the right to freedom of speech, our generation is wanting to strip this away starting on university and college campuses. Citizens in our country that are part of this new and rising generation believe that the first amendment is shielding people who spread hate speech. Young adults and college students are wanting to restrict what people say in order to not feel offended or hurt emotionally. Taking away the right to speak freely can be seen as either positive or negative. Getting rid of free speech protect citizens from the hate speech of others, but it would not allow people to protest and defend what they think is right. There are lots of people wanting to sacrifice their ability to protest or go against government policies in order to protect their personal feelings from being hurt by verbal speech. There is a fine line of whether people should speak freely or not, and a person's standpoint on it would probably be determined by personal experiences. On the college campus I am on, there is not a person to jump to your side to support you whenever someone speaks out of tone or cruelly to you. The world is not going to treat us kindly on our journeys in life. In spite of this, we have to realize what is important not only to ourselves but the world around us as well.

Personal Reflection

While I did not get many opportunities to speak and converse with other people this week, I was able to learn that talking to people efficiently is important to me. There are times that I do not feel like I convey my ideas to people right as I stumble over certain parts of my ideas. I want to become better at talking to people because as a mechanical engineer I need to be able to present my drawings, designs, and work to other people so that they can understand what I am working on and what I need to do better.

Sources:
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/25/16524832/campus-free-speech-first-amendment-protest
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment
https://www.lifehack.org/582780/12-essential-communication-skills-that-arent-taught-in-schools-at-all
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U47Tn-SKpwcQHY_GKHBIcJkViCpijJdt/view