An Account on CSC

Our assignment is to make a corporate story (carrying the ideology of management and reinforce policy), personal story (members of an organization tell about themselves, often defining how they would like to be seen within the organization), or a collegial story (positive or negative anecdotes told about others in the organization).

I chose to write a corporate story concerning an organization I joined in high school, and up until today, I am still a member even if I am in college.

 

“Barely two years ago, 2006 proved to be one of the most heart-warming and fulfilling years for me. It was the beginning of my fourth year in high school. I was sixteen.

A year prior that, I joined an organization committed in helping others who are in need. It was due to the fact that I wanted a challenge. I wanted to get out of the school I studied in for more than ten years, and the organization gave me an opportunity to do so.

The Community Service Club (CSC) is probably the biggest organization in my alma mater, General Santos Hope Christian School, with one-fourth, more or less, of the school population as a member.

My first participation was in a gift-giving day to an orphanage. I wasn’t keen to the idea of children hugging me, but as the program progressed, that ‘taboo’ for me was totally erased. I probably got carried away with everything that was happening. There was just so much fun, so much joy, and so much heart in giving what those children never had.

I was more than willing to renew my membership in 2006. It was funny because just as I entered the room for the first meeting of the club, I was immediately nominated as an officer and won the elections consequently. But the obligation did not mean hard work for me. After all, I really wanted to help.

And then, the club had its first set of service leaders, and I was one of them. We supported five day care centers in the barangay of our school. We had outreach programs, which included a small salu-salo, donations given by the well-off families in our school, entertaining presentations, and even a time to assure them of their salvation.

In addition to this, we rode trucks; sometimes, small vehicles too where we tried to fit all of us in! We actually enjoyed those, anyway. We even prepared sandwiches and spaghetti, which is usually done by our yayas at home, but none of us even had any qualms doing it ourselves. Lastly, whatever the leaders had decided (riding trucks, going some place where it was a little dangerous, and etcetera), the group was more than willing to cooperate without much of any problems, which was hard to believe for a close-guarded group of individuals who can be kidnapped at any time and day!

Finally, the biggest challenge for us was to gather all these children from the five centers into one venue last December 21, 2006. I was turning 17, and I could never forget every single one of them singing a birthday song for me. I have given so much to the club that even if I were sick I would not rest just to help those who need more help than I do. I assisted in wrapping the give-aways, made sure that the groups were ready, and even documented what was happening.

The party was so big; we could not handle it, but we thought of a way to keep everyone together, and thus the program was successful after so much stress (which we considered fun anyway). We called for the different levels in elementary until high school to impart their gifts to the children, served every child the sumptuous food we prepared, even taking care of the entertainment, and games and prizes they would receive. It was one heck of a day. But even if our poise were a little off, it did not matter after seeing that all of them were happy with our efforts. After countless brainstorming in meetings, countless reminders just to make sure everything is okay, and countless stuff we had to do, everything paid off!”

Our adviser initiated that project of having outreach programs to the various day care centers, still probably the biggest project of the club to date.

Us, the service leaders would always recall, now that we are graduates of high school, the nights when we would go to our adviser’s house to help her with the tasks needed to be done for the club, particularly the nights before the Christmas Party for the children. We brought food and instead of treating the tasks as work, we enjoyed them. We had fun and serious conversations, proving that CSC was more than just an organization. It was a group where you could meet friends.

For us, meetings were an occasion of freely expressing thoughts, instead of inflicting headaches to one another. Nobody dominated the discussion. Everybody listened to what the other says could be most effective. And in the end of every meeting, the agenda were addressed well, and solutions to those were easily obtained. Just because no one acted as king, and there was just enough democracy, giving everyone enough room to breathe and think of the best ways to serve and answer a predicament. I, myself, could remember how we incorporated every leader’s idea so as to make the best Christmas presentation for the children of the day care centers.

We saw the importance of being committed to one goal, having no biases whatsoever. We saw the importance of not using our positions as officers a hindrance in saying what we think is best to be carried out. We saw that the organization was our playground, a place where we can challenge ourselves, putting what we have learned from school to the outside world. And finally we saw that out of even a little act of kindness, we can receive things we never really expect to get such as the feeling of fulfillment we never imagine we could get after too much running around, too much yelling, too much enjoyment, and ironically, too much stress experienced.

Now that we, the first batch of service leaders, are in college, we still continued our membership to the CSC, occasionally helping the club in its programs. And we are happy that up until today, the club still exists to help others who are in need. After all, that was what the club was after— to help, not only thru material things but also to lend them a hand in their spiritual lives.

Every year, the club plans to carry out a Christmas party to those who are in need, and this is the occasion we, the service leaders, are going to participate, even plan. We are looking forward, actually to meetings, and subsequently, our reunion. CSC has truly become a family for us.

COMA101 Research Proposal

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 

I.                    Title: How the Students of the University of the Philippines Mindanao (UPMin) Distinguish an Individual as Poor or Rich Based on Demographic Features and/or Behavior

II.                  Duration: Five (5) Weeks (approximated)

III.                Abstract:

The Philippines, although not having the same rigid classification (Caste System) of its population like India, have an Open System. A person may opt to find a higher paying job to elevate his or her class status. Further, this led to the perception that if someone were poor, they do not look good, basing on their demographic features (skin, clothes, hair, etc.) and behavior (fluent in English, poise, etc.); and otherwise, rich.

