Week Nine

This week we talked about couples relationships. We covered all the basics to this topic, in fact I think we have talked it to death, but for the sake of the blog, we started talking about crisis in a a relationship and how to prevent it and how to react to it. For example, prevention would be like savings, food storage, 72 hour kits, and just plan things out, also another very important aspect to this is good communication, insurance, medical, car, life, family and friend support, and education. This is a pretty good list to help prevent a crisis or at least make the burden of a crisis a little bit easier. I think its also import to learn good coping strategies and what works best for you and your spouse or significant other, so when a crisis comes your way you know how to work through it. Also we talked about 9 dimensions of a couples relationship; they are satisfaction w/ partners personality traits and habits, the amount and kind of communication, how conflict is handled, how finances are managed leisure activities, sex, children/parenting issue, relationships w/family and friends, and religion.

We Finished the week talking about The family life cycle and all the different stages of a family, from the day you start your family, your wedding day, to when you have an empty nest again. According to our book, their are six stages to this cycle and I feel like its pretty accurate, they are, 1) Independence-leaving home, 2.) coupling-the journey of families through marriage, 3.) Families with young children, 4.) families with adolescents, 5.) empty nest- launching children moving on, and 6.) families in later life. I Thought this was interesting to study because its true we see this happen all the time and don't usually say anything about it, or don't notice that it is happening. But there is a pattern in all things and why would the family be any different.

Week Eight

This week our discussion continued on the topic of conflict. we talked about the different types of stresses in our lives and their effects on each of us. It was a very interesting conversation and nice to know each type of stressor events. Also I liked talking about how the stresses turn into a crisis its interesting to know how and when that happens, and also how its different for every person and every situation.

Week Seven

This week was all about communication and everything that goes with communicating. When Brother Winfree walked into class on Wednesday, it was like any other class day, he walked in put his stuff on the table and started writing stuff on the board. After he was finished writing stuff on the board he then sat down with the students. On the board it gave us our directions for today's class discussion. On the board it said to discuss Power, so one girl started the discussion, and it was no surprise who started the conversation, because she literally comments every class discussion and has an opinion on everything. Anyway, you could tell who was going to be talking the whole time so I knew that I wasn't going to get much in and just kind of kept quite this time. It was interesting to see and listen to how the discussion on power shifted to semi-related topics. It felt like I was listening to some group of girls conversation more than a class discussion, but I saw the point that brother Winfree was making, without someone there to lead the class, the power shifted from person to person. Therefore, not one person had complete control to guide the conversation. At the end of class Brother Winfree stood back up and made his point.

Also it was interesting to re-learn all the basic communication principles. I have a minor in communications so I have learned these principles before, and it was a good reminder and refresher on these principles, because it is good to know how communication works and also I find it interesting to learn about something that we do everyday.

Week Six

This week was a short week and only had two class periods. we had a class review on Wednesday and went over everything that we had talked about thus far in the semester. At the end of class we learned the 4 stages of Human Sexual Response they are 1.) Excitement/Arousal 2.) plateau 3.) orgasmic stage and 4.) resolution. On Friday we took the big Mid-Term.