Spring break was my
time to catch up and get ahead. I finally felt there was enough time to
do some in-depth reading. After a fruitful trip to Half-Price Books that
yielded almost a dozen books to my ever-growing collection, I almost
immediately found myself wishing I could read even faster than I do.
More than half of the books related to the ICM class, which meant my
spring break to-do list also increased. The books for this class have
been quite informative, with lots of practical advice and tips.
A meeting was held
Saturday in which I feel my questions were answered and a concern or two
I had were addressed. With that said, I am disappointed with the “Mean
Girls” demeanor and behavior, which included eye-rolling and patronizing
responses as directed toward one of our classmates who had called in
via telephone.
It’s obvious some of
you are frustrated with this person, but she is a teammate, still. I
hadn’t witnessed that frustration manifested to such an extent until
this meeting, possibly because Carli B. wasn’t present as the overall
group leader. Whatever the reason may have been, get over it and behave.
Part of what we are to
learn in this class is how to work through a major group project that
involves a diversity of people and opinions. It is a lifelong learning
process but what we all need to take away from this is the proper way to
handle things and not learned behavior that includes inappropriate,
unprofessional mannerisms.
Have I made my share of
mistakes in the past with people? Absolutely, yes! One of the reasons I
am in graduate school is to learn how to do things better, both through
study and observation, because there is always room for improvement. It
was wrong of me not to say something about this during the meeting.
More and more, “spiral of silence” is proving to be the one theory I’ve
learned during my time at Mayborn that strikes home. In this case, I
personally let a classmate down by not coming to her defense and saying,
“Enough!”
Yes, this report is
late being turned in. I left the meeting, went to Fort Worth to see a
TCU play my niece is involved in, stopped by a business, got home, fed
the dogs, forgot the report was due and did other things. It’s later
still because I wanted to look back on a couple of things from the
discussions already posted. Here are several observations:
• At the most, based on my calculations
and by looking at the data posted by BlackBoard, seven people in this
class read every single resume posted. Perhaps if we had all done that,
there might be a little more respect and a better ability to “agree to
disagree.”
• It’s obvious that many in the class
aren’t reading every posting. Yes, it’s a pain in the neck and
time-consuming (especially if you don’t know how to “collect” them to
read all at once and then “mark all” as “read.” But perhaps we all could
get along better if we really tried to understand each other’s styles
and what we each have tried to bring to the table.
• To the person who said to my face, “You
shouldn’t put anything into a plan if you don’t know what you’re talking
about” before going on to say, “I learned this in class,” well, I can
appreciate what you say you’ve learned but you don’t know me. You’re
likely one of the 11 people in this class that didn’t bother to read my
resume. You don’t know (or don’t care) that my experience includes
working for a newspaper that also published a semi-annual tourism guide
and a general interest/feature magazine and where I had primary input. I
do know what I’m talking about. I may have failed in how my ideas were
communicated to you, but the appropriate way to address that is to say,
“I’m not sure what you mean here. This isn’t the way I’ve learned how to
do that. Can you explain your thoughts to me so I can understand where
you are coming from?” I thought of bringing you copies of my work, but
decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort to defend myself against
someone who had already patronized me.
• I would agree I have learned much about
the topic of integrated communications marketing in this class, albeit
some of it painfully. Still, my eyes have been opened to an entirely new
area of thought. Just this morning I came across a ProPublica article, “No
Windows. One Exit. Free Drinks: Casino-Driven Design for
Crowdsourcing,” that saw my mind click as to how it relates to what we
have been studying and the possibilities of how I could incorporate this
into future work.
• And with the above, a long, although I hope not rambling, weekly report is done.
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