Conflict is a bumpy road.

So this week we talked about some reasons why conflict comes about and also about how to deal with those instances. Also, we talked about certain types of roles that come into play during conflict that are largely derived from one's personality. I really liked how the guest speaker talked about conflict being a source of opportunity. Personally, I have always avoided conflict as much as I can and my quiz results from Lab supported that. Something important that I have taken away from this week's lesson is that I need to slightly alter my approach to conflict. I plan to try and be a little bit more of a competitor in order to get the conflict resolved in a more timely or efficient manner. Avoiding buys time but it doesn't solve much in the ways of coming closer to a resolution. Eventually, the individual has to suck it up and take action.

Well, back to my goal from last week's blog, I thought I'd give y'all a status report. The activity that we decided to put together kind of fell apart at the seams... no one really showed up. I think this is mostly due to the fact that it was a week night and there were probably conflicts with school. However, even though the event may have been a failure it was definitely not useless. I've put some thought into the result of the event and how to make the next event more successful. I think it will be best to keep the events on the weekend (an earlier event we had on Saturday night was a big hit). Also, I now have thought of better ways to keep everyone informed and reminded of the upcoming activity. Still, I think it is most important to make the activity something that everyone can enjoy. So, with the help of our experiment in Lab this week I have learned of some ways to resolve conflict, especially when it involves choosing a group activity. Also, I will continue to improve upon my strengths in preparation of the next activity and try to put them to even more use.

A new goal that I have made for this week is to help resolve conflicts that I notice on my floor. I have one in mind that needs to be dealt with between two guys who have been on both ends of floor pranks and there is still some tension from the aftermath. So, I would like to take the opportunity to exercise the knowledge I've gained about conflict resolution. Hopefully, I will be able to make an attempt at this goal at this weekend's floor activity. If that opportunity doesn't arise, then I will make it happen after our floor meeting or may even talk to my RA about working in some kind of friendship building activity, or even better... a conflict resolution workshop for applicable use among roommates, into the meeting and have them paired up as partners to see if we can fix this problem.

Over and out.
Kellon

P.S. I totally forgot to work in an analogy for conflict, hence the funky title of the post. For what it's worth, I was going to say something like how conflict can be compared to a bumpy road that can get some pretty nasty potholes, but nothing some good ol' asphalt (conflict resolution) can't fix!

P.P.S. I was inspired by the guest speaker's cool water/emotions analogy to try and make my own comparison.