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