Blog Prompt #1

Andrew Zhu

HCOM 214

Blake Rodgers

3^rd March, 2014

Emotions in Conflict

            Four areas of conflict are usually within family, roommates, romance, and work. When conflict arises in each other these areas I, obviously, feel different emotions in relation to the situation and level of conflict. However, one of the common emotions I feel when conflict in general arises is pure irritation and annoyance with the person.

            Conflict within the family is probably the most common for people in general. Everyone experiences some sort of conflict between their parents or siblings. For me, I usually experience conflict with my siblings. My siblings and I don’t usually have conflict so much nowadays, but it was most prominent during our childhood. Although, I do not remember specific conflicts, majority of my conflicts with my older brother were about what morning cartoons we would watch. We would constantly fight about what channel we wanted because all our cartoons we wanted to watch would be on at the same time. I would start getting annoying and would grab the remote whenever I had the chance. My brother was a little more hands on and violent, but the past is the past. Although, that was just one example of a family conflict in the past, common emotions I felt would be, like I said, irritation, annoyance, frustration, and a little hint of hatred.

            During this year, I have not had any sort of conflict with my roommate which I am really grateful for. I am glad that my roommate and I get along, even though we do have many differences, but at the same time have many similarities in how we think and what we think about situations. I’m glad that we are different because I get to hear about his perspective on issues and hear about his life and what he has gone through and vice versa. When it comes to roommate, I feel blessed to have someone who is open-minded and easy to get along with. I hear many stories about how other people don’t get along with their roommates and have issues that I personally wouldn't know how to handle. If anything, I solve some of my conflicts with other people, by talking to my roommate. I generally feel really lucky to have a roommate who I can talk to about my feelings because not many males like hearing about feelings or even talking about their own, but with my situation we both talk to each other about anything, including romance.

            In the case of romance, I personally don’t feel comfortable sharing on this blog, so we’ll just move onto the work place. I've had a part time job at the state fair this past year and I plan on working there again this year. In terms of conflict, I didn't really have any conflict with anyone because all my co-workers were my friends in high school, so we all got along pretty well. If there were any sort of conflict, I guess it would have been some workers getting more breaks than others. Sure, I felt a little cheated, but I got more hours than them. I have not had enough time and experience in the workplace to have conflicts as of now. But I’m assuming if I ever did have conflicts in the workplace, I would feel angry and would try to distance myself from them as much as I could because I wouldn't want to look at them.