My first community service activity was last Saturday at the boy scouts food drive. For the most part we seperated and packadged cans and boxes of non parishables that were donated. I find doing this type of community service rather difficult as you do not get to see the results of your work. Another thing I found particularly frustrating was how many restrictions there were on the types of food we could packadge and send to feed the needy. I am positive that someone who doesn't have enough money to buy food would not be upset if they received their dinner for the evening with a dent in the packadge. All in all, it was a good experience.

Since I missed the session on communicating, I had to read the article on effective communication. I realized the importance of the receiver in communicating that is often taken for granted. It makes perfect sense, naturally communication will fail if the receiver and the source are not on the same page, but I generally don't think about this aspect when I am trying to get a message across. The entire process will completely fail if the communicator and the recepient are not giving and receiving the same message. I will definitely have to remember this every time I have something important to say.

After taking the Jung Personality Test, because I missed the first meeting, I discovered that I am an IIFJ. I am moderately introverted, highly intuitive, slightly expressive in my feelings and moderately judging. People with my personality type are idealistic counslers. We are highly motivated to work towards a cause, and often end up taking on too much responsibility. We are highly empathetic and care about the wellbeing of everything around us. Careers that people with my personality are good at are, writing, public cousling, and politics. Famous IIFJ's are Martin Luther King Jr, and Ghandi. Not bad company!

Since I missed the first meeting of Crimson and Gold I had to make up a personality test. Which the test results said I was a ESFJ (extraverted-33, Sensing-12, Feeling-62, Judgin-44). I'm an Idealists called Teachers which take on leadership roles and are cooperatitve in their style of achieving goals. They are reliable and handle people with charm, and are interest primarily in the personal growth and development of others. They tend to make great teachers, psychologist, or social workers; which are all areas I am interested in studying. For the most part I think the personality test described me but some characteristics I wouldn't quite agree with.

Volunteering!
On Saturday, October 13 Nichole and I joined other volunteers at Mount Mercy through a program called Volunteers of America and we went to an elderly woman's home and helped with her yard work. We cleaned out her garage and car, and then we had to trim bushes and rake the leaves around her home. It was a great way to volunteer because you get to spend time with your friends and meet new people in the community. I established five hours of community service through this program and would definitely do it again.
Emily Graves

OK, so my post about the earthquake situation is a bit late, but here goes....It did seem a bit over-hyped. It was called "earthquake" and was about groups-I could pretty much guess that we would be in a simulation situation, pretending an earthquake had happened. Yet some how I was still expecting more. Nevertheless, it was somewhat interesting. I was in the group that was deemed "fractured". I completely disagree. I think we worked out everything very well, even if we did have a few people who seemed to be leading more. And if I were really in that situation, I would want clear, decisive leadership, not an unwavering, must-make-complete-consensus group. My theory is that by the time the other group had figured out all of the choices, my group would have already been signaling and been rescued. I do not to knock the other group in any way; I am merely saying that I preferred my group and still think our methods were effective. And this may just be because I am stubborn, but even on seeing the "experts" decisions and how ours differed, I am still satisfied with the decisions we made. So that is what I thought of it.

I was interested to see how Crimson and Gold would be done this year, because I had done some of it my sophomore year and the program was divided into two parts. I am pleased with the revision that has occurred and I think I will enjoy this new set up. I really enjoyed tonight's activity. I have done a few personality assessments similar to the one done tonight, but I had never encountered the one we did, so that was cool. I had thought I would be Green and I was in fact a Green. My second one was Orange, which surprised me to some extent. My score for Gold was also fairly close to those first two. I only had five points for Blue, which makes quite a lot of sense; nonetheless, it was still a bit funny to see. I plan to give the little assessment to the other people living in my apartment, because I am curious to see if they will test how I think they will. I had a good time tonight and am quite looking forward to the upcoming sessions.

I found the earthquake activity to be really enjoyable. I thought it was interesting that our group's score was better than our individual score. It was fascinating that our group’s first approach was very democratic, reflecting the society in which we live in. After learning that the democratic process took too long, we switched to using whoever had the most convincing argument, this was also reflective of the society in which we live. In America, we place great value on being able to articulate your ideas and beliefs. I believe that since we all valued each individual’s opinion we were able to increase our score. Thus, when members of a group work together, it is essential that they respect and listen to each other in order for the group to be successful.

Yesterday at the Crimson and Gold meeting, I thought the ABC communication session was very interesting to absorb. I was an E so I could only communicate with B and when your messenger doesn't rely your message it becomes very frustrating and upsetting. I had know idea what we were doing because the back row didn't have a specific task. We didn't know what A was trying to do or what their task was. Its interesting to see how communication can get lost along the way and how task are confusing when not everyone has a clear picture of what is going on. In the future I know I have to communicate my ideas across to others so that they understand the task at hand and so that there is no confusion and all functions run smoothly.
Emily Graves

I really enjoyed the earthquake activity. I thought it was interesting, and I also learned that I wouldn't survive an earthquake. Well actually, the steps I thought necessary to survive, were not the steps that one should actually take. It was a really interesting activity, and it was interesting to see how other people ranked the events in order from importance. The group I was in didn't seem to have too much trouble compromising on how to rank each event. The two groups had different ways of discussing and coming to conclusions about how to ranks the events. It was nice doing an activity with a big group, instead of an individual thinking activity.