Blog Post #1 Arianna Arcos

 I believe that presentation and public speaking serves as an extreme benefit to the American college system. I believe that it truly prepares students for college readiness and to see growth in their academics. 

In this assignment, the goal was to be split between three groups and each group built a presentation build on not only their groups and projects, but everyone else’s as well.  Our speech was based on Chapter 3, Intercultural Communication.

Our presentation consisted of slides that explained the dynamics between all of the most common terms that define us today. This was not expected whatsoever, this presentation was definitely more exciting than I expected it to be. 

My group displayed a very professional and engaging relationship and I’m so grateful for the group I was in. From the moment we were assigned this project, we were already speaking about each person’s role and what they might want to talk about. We were already extremely engaged from the moment this presentation was assigned and this effort was characterized by a visible commitment to collective ownership and thorough preparation. The topics I personally chose to speak about were Sex and Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion, and Socioeconomic Status. 

Sex and Gender: 

Sex consists of the biologically determined physical traits such as chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy that lead to what we are assigned to at birth. 

Gender is a social construct of learned roles and communication patterns based on cultural standards. Men are expected to act in masculine ways while women are expected to act feminine. The example provided in the book displays when a woman who is outspoken is told to “act like a lady” and not speak her mind or when a man who is emotional is told to “act like a man” and stop crying as society has defined strength as masculine and sensitivity as feminine. 

This includes not only how we express ourselves in public but also how we display our self identity. 

Because gender exists on a spectrum and sex is biologically rooted,  someone’s gender does not have to correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

Sexual Orientation:

The inherent attraction (whether physical, emotional, or romantic) to someone else. Sexual orientation is also built on a spectrum and consists of 

heterosexuals (attracted to the opposite gender)

homosexuals (attracted to the same gender) 

bisexuals (attracted to more than one gender)

pansexuals (attracted to someone no matter their gender)

asexual (the experience of feeling little to no attraction for someone)

queer (an umbrella term for anyone else who lies on the spectrum but does not yet identify with a certain orientation)

The most societally accepted orientation is heterosexuality and this has reflected in the treatment of the LGBTQ+ community as homophobia has ALWAYS existed. Many people have fought to modify American culture and the acceptance of this community which has lead to a lot of change such as the legalization of gay marriage in 2015 and the law of protection of employees against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Religion:

An organized set of ethical standards and rituals based on a common perception and mutual belief of what is considered holy or sacred.

Religious freedom is valued in the US. 

Religions today include 

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and more.

I also provided statistics on the fastest growing religion today, which is Islam.

Socioeconomic Status:

The class and reputation that someone maintains based on their level of wealth, education, and background. These backgrounds are split into the lower class, middle class, and upper class. 

Different classes have been portrayed to display different traits where higher classes are more capable of having strong personalities where they’re more like to speak out and be confident and those from a lower class background are less likely to speak up and more likely to stay in their corner.

The culture that our presentation was based on was far more intriguing than I expected. What I expected to be short and simple ultimately ended up being a long presentation of different subjects, including race, ethnicity, power balances, sexual orientation, gender, etc. This definitely made all members of my group a lot more interested in the presentation after discovering the amount of subtopics we had to choose from. I appreciated specifically that although they’re related, race and ethnicity were able to be put into two completely different slides giving them different explanations. Same thing with sex and gender, and sexual orientation. I appreciate this separation because people tend to assume that these terms are so related that they can be defined together when this is not the case. There is a clear difference between race and ethnicity, sex and gender, and sexual orientation. I definitely feel like our presentation opened the eyes of other students in this sense.

I ultimately think my group delivered a confident and organized presentation.

Group 2 also portrayed their chapter on communication in groups very well. My favorite thing about this group is the irony in that their topic is based on what they had to do to be able to present well. I think they did a great job in displaying their personal communication and how put together their presentation was. I appreciated their amount of effort for every slide and how they included maximum information, which allowed the slides to be easier to follow. Their explanation on how groups need to be able to communicate to work well together definitely made me feel connected to their presentation as it felt like they understood most where all of us were coming from in regards to the presentation. 

Group 3 represented their topic well as their chapter was about group leadership and problem-solving. This topic was also definitely portrayed throughout the creation of our presentation, as we ran into some hardships where we couldn’t quite come to a final conclusion. Ultimately, through someone’s leadership and assistance we were able to come to a compromise on our confusions and made decisions that benefitted us all in the end. 

I appreciate most how they spoke about leadership and that most groups are likely to face a difficulty when working together,  it that it’s important to build problem-solving skills to get past these challenges. I think because of their understanding on this topic, they worked well together to provide a well organized, clear, and confident presentation where they delivered their point effectively.