Question #3

The concept I chose was the importance of diversity in small groups. When I was in high school, it would be obvious what group you hung out with mostly by the ethnicity, club, or sport you played. I enjoyed high school, but after I graduated, I wished that I had gotten to know a larger diversity of people when I had the chance. When I had entered San Jose State, I wanted to join a club that had a group of diverse individuals, not only by ethnicity but background as well. The fraternity called PKT rushed me and one of the major reasons why I joined me was because of their diversity and small amount of people. This newfound diversity brought me a different perspective people's background's. It was a great learning experience being in an organization that accepts diversity and personality. Diversity in small groups is truly an important aspect or else one would never understand the different surroundings in which they live in.

Question #2

White men of privileged is defined in the text as “organizational behaviors and expectations have been defined within the context of that privileged upper-middle-class, middle-aged, able-bodied, white make experience” (p. 96). I work in a very high class gym and I teach tennis part-time. Every day I believe I talk to the typical upper-class-men white male. I ask them how did they get to their successful jobs and most of the stories I heard is that they get their opportunities from family members and close friends. At both college's I attend, there are many student that are truly eligable to have great jobs and internships but they are given to other close relatives that will soon pass it on to their close relations. I believe that it is all part of the system that is for t

Question #1

I have several groups that I hang out with on a daily basis but the closest one to being stereotyped is probably the fraternity I belong to at school. In my experience in with this group, one of the concepts of stereotyping is our "language use." In the greek community we use terms, for example, "big's" "little's" "socials," that only people belonging to a fraternity or sorority would understand. Greek people usually talk to each other about their organization they belong to and use terms that involve knowing the vocabulary.

Also, the nonverbal communication used can easily identify a certain sorority or fraternity. The easiest way to identify a greek person is by the letters they wear. The greek letters identify the certain organization they belong to. Each individual wears these greek letters to represent for their organization.

A lot of my friends that aren't in a fraternity or sorority stereotype against me because of all the movies and picture that the media imprints on greek organizations. It's not all about the partying, drinking, and belligerent loudness. Instead, it's the brotherhood and bond that only those in the organization have for each other and builds lifelong friendshis.

Cohesiveness

Cohesiveness is the force that brings group members closer together. There are two parts of cohesiveness: emotional and task related. The emotional part of cohesiveness is from the connection that the members feel for other group members. Its the amount of time they each spend with each other and the more they look forward to their next group meeting. Task related cohesiveness is the connection of group goals and how they work together to meet these goals.

My friends and I join a bowling league every year and we look forward to winning it as well. Not only do we look forward to winning the league but it gives us a chance for us to hang out and catch up with each other. I look forward to this every week because it gives us a break from all the stresses we have in our regular day. Also, our bond grows as we work together as a team to push each other to do better.

Norms in my group

Some norms that I realized in my group are pretty simple and normal. Every week, since we have close to the same schedule, we meet at the same spot on campus to eat lunch. Every monday at Mission Lanes, we all bowl because it's a dollar a game. And lastly, since most of my friends have dogs, every other day we take a trip to our local dog park and hang out for a couple hours. Other than our regular schedule norms we don't really have many other things.

One example when one of my friends broke the norm, was when he had just got a new girl friend. After he started going out with her more, we started to see less of him more and more. It was beginning to be a norm of not seeing him at all. But after they broke up, everything went back to normal like nothing ever change.

Group Norms

In every classroom I enter at SJSU, I believe there are many different type of norms that appear. In every classroom there are those few who are brave enough to speak freely during the first day of class, there's a section of people who mildly give a comment during class, and lastly, there's the group of students whom stay quiet and are the listeners of the classroom.

There are also norms in the groups I hang out with. For instance, my fraternity that I am active in. Each of us know each other so well that we can probably classify each of us in a norm category if we had to. There are the leaders of the fraternity, the jokers, the alcoholics, and the quiet ones. Although we all have totally different personalities, it all forms to make our brotherhood. That is a norm in itself. Every week we hold meetings and arrive on time. There are different traditions that we hold and rituals that only we know about.

I identified these norms by observing the different kinds of personalities and how they fit in for each role. I guess this is another way of stereotyping, but stereotyping is embedded into us and there's nothing we can do about it. I adapt to these norms by knowing myself which category of norms I fit in myself. Sometimes it varies on my mood but usually I appear the same in each group.

Question #3

In Ch. 2 I will be talking about the term irreversibility. We've all been through that experience where we wished can turn back time and take back what we said to our family, friends, or close ones. "Once something is said-whether in anger, frustration, enthusiasm, or excitement-it cannot be taken back and will have some pact on the participants and later group discussion (Harris 48). I know I have done my fair share of bad criticism. One time during a tennis match, I started an argument with another player because of a bad line call. Not only was it a bad line call but that point lost me the match. I was so furious that I said a lot of things that I wish I hadn't. A year or two later I found out that one of my old opponent was close friends with one of my friends. When we met, things became really awkward. I apologized to him, but I had a feeling that it still affected him. I then realized that anything said or done cannot be taken back. I've learned my lesson and also learned to think before I say.

Question #2

Harris describes entropy as "disorganization, stagnation, and chaos." And in order for small groups to maintain a general focus they must keep their energy up but not too much or else chaos and disorganization will occur (Harris 33). Groups must come to a census and create a balance within in their group or else nothing will be solved.

The reason why equifinality effects small groups is that it helps groups to be more spontaneous and try different things. I would describe one of my small group of friends at school as a little "bi-polor" sometimes because one day they'll sound optimistic and want try so many different kinds of activities, and sometimes they will just want to sit and be lazy. But it is true when Harris states that too much energy will cause disorganization and chaos because last semester our group was so excited that we were going to southern california for a road trip. But some of us assumed others would plan the trip, and it ended up that none of us planned the trip. In the end the trip was moved until a month later until all of us came to a secure plan for our road trip.

Question #1

Being interdependent means to "depend on one another and share in responsibility for the group process" (32). Although working with groups can sometimes be difficult and frustrating, as long as you follow a system of motivating each other and helping one another through difficulties, there won't be any breaks in the friendship.

Within your small group of friends, family, or co-workers; each of you have a responsibility to provide guidance and motivation for each other in order to keep that group intact. If one person in the group starts acting independently, others may follow. So each person has an effect on each other whether they know it or not. I'll take my group of friends from high school. Since we started college, all of us lived in the same area except one person in our group. After awhile he started to lose contact with us, which I understood because of the distance, but I noticed that each of my friends started to slowly drifting away until none of us talked or bothered to contact each other. It was a domino effect that hurt our whole circle of friendship. Now that we've noticed it, we all started to slowly get back to how things used to be.

I work at a gym teaching indoor tennis, and I work with a small number of co-workers. Because there were so few of us, each of us had a different responsibility to take care of. For about three years our system worked perfectly until one accident. One of my co-workers injured his foot and would not be able to teach for about six months. We had to keep the same schedule or else we would have lost members. So because of losing one co-worker my manager and I had to pick up his slack and work twice as much as we used to. One small injury not only effected him but us as well. We all worked together well until a speed bump comes our way and slows us down. Thats why working together is so important and being prepared for the worst if it does come our way.