After the pipeline activity a few weeks ago, a classmate made a comment that stuck out to me.  She said that because she did not the golden voice, she was ignored.  Frankly, she was spot on.  The pipeline activity was quite interesting.  Matthew had divided the class into two teams:  one that couldn’t talk, and one that could.  He selected all the students who often talk on the quiet team, and the ones who normally don’t talk on the talking team.  The first task was fairly easy; however, Matthew challenged the class in the second task.  At first, it felt like team b, the talking team, was really trying to overcome the challenge.  The team was getting multiple feedbacks from some members.  Some were heard; others were not.  That is due to the fact that some people do have the golden voice, and some just do not.

Another comment that stood out to me which was made by another classmate is about the importance of actually listening to your peers.  Listening is an active process by which we make sense of, assess, and respond to what we hear.  The listening process involves five stages: receiving, understanding, evaluating, remembering, and responding.  If we didn’t understand the topic, we didn’t evaluate it properly; therefore we weren’t actually listening.  We all like to say that we are good listeners, but are we?  Honestly, this is a skill that I need to improve on.  Here is what usually happens:  during interviews or talk sessions, people ask questions or make comments about a specific topic, and they expect the listeners to actually listen.  Only problem is, some of us would listen to key words, think about a response, and ignore the rest of the question or comment.  This is due to multiple reasons:  topic is not interesting, very hard to comprehend, not relatable; the list can go on.  Maya Angelou said, “When you know better you do better.”  I say, “When you listen better you know and do better.”

            Patience was also a crucial factor.    It is something that I need to work on for many reasons.  Patience is a virtue; the ability to wait on something without getting frustrated is an amazing quality.  As I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph, both parties were very interested in the success of this activity; however, after multiple failures, classmates lost patience and wanted to give up on the activity.  Robert H. Schuller once said, “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.”  This is one of my favorite quotes; it explains how patience is essential to making the right decisions.  Another quote that I like is by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  He said, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”  No matter what situation you are in, the outcome will always be rewarding when you are patient.