According to A History of World Societies Fourth Edition (McKay, Hill, and Buckler, 1996), the ruling class usually directs the work and lives of everyone, like that of the Shang Dynasty in China. On the other hand, those who belonged to the bottommost class, like the untouchables of the Caste System, were treated impure because of the discrimination brought about by their jobs.

Instead of having the Closed System, wherein the class of a person becomes permanent, the Filipinos of today, like other societies, have the Open System, wherein the members of the population are free to change their class status.

The proponent, therefore, would like to conduct a study that shall seek to find out how students, specifically the first year BA Communication Arts students of the University of the Philippines Mindanao (UPMin), distinguish someone as poor or rich. Furthermore, he would try to find if these students focus more on the demographic features or behavior of the person.

The proponent shall conduct a survey among the said UPMin students by randomly selecting thirty (30) students as respondents. The results shall then be tallied and scrutinized under applicable theories such as Coordinated Management of Meaning or CMM (W. Barnett Pearce & Vernon Cronen), Symbolic Interactionism or SI (George Herbert Mead), Attribution Theory or AT (Fritz Heider), and other applicable theories.

Through the results, the proponent seeks to find out the factors influencing the judgment or perception of the students (through AT and CMM), understand how a person, if tagged “rich” or “poor”, would act in his environment (through SI), how cognitively complex the ideas of these students are from first glance or primary interaction (through Constructivism), and determine if this perception would contribute to their want to strive for something they think would be better for them, for example, to strive to earn more money (through CMM).

IV.               Significance:

The study is significant due to the following reasons:

1.      The study will employ various communication theories in a local setting, which shall be pertinent to students of COMA101 in the University of the Philippines Mindanao (UPMin).

2.      The study may lead to other researches in UPMin that focuses on the Open System, specifically the factors that may affect the role of one in changing or maintaining his status.

3.      The study may lead to yet another research in UPMin that focuses on perception, specifically how its students derive their judgments or conclusions.

V.                 Background:

Societies before classified their people into different categories. This is called a “Class System”, which can be of two: Closed or Open. In history, the most famous class system would probably be the “Caste System” of India. It was a rigid classification, which determined the destiny of a person. There was either little or no chance at all to change their class status.

The priests were the ruling class, who directed the lives of the others, like the Shang Dynasty of China where the aristocrats were at the top of the pyramid. On the other hand, those who belonged to the lowest class were thought of as slaves. Slavery was said to be a “feature of social life”. They were discriminated because of the job they perform, and were considered impure. (McKay et al., 1996)

Unlike the Closed System characterized above, the Open System is very evident in present society, wherein the members of a population can freely change their status.

In the Philippines, in particular, jobs are classified into two: white-collar and blue-collar jobs, but a person, for example from a blue-collar job, can change his status. He can study for him to be able to get a white-collar job.

But prior to this, the proponent would like to find out how a person, specifically a college student (making use of the local setting of the proponent: University of the Philippines Mindanao), arrives at a conclusion that a person is rich or poor since “the period of late adolescence and early adulthood are the formative stages for the constitution of a distinctive memory and personal outlook. (1972, as cited by Misztal, 2003)”

According to Barbara Misztal (1996),  “memory is the essential condition of our cognition and reflexive judgment. It is closely connected with emotions because emotions are in part about the past and because memory evokes emotion. Memory is also a highly important element in the account of what it is to be a person, as it is the central medium through which identities are constructed.”

The idea of conducting this study is due to the communication act witnessed by the proponent. Some people describe someone as rich if they are wearing branded clothing, smell good, have good hair, and can speak very good English and acts differently from the rest. Someone tagged as poor on the other hand, does not look good, they smell bad, the clothes they wear are obviously not branded, has poor command of the English language, and they do not have good hair.

Where could these judgments or perceptions come from? It may be coming from their past experiences when they saw the difference of the rich and poor. Moreover, these experiences have been accumulated in what we call memory.

According to Connerton (1989, as cited by Mistzal, 2003) the memory this study pertains to is habit memory, wherein one has a:

“…Capacity to reproduce a certain performance and which is an essential ingredient in the successful and convincing performance of codes and rules. Habit is the mode of inscribing the past in the present, as present. In this case, memory denotes a habitual knowing that allows us to recall the signs and skills we use in everyday life. This kind of memory, like all habits, is sedimented by bodily postures, activities, techniques and gestures. Such conceptualization of the process of remembering, where memory ‘gets passed on in non-textual and non-cognitive ways’, allows us to study social remembrance by focusing on the performance of commemorative rituals.”

Moreover, According to Joseph DeVito in his book The Interpersonal Communication Book Ninth Edition (2001), past experiences may be called interpretations-evaluations, which are accumulated in memory. These are stored for later use of the person.

For example, we see a varsity player who is playing basketball. He is then stored in our memory, including his characteristics like ‘runs fast, academically weak, and popular’. These characteristics are called cognitive tags.

