Why you should endeavour to improve your communication skills

Not everyone can stand in front of 100 people and recite a poem, and many people would find it difficult to record themselves on video to send to YouTube or vine.

What I'm trying to say is that there are many ways in which we can be good at communicating but they are often taken for granted. Just having the balls to be able to speak up in class or a meeting is something that you should praise yourself for, especially if you find you get a little nervous like me.

yeah I know right, it may be hard to believe that even though I sing and record videos, answer in class and will talk in meetings that even I get nervous. I even get nervous before these events knowing that I’m going to say something or do something that many people may judge me for.

As I write this I’m just watching the new art and design school as Cardiff met being built. And even from in here, inside behind glass at least 25 metres away, the noise is still impressive. Builders have a unique situation, they NEED to have good communication, if they don’t, and someone could be hurt or worse killed. And it has happened many times in the past, new reports of a person killed on a building site and it being put down to poor communication or a lack of. So if the noise is too bad how are they telling one another what’s going on and what’s happening? Through many different ways, a gesture is probably the most common but also shouting and phoning one another too. You see this with other professions such as divers where they have no verbal communication, or at least they did until modern technology.

There are different ways to communicate.

Think about everything you do. How you communicate. How well do you do it? Are you often misunderstood?

Go to workshops on it, nearly every institute has them, many even for free! Like UMAX they have Perfect Presentation workshops.

Whatever you do, don’t let people misunderstand you, supposedly people don’t remember what you say and what you do, they will only ever remember how you made them feel. However, your words and how they interpret them will affect their feelings, so don’t be misunderstood. Be heard, be known for your wonderful communication J

Take care until next time kittens

Claire xx

The time I got locked out....

Good day gone temporarily crazy.


ovens on, bread is proofing and a half made cookie mix.


then I realised I don't have a sieve! I know its terrible. but all is not lost, my neighbour, a fellow foodie and she has a plethora of baking equipment. its fab.


so I go to leave, without my keys, get to the door and then feel smug because I remembered needing my keys, you know so I don't get locked out.


I pick up my keys and trot off to fellow foodies, grab a sieve and then off back to a land of domestic awesomeness, bread and cookies.... but no. I have my set of keys but not for my flat, for my home in Swansea, but not Cardiff. typical.


head back upstairs leaving my buns proving and my cookie mix incomplete, so now im not doing work nor am I baking. #thissucks

.
,
She clearly got distracted by tea. Silly girl. 
,
,
,
some time the next week
,
,
,

so I had to wait for lover boy to return, the bread rolls were the size of massively overgrown hamsters with super high BMI scores. 
but when baked they were amazing, the cookies were okay, but nothing special. 

so yeah that taught me to check my keys, and now I do have the right keys on me at all times...

typical student  

Take care till next time guys


Claire 

Annnnnnd I've Abandoned you again......

I am so sorry!

Yes, I am a terrible writer an I did indeed abandon you again. Horrid person I am and all that, yeah I know.

Well today is the first chill out day that I have had in AGES.

So I will just rush over some details,

Basically I put my ethics form in and then it came back two weeks later, one week before interviews with farmers were meant to start, saying yes but no.

Essentially I had been approved in theory, on paper yes, in practise no. I had a few amendments to make, that even some of my lecturers think are ridiculous, and resubmit. With one week left to the term. Are you fricking kidding me?! Anyway my awesome pawesome superviser apparently “accosted” one of the ethics panel to push through my application and I think I received the best email in the world (I know I need to get out more):

Dear Miss Thomas

Please note your ethics application has been approved in full following my recent run in with your supervisor. Enjoy data collection.

Chair of ethics board

Then I got all excitable while trying to drink coffee, not pretty very messy no need for details.

Next I went to my padre’s in west wales and was calling up all of my old farming friends to find participants, bit last minute I know.  But I did it, I got 5 to agree to being interviewed in one night. Felt like an absolute boss (a bit dramatic iknow but an accurate descriptor nonetheless)

My first two interviews were both under 25 mins long and I was aiming for 35-50 min sessions, so I started to panic. I needed more participants and soon. I only had 5 days in the shire. So I called upon any researcher’s, the telephone book and started calling farmers whose name and farm were familiar, I know terrible right? Nearly all of them (there were 3 more) agreed to be interviewed, the next few interviews were much longer and the quality of them was amazing.

Finally all my interviews were done. And I left the shire. My dad was very sad he couldn’t be a participant so I asked him the questions down the phone and he got bored half way through… *rolls eyes and smiles*

Then the typing came, well not for me, I was snowed under with other college work, so a good and wonderful friend of mine offered to help with transcription, while I plodded on with a clinical review of the psychological implications of being diagnosed with depression and a media analysis of two papers reviewing their biases.  Epic fun (actually to be fair they were interesting!). Anyway, my transcripts are now done, they need to have all identifying data removed, and then I can send them back to my wonderful participants for them to read, if the want to, which they all kept asking me… “okay, so youre going to send it to me? Do I have to read it? Cant I just say yes its fine?”  

