Interpersonal Communication

As part of my requirements here at UOP, I need to teach two discussion sessions. The first is public speaking, which with my Forensics and debate background, is pretty easy. The only complication is the use of nomenclature and terminology, which reading the required information makes for easy processing. The actual sharing of information in the classes is easy because my forte IS communication to groups, which is all what this course is about.

My other discussion section is a little more difficult. I also teach Interpersonal Communication. Now, for those who have had conversations with me, I tend to be capable of holding a conversation. But that's usually with people I know. Part of the allure of interpersonal communication is that it also helps you with people you don't know, and to be honest, that's always been one of my complications. As an investigator, I was very good at surface conversations that are designed to pick out pieces of information, but always I had a goal of achieving some piece of information. Conversations were generally investigations rather than give and take processes that integrate the very nature of communication itself (where the back and forth messages constitute communication rather than one side sending messages and the other being assumed the messages were received).

Well, like I was saying before, those who know me probably may not have realized it, but it took time for me to get to know them well enough to be conversational with them beyond a surface level. It's part of why I don't really have a lot of friends, but when I do have friends, they tend to be really, really close friends.

This makes the teaching of interpersonal communication an interesting process. I do happen to be fortunate, however, in that the professor for whom I'm teaching the discussion session is also the professor of the graduate course I am taking, which is the graduate study of Interpersonal Communication. While I was doing the Ph.D. work (and even the MA work) in political science at Western Michigan University, I hit a point where I really wasn't learning anything anymore. I was culling information from sources and self-learning about specific issues. This is probably the first time in a very long time that I'm studying something that has the potential of being extremely useful to me over the long haul.

I once wrote a very self-referential play called Southern Hospitality that chronicled the breakup of a male actor (me) and his girlfriend (yes, there was a person, but who she was is not all that important for this blog). Their final issue is that he was incapable of telling her that he loved her. During one final scene, he realizes why they're going to break up when he says: "I finally realize the problem. You have trouble talking in front of an audience but you're great with individuals. I can talk comfortably in front of dozens, hundreds, even thousands, but put me in front of one person, someone I like, someone I love, and I just completely fall apart."

This should be an interesting semester.

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