Between taking COM250 and going to GDC, my professional communication skills have seen a lot of growth this semester. While I don’t think these skills were too bad to begin with, there are certainly several areas where I can improve. Things like following up with colleagues, going to career events, and starting conversations are areas that I can improve on. Likewise, there are skills that I’m already fine at like keeping my professional sites up to date, asking questions, and having topics to talk about. While I’m not the best when it comes to communication, I can certainly hold my own. I always make sure that I have something interesting to talk about. Whenever something interesting happens on any given day, whether it be something that happened
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The thought of having dead air in a conversation worries me, so when that happens, I can just draw upon the topics that I have and start a new conversation. I focus a lot of my communication skills on trying to maintain conversations, so on top of always having interesting topics ready, I try to ask questions when I think of them. Going from topic to topic is one way to keep a conversation going, but what happens when you run out of topics? If a person doesn’t have a lot to say about a particular topic, the conversation can die pretty quickly. That’s where asking questions comes in. Asking questions is a clever way to get to know the person you are talking to on a deeper level than only knowing their opinion on a topic. For example, when I was talking to someone at GDC about the company they work for, I started queuing up questions in my head about what they were talking about. Whenever they finished a topic, I had question for them about that topic, and it got me to know more about what that particular person does at their company rather than just how their company functions. In the end, I got to know that person better and made a better …show more content…
There are times when communicating that make me feel like I’m just on another wavelength entirely. One thing that makes me feel that way is following up with colleagues. I perfectly fine at sending follow-up emails talking about how nice it was to meet them and how we should stay in touch, but when it comes to actually staying in touch, I don’t really know how to do it. I just can’t think of a good way to keep the conversation going. If the other person follows up with me, I can keep the conversation going, but when I’m the one who has to follow-up, it ends up falling through. To change this, I’m going to challenge myself more with keeping up conversations. Emailing a person back and forth can be tiresome, but if I connections that I enjoyed talking to on my social media, I could start up a conversation with them on topics that we mutually enjoy. Things like commenting on a Facebook post go a long way in keeping connections together. The reason why I think adding connections on social media would be a good thing is because of another communication issue I have: starting conversations. With social media, I could just add on to a topic that they are already starting, but when it comes to down to me starting a conversation out of the blue, it’s hard. I usually can’t think of a good enough reason to message someone, and
The thought of having dead air in a conversation worries me, so when that happens, I can just draw upon the topics that I have and start a new conversation. I focus a lot of my communication skills on trying to maintain conversations, so on top of always having interesting topics ready, I try to ask questions when I think of them. Going from topic to topic is one way to keep a conversation going, but what happens when you run out of topics? If a person doesn’t have a lot to say about a particular topic, the conversation can die pretty quickly. That’s where asking questions comes in. Asking questions is a clever way to get to know the person you are talking to on a deeper level than only knowing their opinion on a topic. For example, when I was talking to someone at GDC about the company they work for, I started queuing up questions in my head about what they were talking about. Whenever they finished a topic, I had question for them about that topic, and it got me to know more about what that particular person does at their company rather than just how their company functions. In the end, I got to know that person better and made a better …show more content…
There are times when communicating that make me feel like I’m just on another wavelength entirely. One thing that makes me feel that way is following up with colleagues. I perfectly fine at sending follow-up emails talking about how nice it was to meet them and how we should stay in touch, but when it comes to actually staying in touch, I don’t really know how to do it. I just can’t think of a good way to keep the conversation going. If the other person follows up with me, I can keep the conversation going, but when I’m the one who has to follow-up, it ends up falling through. To change this, I’m going to challenge myself more with keeping up conversations. Emailing a person back and forth can be tiresome, but if I connections that I enjoyed talking to on my social media, I could start up a conversation with them on topics that we mutually enjoy. Things like commenting on a Facebook post go a long way in keeping connections together. The reason why I think adding connections on social media would be a good thing is because of another communication issue I have: starting conversations. With social media, I could just add on to a topic that they are already starting, but when it comes to down to me starting a conversation out of the blue, it’s hard. I usually can’t think of a good enough reason to message someone, and