So that is where  I am now.

And I am feeling pretty good about it

To do

- Analyse transcripts

•           Coding
•           Find themes
•           Put those themes  in bigger over arching themes
•           Quotes for tables
•           Write about quotes

- Researching for

•          intro
•           method
•           discussion

-  Write up

•          Intro
•           Method
•           Results
•          Discussion
•          All the other schmancy bits

So we still have a long way to go….

But look how far we’ve come!

Take care till next time guys 

Claire, who loves you very much and won't abandon you again... she thinks

28th October til the 17th November

Hello lovely supportive people.

Here we are, again, I said I wouldn’t abandon  you, but I did. Whatcha gonna do hey??

Anyway, back to the real world. And the world of my project.

28/10/13 til 3/11/13

READING WEEK. I just worked my butt off. I went home and cuddled my cats. And mother. But mostly the cats.

4/11/13 til 10/11/13

This week I was furiously typing up my OP assignment. Which I honestly don’t know how it went but I will let you know in due course… ARGGHH, but nothing to do with my project here either.

11/11/13 til 17/11/13

Really not a lot has been happening, I had a deadline to make. Which I did! But not for my project.

There has been more tweaking of ethics bits and bobs, the parts that allow you to do your study. Without the approval of the ethics board you have no study. It’s one of the most important elements of your project. So this week I have been fine tuning my ethics submission. And I think it is nearly done.

BUT guess what did happen this week…..? Oh only that the marks for the proposals were given back… and guess what?! I GOT AN A!!!! AN A!!!

Yes, for my proposal I got an A. (75%) which is really high at university.

Here is the proof!

Anyway, that was that week, on the Friday I went to see my tutor, and we made a game plan for this week to battle through the final snags in my ethics form!

Excellent!

Thank you all for being patient with me. I really appreciate having you to talk to J

Take care kittens

All the best

Claire xx

The Cohesive capabilities of Coffee and other Hot Beverages

Hello Beautiful People. 

Yeah you, there at your end of the internet connection! I know you’re gorgeous!

Anyway,

A nearly empty Caramel Latte mmm....

I sit here, sipping slowly at my currently too hot caramel latte, in a coffee shop, you know what I mean every coffee shop is the same. It’s a place where you either sit alone, or are fully engaged in conversation.

You can see all types of relationships around you in one place. The very beginning of a brand new relationship, ones just starting. A typical cute scene, two people, smiling at one another at first, cheeky glances over a book or laptop. Finally one is brave enough to go over. The "Are you on your own?” the “I haven’t seen you in here before" or the "what are you working on?" or the simple "can I join you?”. And soon enough smiles and laughter soon spill over their coffee cups. It’s sweet, it’s new, and it’s innocent.

Then there are friendships, a few types are seen like old and informal, usually the loudest in the shop, their solid friendship only bound tighter by the shared glue that is caffeine. They will talk about everything and anything for as long as one will let the other.

There are the busy “business meeting over coffee”. Two birds, one stone. Caffeine and a meeting. Boom. Done. But don’t be fooled if you are invited for a coffee with a potential employer, they don’t want to talk about your dogs or family, they are there on business and this is an interview. And it’s formal. It’s ON right now.

There are the people who haven’t seen each other for years, decades even and the coffee shop is mutual territory, nowhere too scary, nowhere too personal. It’s not too loud, but a place you can talk and splurt your life story since you last met. You know you have pre-rehearsed what you’re going to say and also what you’re not. Everyone who you meet you tell an altered version of what’s happened to you and your life. Not lying, just not telling everything. Jesus did it, you know those years that cannot be accounted for in his life? Yeah those are his "I aint gonna tell you that" moments. *if he’s real that is.

There are colleagues becoming friends, sharing more than just an office together but sharing their lunch and downtime with one another, this making their relationship stronger over the shared fix of coffee.

There are the groups of friends, the last nights story tellers, the "you-won’t-believe-what happened"ers and the "I-have-so much-to-do-right-now"ers.

There are the people sharing secrets, whose tears, in both laughter and sadness run into their cups. And obviously there are their audiences. The friends, the best friends, the “I couldn’t live a day without you” friends, the “NOWAYS” sayers, the motivators, and the “Of course I will always be here” friends.

Sometimes there are the break ups, there are the breakdowns, there are the awkward meetings to return your exes scarf that you knew looked better on you anyway but now you’re going to sit here and drink your coffee alone... without their scarf.

Then there are the goodbyes.

the walkouts, the storming aways, the “I am so upset right now I’m going to leave without drinking or even taking my coffee with me”. But there’s also the "this was great" the "I’ve got to go now" the "I’ve got a meeting in in an hour"

There is the "we should do this again sometime" the "same place same time?" and the “we need to do this more often". Friendly, not committing to too much and easy to reschedule.

