Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

A Little Bit About Myself

I am a senior in the Communication Department, although I will not be graduating this year due to troubles with grades in the earlier years of my college career. Hopefully I will be graduating one year from now, as I definitely feel bad wasting my parents’ money already. I’ve lived in the same house in Easton, MA my whole life and would miss it terribly if my parents ever decided to move. I am a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity on campus and have held numerous leadership positions within my house, including (but not limited to) President, Recruitment Chairman, Scholarship Chairman, and New Member Educator. After attending Interfraternal Council meetings for close to three years, I ran for the position of Interfraternal Council President at the end of last semester, which I won. I am now currently entering the second semester of my two-semester term and have enjoyed every moment of it. I'm very into politics, although I hate politicians who throw endless lies at their constituencies. Due to my interest in politics, I am an avid watcher of CNN, because it is not as biased as Fox News, and also because my second cousin, John King, is the Chief National Correspondent for the network.

My main goal in life is to become a professional musician. I have played the piano for 18 years (since the age of 4), and sing as well. This summer I will be dedicating a tremendous amount of time to being in the studio and recording my first album, which still lacks a title at this moment. While it has always been my dream to be a professional musician and make a living by doing what I love to do, I did not start actually writing my own songs until the beginning of last semester. In a perfect world, I would be able to get signed this summer and not end up wasting any more of my parents’ money after all, but chances are I won’t even fully finish the album within the three months of summer. I have some good connections that I hope to build upon: my best friend’s girlfriend’s father is the first-ever Mastering Engineer to win a Grammy award for his mastering work, for Norah Jones’ album “Come Away With Me”. (His company’s website can be found at Sterling Sound). He has already heard a recording of “Wonderwall” by Oasis that I recorded last summer in three hours with a friend, and said I had a lot of talent but that he wanted to hear some original stuff, which I hope to be able to send him this summer. He is based in Manhattan, but I also have a two-bedroom apartment waiting for me in Beverly Hills Adjacent after I graduate. One of my good friends is out there studying to be a Rabbi and has an extra room in his apartment, which overlooks the Hollywood Hills, so whether I end up on the East Coast or West Coast, it will be an unreal experience. Should I end up in Beverly Hills, I have a cousin out there that is Garth Brooks’ entertainment lawyer, who probably knows a lot of people as well. While so many people see becoming famous as an unachievable dream, I am merely counting down the days until I get signed. I do not take “no” for an answer, and never will, unless of course, I end up at the pearly gates and the big man looks at me and says “no”. But even then, I’ll put up a fight.

My Experience With Group Dynamics

I first joined the class about four weeks after everyone else. I thought that I would not be taking the class because of a scheduling conflict on Spire, but as the Add/Drop period began approaching more and more quickly, I realized I was pretty much up Shit's Creek without a paddle and would have to take the class. As I have been a member of many groups in my lifetime, I was definitely intrigued by the title of the course and its description on Spire. At least since I've been in college, I've realized that no matter how much you think you know about any given subject, there is always more to learn. This is the stance I took on learning about groups and the dynamics that evolve as a result of a group's membership and the different roles they play.

The first class I showed up to was definitely strange. The class had already begun taking weekly tests and giving anonymous peer feedback. Everyone had also already been assigned a random number for Steph’s study of the class. Jumping into all of this in the fourth week was overwhelming. Naturally, I had no peer feedback to give on the first test, nor did I know any of the “correct” answers for the test. One of the questions asked “What are three things I need to work on?” and one of my answers was “Registering for classes on Spire on time rather than waiting until the Add/Drop Period is just about over”. That was really all I could say as I had no prior knowledge of what the class was all about.

It definitely took a couple weeks to become more comfortable with the class. The first two or three weeks, I had a very negative attitude, turning to other people in the class and constantly asking “What the hell are we doing here?” or complaining that there was no structure to the class. As I have been a member of groups my whole life, I felt uneasy with the fact that there was really no structure to the course at all. Even the teacher explicitly said she didn’t want to take the lead in the group! How was this going to work out at all?

As we moved more and more deeply into the fishbowls, and I saw people getting aggravated and worked up over what we were eventually going to create on our website, I began to realize that I was not the only one frustrated and confused on what we were supposed to be doing. And this is where I started to actually feel like a part of the group. I had found the deeper common bond than just being UMass students that I had been looking for. The majority of us were all confused and aggravated and wanted to get out of the anger stage (a.k.a. the “Storming stage”), before we started “Norming”, and eventually “Performing”. Richard Weber is the scholar that introduced us to the “Stages of Group Development”, and once we were introduced, I could recognize the stages that we were in as we were in them.

Later in the semester, we began to focus on our individual roles within our group development. With Benne and Sheats’ article as a guide, we began to recognize through anonymous peer feedback and self-reflection where we fit in within the group as a whole and what role we began to take on. This is probably the area where I feel I gained the most out of this class. I eventually came to recognize the fact that I am very opinionated, but also love hearing other peoples’ opinions as well. I recognize that everyone’s opinions matter within a group, although not everyone can always be pleased with the outcome. Within a group, as is demonstrated just through our user pages, the members all have such different backgrounds, stories, opinions, and beliefs, it is near impossible to come to an agreement on everything; but through recognizing roles and stages of group development, it becomes easier for members to realize what roles they need to take on for the continued success of the group, depending on what stage the group is in.

This class was great because it really gave people a chance to add a bit of their own flair to the whole group. For example, as the wiki project began to get underway, we decided that we were going to create groups based on common interests. As stated above, I am very into music and performing, so of course, I decided to join/create the music group. It gave me a chance to collaborate with others in the class that were interested in music and also gave me a chance to perform with another member of the group. It also gave me a chance to make more information known about another passion of mine: Greek life at the University. I wrote a blog about why people should join Greek life, and hopefully, my classmates read it. That blog can be found at my weblog at King's Weblog.

Another part of the class that really engaged me and allowed me to add my perspective to the group was our deconstruction of certain terms that may be deemed negative, but aren't necessarily negative. I chose the term "Arab", mainly because of my interest in politics and the way the media spins everything to reflect the ideologies of certain higher-ups. The term "Arab" has been used negatively in the media ever since the September 11 attacks and especially since I study Communication and the way the media spins stories, the term was a term I was very interested in exploring. Again, the blogpost can be found at King's Weblog.

The class at first seemed pointless and stupid. I was very pessimistic and believed that it wasn’t going to get any better and/or I wasn’t going to learn anything from it I didn’t already know. As I gave it a chance though (I had to), I began to realize that I was actually learning a lot. I appreciate Steph’s insight and hard work throughout this whole semester, and I will definitely miss the dynamics of our class when it’s all over.