Once these tags are made, it may be used to other people by attributing qualities a person sees in that person they judge.

VI.               Conceptual Framework:

The Philippines follow an Open System. With this, one can change his class status at will, without anyone opposing.

As stated earlier, Misztal pointed out that “memory is the essential condition of our cognition and reflexive judgment.” Further, past experiences are summed up in memories, thus, the proponent would like to find out what constitutes to this memory for judging or perceiving people as rich or poor. Is it influenced or cultivated by the different media such as television and books or the meanings people co-create in discourses like what is stated in the Coordinated Management of Meaning by W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen (as cited by Grffin, 2006)?

The media after all has been part of the institutional forces of society (Littlejohn, 1996). Books are printed media, but through time, television has become the primary source of information, and even entertainment and social interaction.

The study shall also base its findings from the Attribution Theory by Fritz Heider (1958, as cited by Kassin, 2001), wherein the proponent can explain why people behave the way they do since in this theory understanding what causes the behavior of the said people is essential. 

Further, the proponent seeks to find out how a person would act in his environment and people around him, if tagged as “rich” or “poor”, and vice versa, basing from the Symbolic Interactionism by George Herbert Mead (as cited by Griffin, 2006) that people are motivated to act based on the meanings they attach to people, things, and events, wherein meaning may be created through the language people use both with others and in private.

In addition, the proponent will yet again look into the Coordinated Management of Meaning by Pearce and Cronen because this theory focuses on the relationship between the individual and his society. Additionally, could this reaction be one of the bases, if not the main basis, in prompting someone to change class status?

Lastly, the proponent would also like to use a concept from Constructivism by Jesse Delia, especially employing social constructs.

In another book entitled Developmental Psychology Childhood and Adolescence Second Edition, it states the idea of Jean Piaget (as cited by Shaffer, 1989) that the said structures may otherwise be called cognitive structures or schema, which is “an organized pattern of thought or action that is used to interpret some aspect of one’s experience.” Further he cites the schema of a child as an example. A child may define the sun as alive because it is moving. This is a simple cognitive schema (that when things move they are alive). So as a child grows, their schema may become complex and somewhat implicit like for example if a person sees someone who has a car, wears branded clothing, and has shiny black and straight hair, he or she may immediately perceive or judge that that person is rich; otherwise, the person is poor. So how cognitively complex are the ideas of the students from the University of the Philippines Mindanao in judging a person from first glance or primary interaction?

VII.             Objectives:

The research seeks to achieve the following aims:

1.      To find out the factors influencing the judgment or perception of the students from the University of the Philippines Mindanano (UPMin);

2.      To understand how a person, if tagged “rich” or “poor”, would act in his environment;

3.      To know how cognitively complex the ideas of UPMin students are, specifically in distinguishing someone as rich and poor, from first glance or primary interaction;

4.      To determine if this perception would contribute to their want to strive for something they think would be better for them, for example, to strive to earn more money; and

5.      To use various communication theories, such as those discussed in COMA 101, specifically Symbolic Interactionism, Coordinated Management of Meaning, Constructivism, and other applicable theories.

VIII.           Methodology:

This study is a descriptive research, seeking to find out how the students from the University of the Philippines Mindanao (UPMin) distinguish someone as rich or poor depending on their demographic features and behavior.

In collecting the data needed in this study, the proponent would like to conduct a survey among first year BA Communication Arts students of the University of the Philippines Mindanao (UPMin). Thirty (30) students shall be randomly selected. Purposive sampling shall be employed.

Some questions shall be based from The Interpersonal Communication Book Ninth Edition by Joseph A. DeVito (2001).

The answers from the survey shall be tallied and scrutinized under applicable theories, which shall then help in the fulfillment of the objectives of the study.

In addition, the proponent would conduct an interview with some of his respondents to further understand how they come up with their judgment.

Moreover, the proponent would consider consulting a psychologist or an equivalent to further give credibility to the conclusions made by the proponent or to give other explanations not covered by the theories employed in this study.

IX.               Calendar/ Gantt Chart:

The table below shows a proposed schedule of activities that the proponent shall strive to closely follow. The steps involved are the following: Survey, Survey Analysis, Interview with Chosen Respondents, Analysis of Facts, Interview with Psychologist, Paper Revision. All these activities shall be accomplished in the weeks listed above as: 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th.

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
Survey	x
Survey Analysis	x	x
Interview with Chosen Respondents		x
Analysis of Facts			x	x
Interview with Psychologist				x
Paper Revision					x

 Chart 1 Gantt Chart, a calendar of activities the proponent shall follow. 

Books/ Authors used as bases:

A First Look Into Communication – Em Griffin, 2006

Theories of Human Communication – Stephen Littlejohn, 1996

Psychology – Saul Kassin, 2001

The Interpersonal Communication Book Ninth Edition – Joseph DeVito, 2001

Developmental Psychology Childhood and Adolescence Second Edition – David Shaffer, 1989

Theories of Social Remembering – Barbara A. Misztal, 2003

A History of World Societies Fourth Edition – John McKay, Bennett Hill, and John Buckler, 1996