Today I attended a personal enrichment workshop at 12:30 that had to do with managing relationships in college. It was located in the vertical campus building in room 1-107 and ended at around 1:50. We learned about how we should handle different types of relationships such as friendships, family, romance and networking. These forms of relationships may be difficult to deal with because of all of our responsibilities but they are essential to our lives because they will affect us in several ways. The way we interact with our family is important because they are a primary template for future associations we might have. Starting college can cause some problems in our family because of money isses or because we have to learn how to be more independent. We also need to learn how to negotiate in adult ways with our family.
Making new friends that can last a life time is also an important part of college. Being isolated from everyone and just doing well in school will not benfit us because we need people to feel happy and to help us in the process of graduating. Friends can also be study partners, classmates or just people you hang out with when you have spare time. Friendships help us learn how to work through certain issues. There may be some people that are not true friends or people that are not the type of friends you need, so realizing who your real friends are is also a part of managing relationships. Friendships teach us how to solve conflicts between eachother and how to communicate.
Networking is a crucial relationship we must have in College because it gives us more opportunities to find jobs and get hired. We should have connections with people outside of our cohort such as professors, internship supervisors and professional colleagues. It would be easier to get connections by seeking networks in advance so that we could get associated better and actually get a job. An example of a network we can join is linkedin.com.
A relationship that can affect people greatly is a romantic one. Romances can either end in a good way or in a painful way. It is up to us to make sure we end relationships in peaceful ways if we do not want it anymore. It is common to have meaningful intimate relationships in college. These romances could last forever. The relationship should be a healthy one that helps you progress as a person and become more mature. By being in a romantic situation we are taught how to communicate our feelings and how to understand others through time.
I personally liked this workshop because it did not only focus on academic issues. It was about real life situations that we are all going through. There is more to college than just studying and it is nice to know that the school sees that as well. It was well organized and eventhough a lot of people attended, there was no chaos. There was interaction between students and we meet new people. I actually learned a few things from this workshop.