However, the area of skill is still my weakest point. Though I have tried very hard, I find it very hard to manage my conversations. I still don’t know when I should change the topic and how I can make it go the way I desire. So I think conversation management is the area I especially want to improve in my future.
Contextual Analysis
For this part, I would like to choose the contexts of family and school. The family context happened between me and my dad. Two years ago, my dad got promoted at work. He went to have dinner with his colleagues to celebrate that night, but in the end, my mom and I got to “celebrate” with my dad in the hospital because he drank too much. I felt so angry that as a grown-up, he didn’t have any control. The next morning when my dad finally pulled himself together, the first thing I did was blaming him for drinking too much rather than asking him about his health. He was so hurt and fragile. But I was too furious to notice his look. It was my mother who noticed that and asked me to put aside my anger and show him more concern. I was so bad at managing my emotion and so lack of empathy. I could have let out my anger after my day recovered, but the first and foremost thing I should do was showing empathy towards the patient. I think the mistake I made in this context was my verbal behavior. Fortunately my mom told me about that in time, or else I would have never been able to make it up for my dad. I find that my inattentiveness or lack of empathy often happen between me and my family. Maybe many of my beloved have been hurt without my consciousness. So it’s very necessary for me to take that into very serious consideration.
The school context happened between me and my English teacher, who had just graduated from university when I was in Grade 2 in senior high school. I had always been the favorite of my English teacher because my English was much better than my classmates. However, it changed when my cellphone kept ringing in one of his classes, which was the last class of the day. We were forbidden to open our cellphones during school, but a friend came to my city that day and I had to tell her the way. Somehow, there was something wrong with my phone, I couldn’t open the mute mode. So it rang for at least three times. After class, I went directly to my teacher and simply apologized: “Sorry, Mr. Chen, one of my old friends came here, so I didn’t turn the phone off”. He was busy answering other students’ questions, and I was in a hurry to pick my friend up, So I left without his response. I just assumed that he wouldn’t mind since he had been so nice to me. But I was wrong, he was so indignant and accused me of paying no respect to him. He said that I could have asked my friend to wait and waited until other students left, and then gave him good explanation but I just left after a simple, insincere apology. He felt so embarrassed among the other students. At last time, I thought he was so mean as a teacher. Teachers would not care so much about their students’ behavior. But now I can understand his reaction. He treated me as a special student and would expect more from me than other students either in my academic performance or respect. I think I have committed both verbal and non-verbal mistakes in this context. I left with “no big deal” face even before he responded to my apology. But non-verbal mistakes seldom took place after I became a college student. My words were also very simple without too much sincerity since I myself didn’t take it as a big issue. Just because of my attitude, I cost myself a dear teacher and may have hurt him very much, which is bad in either way.
Compared non-verbal behavior, I think I should pay more attention to verbal behavior. I find the message type of HPC can help me most in improving my weakness. During the two contexts, I didn’t think from the counterparts’ perspective, and more of the LPC type. With my father, I should first express my happiness about his promotion and then voiced my concern. With my teacher, if I had first shown my understanding for his fury, I guess we would still be on good-terms now.
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