The Phase of Student Age From Personal Experience - Essay Example

Reflection Introduction: Being a we are told that age is the golden age of a person’s life. This golden age, as we are provided with it, doesn’t hold all the goods in it. As a student we are faced with all the different challenges of life like any other struggling person would face. Then why call it a golden age? It’s because of the experiences that we get to go through being a student that no one else does. Studying in an institute getting to know people with mutual interests and goals in life and working under a superior who will help us guide to the aim of our life, this doesn’t happen in any other aspect of life where one gets to meet so many people who are trying for the same thing. It is through these facets of the golden age that we get to learn so many things as a student. We are provided different challenges working as an individual and managing work in a group. The friendship that we have and how it is put at test when the same pals get to be rivals of each other. In this report I’m discussing all those aspects that we go through in our life when we are going through the phase of student age. What I went through in my last year of being a student and whatever I learned and plan to learn in the future from the mistakes I made in the past year. As An Individual: I learned that where working as an individual has its advantages it also has some disadvantage. Nothing is perfect and doesn’t come with all pros. When I mention the pros for working as an individual I would foremost like to mention that when one is working alone, they have all the authority to themselves. They can make decisions and wouldn’t have to argue with anyone about following them. They are the leader and they are the follower. They set their own rules and then act upon them according to their desires. They don’t have to wait for anyone and individual working gives a sense of independence to them and when they achieve something the achievement is all theirs. They can proudly receive what they achieved and keep it to themselves. It’s all theirs. It’s like being the only child of a family where you get all the toys and don’t have to share them with anyone. On the other hand, the cons that one faces in this part of life are that they have no one to motivate them. It sometimes feels like a burden when all the costs are on them and they don’t have anyone to share their ideas with to make them better by brainstorming with other people. One would alone be responsible for any actions they take and then may regret them if something goes wrong when they won’t have anyone to share the blame with. As A Group Or Team: When we’re talking about group work most people only see the drawbacks you have when you’re working together with other people which would be that when multiple minds are working together you are bound to have conflicts in your ideas. Brainstorming may provide you many ideas to work on but the fight on leadership is always there when good minds are working together. Who gets to be the leader? Who gets to decide everything? This mostly happens where there are people working in a team and all those people hold that sense of leadership. One has to wait for their partners to finish their work so that their work may be considered completed as well because when in a team you are bound to be dependent on your partners or co-workers. But as mentioned before nothing is always with all cons or pros. The good side of team working is that your communication skills get polished. One gets to have so many minds to work together on the same thing to get better ideas than when working alone, gets to share the cost and sense of responsibility and is motivated when they see others working on the same thing they find themselves procrastinating on. When the group achieves success the excitement is indefinable on how the success is supposed to be a shared prize and when the members hold a sense of sharing it can prove to be a good thing. Usually it all depends on the type of people you are working with. If you have good minds working with you the success can prove an excellent achievement and if individual minds are working as a team then they may prove to make the worst out of their achievement by asking for their share of the prize and conflicts take place. Conflicts and Rivalry: In my past year of life I learned how friendship can be put to test in this said golden age. How conflicts and rivalry take place and how you lose something and then learn to endure the loss and move along. It mainly all happens because of the competition that we are given as students that friends start sharing a sense of rivalry for each other. Because of this competition put in between, everyone is caught up in a race to leave the other behind, to prove their selves better, to gain what everyone is trying for. Having so many people to try for the same goal one realizes how hard life can prove to be, how hard winning can be even for the winner. When one realizes how his gain resulted in someone else’s loss it is not satisfying enough seeing the one who lost was someone who was dear to you. In this race for success in life we learn how worldly relations come to end with the passage of time when you keep trying for yourself. We learn we are selfish beings but we also realize that it’s not something we should hate ourselves for. Human race has always tried to prove itself better among its fellows just to get the satisfaction of knowing they did it. This is the race of being better, race of winning between the curious minds we have as humans. Most students manage to work out a compromise between outside pressure and studies which enables them to meet their basic obligations, but there is frequent if not continual friction involved which leads to energy diffusion at college, irritation, and, when provoked, anger and aggression. For example, a key member of a task group or task force who is chronically late for group meetings because of transport difficulties can cause problems for the entire group. Another example is suggested by the interpersonal squabbling that broke out among several members of the New York Mets baseball team during the summer of 1987. The Mets were several games behind the division leader, at the time, and were struggling to regain their former championship form. One key player was publicly criticized by some teammates for missing too many games due to minor illness and possibly other reasons. He, in turn, threatened them with physical retaliation for their public criticism. The reported behavior pattern strongly suggested that this player was experiencing serious difficulties in dealing with life stresses beyond his occupation. His teammates, on the other hand, were angry because they believed he was letting them down. Compromise is typical Most people who work out a reasonable accommodation between their studies role and requirements for daily living accept or adapt to task-related obstacles. They resign themselves to undemanding jobs, inadequate supervision or inadequate procedures and perform at an acceptable level. This accommodation often but not necessarily includes a fair amount of grumbling. Some will also engage in problem-solving behavior to deal with the sources of these frustrations, if possible. However, not everyone has viable alternatives and some become "problem" employees. If group progress or survival depends on such people, and if it is necessary to excite them, mobilize maximal energy, and sustain it, then the organization must attend to the obstacles involved in all three categories. Stress Some colleges believe that "pressure keeps students on their toes," put great pressure on them to get the work out. (Pressure in this sense refers to the motivational stress or tensions created by schedules, deadlines, accuracy demands, facultys actions, teachers threats (such as, "If you dont make your deadline, you are in big trouble"). The good news is that pressure in the right amount keeps students on their toes. Task-relevant frustration can increase