The Art of Communication

Dear Reader,

I am sitting here in my dorm room, sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea that I have now reheated for the third time. I woke up at approximately 5:30, unable to sleep any longer, took a delightful shower, and am now feeling human enough to challenge the day, and what a good one it will be. You see, I just got back to school yesterday and am settling back in, possibly to live a life solitary. I miss my roommate, but alas, life has called her elsewhere.

Let's be honest, we're all communications majors. If not majoring in it, we're minoring in it. I don't care if your transcript says you're pre-med, or Biology, or Engineering, or Psychology, or even Enigmatology, the study of puzzles. (I was recently told that Will Shortz, creator of the New York Times crossword puzzle, majored in this. According to Wikipedia, it's true.) No matter what your declared major, communication is and will be an important part of your life.

Now, let's be honest. As humans, we sometimes suck at communication. Things get misinterpreted or lost in translation, or sometimes we just refuse to put effort into it or ignore the fact that a problem stems from our poor, lacking communication skills. BUT, we still have this incredible ability to transpose feeling into thought and spin thought into written and verbal language. We can write volumes in a photograph, and speak not only sentences, but recite entire epics using only our eyes. We communicate through words, body language, touch, sound, we do all of this communicating, and why? Well, 1. It allows us to survive and 2. We crave it.

When you get down to the nuts, bolts, statistics, and logistics of living in society, it is based on the ability to communicate, to be able to proclaim our existence to others and have them recognize and interpret the implications of that existence.

Now, let's jump back to the present. Us as communication majors. We're all studying and learning the art of communication, be it at age 9 or 90. We learn, we laugh, we love, and we somehow figure out what is okay to say and do around certain people. I have learned to not make lawyer jokes to my cousin who will soon graduate law school. YAY learning! As we go through life learning to better present thoughts, opinions, and facts, we are also learning how to better interpret those same items. In this information age, we are becoming able to more quickly comprehend information as well as with more accuracy. Good thing too, because these days we're dealing with loads of information on a daily basis.

So, what are you waiting for? Go communicate! By itself, communication is not good nor bad, it is only the vehicle with which information is transferred. But, if you can better transfer that information, I can almost guarantee you'll see some positive results, even if that's just time saved from not having to dance around a subject. I'm just thankful we're able to connect with each other on so many levels.

Go be epic and excellent!

-Megan