My Topic or Content Goals

Kayla Cota
HCOM 214
Blake Rodger
March 4, 2015

            In our lives, we are constantly encountering disputes in various relationship contexts. For college students specifically, we most likely come across conflicts within our romantic relationships, friendships, roommates, classmates, and maybe even professors. Personally, during my first year of college, my conflicts have mainly come from relationships with my roommates, friendships, and group projects with classmates.

            I have two roommates, which makes three people living in one small dorm room. One of my roommates and I get along extremely well, but we almost always have disagreements with our other roommate which causes many conflicts between us all. Most of the time, we all tend to be avoidant and try to deal with our problems internally. One time though, we just couldn’t take it. My roommate and I could tolerate our other roommate’s messy clothes scattered around the floor, but we couldn’t tolerate her leftover food on her desk. Towards the end of last semester, our roommate began to randomly leave for four to five days at a time without cleaning her area. She left trash not only in her trash can, but also on her desk. This trash wasn’t just empty bottles and wrappers from candy and chips, but it was actual food such as sandwiches and pie and Chinese that was there for days. Obviously, this food caused many problems such as creating an almost permanent stench. We finally had enough, so we confronted out roommate and asked her to clean her side before she left again. Unfortunately, this did not work; she continued to leave for long periods of time without cleaning up. We then decided to bring our RA into the situation, which helped a little bit. Our roommate doesn’t leave her food out overnight anymore, but continues to leave clothes all over the floor.

            Another common reason for conflict is disagreements in group projects. I think most people have encountered at least one situation in a group where others have maybe been uncooperative. For example, some members of the group may have done little to none of their assigned work, leaving one of the other members with most of the work to do on their own. Although this problem is extremely annoying, there are also other conflicts that arise from group projects. One of my groups was given a deadline that was two days after we were given the assignment. Due to us all having different schedules, we couldn’t find a time where we could all meet to finish the project. This forced us to meet the night before it was due, leaving us with hardly any time to finish. Of course, we all didn’t agree on what to do on certain aspects of the project, so this became a conflict. We first tried to collaborate by attempting to use all of our ideas, but that only made more disagreements and we also didn’t have enough time. We then had to create a plan that took way too long for all of us to agree on, therefore making our project not as good as it should have been.

            Having disagreements and arguments with friends isn't very common for me, but it does happen sometimes. For example, a friend who I met last semester asked if I would be her roommate next year. Unfortunately, I already had living arrangement plans so I politely told her I already told other people I would live with them. She didn’t take that very well. She began to be extremely passive aggressive which irritated me, so I confronted her and asked why she was upset. Since then, she has been very avoidant to the situation and especially to myself. I figured it was too small of a problem to get that angry about, so I just left it alone instead of arguing and creating a bigger conflict.

            All of these topics of conflict don’t seem to be similar, but they kind of are. Each of these conflicts all arose from a disagreement between two or more people. Conflicts are caused by many reasons, but they are especially caused by disagreements.