the challenge involved and enhance energy mobilization. In the right amount, it can also produce problem solving behavior and innovation, which often are necessary group process ingredients. The bad news is that if the pressure is too great or too continuous, some students will seek ways to avoid it. Students frustrated by too much pressure from the college very often try to beat the system. Hiding errors or stubbornly refusing to use proper procedures while under pressure are some of the things that employees do to "get even with" authoritarian supervisors on occasion. They represent aggressive reactions to frustration. Thus heavy pressure on employees may keep some of them on their toes, but it can also create serious problems. Rather than choosing between high and low pressure, it is best to find that optimal pressure point where particular individuals or units work most efficiently. This point varies from one person or group to the next. Let us now consider another relationship -- when people are placed under high pressure accompanied by high tension, what happens to their ability to perceive differences among other people and objects? Do they become more or less discriminating, or remain unaffected? It is essential for all of us to make accurate and efficient perceptual discriminations among people, objects, plans of action or alternative diagnoses of trouble throughout our lives. In many instances such perceptual ability is an important aspect of task performance. The basic relationship here is very similar to the one discussed above in relation to performance. As we increase the amount of pressure that we place on a person from zero to some moderate amount, performance and discriminating ability increases. But there is a point of diminishing returns. When we increase tension beyond some hypothetical "moderate" level and approach the "high" level, however, the rate of increase in discriminating behavior slows down and eventually deteriorates. The behavior of students in conflict or competition with other groups follows a general pattern similar to the one observable among frustrated and/or competing individuals. A group whose goal-directed activities are perceived to be interfered with by the goal-seeking activities of another group may engage in collective problem-solving behavior, become aggressive in varying degrees, display immature behavior, or give up. It also can become "sick" or lose its efficiency, much the way some individuals do under excessive stress. The existence of frustration among individuals within class can affect the relations between them - For example, widespread exam depression and its attendant frustration often lead to scapegoating. In the larger society this historically has been accompanied by deterioration of relations among racial, ethnic and religious groups. A similar phenomenon occurs in colleges. If students become too frustrated by ineffective or arbitrary faculty, stressful studying conditions, or by external, societal stresses, they may very well engage in hostile collective action against an "out group" -- management, or ethnic and religious minority group members at college. A rival unit in the campus also may become a target. Strikes, rumor mongering, scapegoating, and other hostile actions become the order of the day. The same type of social process also can occur within and between student unions. In such cases the union leadership becomes the "out group," or else jurisdictional battles occur between rival unions. CONFLICT Most behavioral scientists believe that rational problem-solving is superior to the use of naked power and emotionally charged hostile behavior. Some of them accept the proposition that while extreme forms of aggression, particularly at the college, generally have unfortunate consequences both for the individuals involved and the college, there are occasional circumstances where aggressive outbursts are useful, while other times they only have a negative impact. It is characterized by a sustained, interrelated pattern of mutually or unilaterally damaging beliefs, attitudes and behaviors such as chronic and persistent: • Hostility, antagonism, punitiveness, dominance striving and threat • Perceptual distortion, stereotyping and scapegoating • Trickery, feelings of betrayal, and revenge seeking • Institutionalized practices, such as publicizing performance data, that keep the conflict from dying • Mutual disrespect and denigration • inconvenience, discomfort, or damage to bystanders When students of a group engage in activities that are competitive as well as reciprocally frustrating, such that the accomplishment of a desired objective by one individual results in defeat or loss for other individuals, unfavorable attitudes develop that result in additional competition between them. As used here, “competition” refers to something more powerful than friendly rivalry. It concerns circumstances in which significant interests and/or welfare of an individual or group are at risk and success by one results in a serious loss by another. The spirit of a truly competitive situation is that one individual have to win and others must lose. When significant stakes are involved and the objective of each individual in a group is to win, the consequences for cohesiveness are catastrophic Communication It must be obvious that cohesiveness is related to communication. Those norms that cause cohesiveness are the products of interaction between people. These interactions have to take the form of communication. As a result, cohesiveness is strongly dependent upon communication. In general, the principle can be set forth that augmented communication between students will intensify cohesion—unless the communication is unpleasant, critical, antagonistic, or otherwise divisive. Any official communicative acts that give emphasis to membership in the group or focus attention upon group values as well as stays well awards of conduct will heighten cohesiveness. This particularly applies to those communications of an informal and personal nature that originate from an instructor. Due to lack of information regarding the activities of other students, feelings of common effort and solidarity are absent. This is devastating for unity and cohesiveness. Competition Competition is another process by which a relationship among individuals, groups, departments, divisions or nations may be defined. It can be either spontaneous and natural or deliberately planned and encouraged. Some spontaneous or "natural" rivalry is normal and to be expected in all colleges. Whenever group boundaries are observable, the members of separate groups tend to identify themselves with their groups and make comparisons between "their" group and "other" groups. They compare studying conditions, effort requirements, political "influence" within the campus, administrative policies, leaders, performance standards, and rewards. They also try to achieve and maintain appropriate "balance" on such matters. Usually such activity merely reflects mild rivalry -- there are no clear-cut "winners" and "losers." Competition can get out of hand - When competition is deliberately planned and encouraged, it normally occurs within the context of a system of rules, rewards, and penalties. By definition, "pure" win-lose competition means that some groups win at the expense of others. The losers, therefore, find (or perceive) their behavior pathways to important goals blocked, and even the winners, during the course of the contest, find numerous blocks and experience stress to some degree. In the long run such a situation often becomes cyclical and self-defeating for all parties concerned. Conclusion: This is all we face in our student life and are taught how to cope with humanity that arises within us for others. We are taught to be professionals and put those feelings aside to learn the ways of making ourselves better. To win that race in which thousands participated along us. How to put forth the best of us and what can prove to be better for us and how we can the best of that better. Read More