And finally there’s the "I hope I’ll see you again in here" or maybe, just maybe the "here's my number.... call me?"

Coffee shops across the world are more than a place to drink an admittedly overpriced hot beverage that burns you at first and then starts to taste good only once you have lost sensation in your mouth. Coffee shops, your Starbucks, Costa, café Nero and other large brands or the little ones one few know of, they are all the same, they are a hub of communication and relationship formation.

Maybe next time you’re sat in a coffee shop, anywhere in the world, you may notice these relationships around you or you may just be one of them. Whether you have a spiced pumpkin latte or English breakfast tea, the power of a hot beverage is wonderful. They make both good and bad times just a little bit better, just a little easier to comprehend. So if you have good news or bad news, grab a coffee, think it through, and it won’t seem quite so overwhelming.

Take care kitten, and Thank you for reading this enormous post! As a thank you, we should share a coffee together, sometime?

Claire xx

Project update (Monday 7th October to Sunday 27th October)

Hello lovely lovely readers,

I feel so bad for leaving you for three weeks.

That is honestly because I feel that I have done anything in the past few weeks. Well I have but i just don’t feel like it.

The week commencing Monday 7^th October, I pretty much just finished my proposal, adding theory context and more grounding to the evidence for my rationale. Which I really enjoyed to be honest, I’m really lucky that I get to study something I find really really really interesting. There are many who are not so lucky. So I am very grateful for that. Admittedly my topic is not rock and roll but I, hand on heart, feel it is important and could help someone somewhere someday, I have no clue who where or when, but I believe and  feel it could.

I handed in my proposal draft to my supervisor on Monday 14^th October and had it back on my birthday (16^th October) and was told that it was really well written and a joy to read, which is always encouraging. It made my birthday amazing, one of the best things on that day. On the Thursday 17^th I edited the draft in keeping with the recommended alterations, all of which were grammatical.

And for some reason I then did nothing, also because I had an amazing party in Wolverhampton on the weekend. So that is my reason for doing nothing.

Then on the 21^st of October, I sat in uni and worked on my proposal a little bit, and put in a little section on pilot study. 22^nd of October, hand in day, done. Sorted. Lovely. Great.

Then on the 23^rd I attended a workshop that I will write extensively about and then that pretty much took up the rest of my time until Thursday night. Late Thursday night.

Friday was full of me going to an open day for occupational therapy, and then singing in a choral choir for the best part of 8 hours. It was intense but I loved it. When I finally got the songs right.

Anyway that was a very brief breakdown of what I’ve been up to.

I hope any of that has not caused you to pass judgement on me. But of course you are allowed.

Take care kittens

Claire xx

Birthday Synopsis (written on my birthday!)

So today is my 21st Birthday. I am 21 years old as of 12:48pm today. I am 21. Number of years old: 21. 

This.

Is.

TERRIFYING!

Today is a day that I have eagerly awaited and while anticipating it with dread. Why? I honestly have no idea. 

21. Saying feels wrong, uncommon, and incorrect. I cannot be 21. It’s the wrong number there must be some mistake. It’s true; someone somewhere must have gotten the date wrong, I can’t be 21. there’s no way I can be 21 because 21 is an age where you become a grown up, you learn to live in a real world, with real world problems, and you live in a real house, not student accommodation, or student digs, you're meant to be all these things that I just don't know if I am or even can be.

Strong

Fierce

Independent

Mature

Did I strong already?

These are traits I can only have when others are watching, on my own I'm scared useless and a little bit of pansy. Okay, a lot of pansy.

21, not a chance. I’ve always been a teenager with the sense and worldly knowledge of a little old biddy and that’s how I like it. And it works for me, staying in, drinking tea, having my cats, I like it. And it’s ironic until you reach a certain age, and for me that age is 21. I don't know why. But I've felt as if there is some big change, obviously not physically but in terms of how I act and who I act. And I hate change. Seriously, I hate it. I do little changes, like wearing make up a bit better, looking after my mop of hair, and dressing nicely on a day to day basis.

Maybe I am changing now that I am 21. Maybe it’s already happening and I knew nothing about it.  I spent my first hours of 21 the same way I wish to carry on, helping someone to feel a little better just by talking things through with me. or anyone really but it is a nice feeling when you help a friend/relative through something, just by sitting on the other side of the screen, letting them throw their feelings and thoughts through the internet to me and for me to just read listen and be there. I am always there for those I care about, and I'm normally there for those who I don't even know. I think that says something about me, I have no idea what mind you. 

21. Its growing on me. Still weird though. Maybe I won’t get used to it until I'm 22. Now there’s an age I'm looking forward too. It sounds fun! I think maybe there is just such a social thing about 21 and that is what is freaking me out. there’s an expectation for you to party and to drink and to be wild and adventurous then to be mature and settled at the same time, mature and settled I can do have done forever!

So lets see what it will be like, come on then you cheeky age you! Let's rock this world! 

Take care kittens 

Claire