Reflection of the Semester in ALES 204

When I first walked into our ALES 204 lecture and heard that we were going to have to create a Twitter account, a blog, and make accounts with many other social media sites (such as Delicious, LinkedIn, etc.), I was quite hesitant. I had always seen Twitter as being used by all kinds of famous people to enhance their career and let people know about their new premieres, show people pictures of what they are doing in their "normal life", or simply just share their exciting news. But over the course of this semester, I have realized that Twitter is a very useful social media tool for people of all status', and I can no longer imagine my life without it - which is the view of many people across the world, as Twitter is now the most commonly used social media tool.

In general, I see Twitter as being the most important social media tool that we have learnt about over this course. This is because Twitter has such a large community and is so readily available. When using Twitter, you can instantly search literally any topic that you can think of or that you are interested in and you can see what people are saying about it from all around the globe. Twitter is an amazing tool that connects the world together in a simple way - which is the main focus of all social media that is created: connection.

Another important skill that we have learnt in this course is how to make a professional Facebook page. I believe that this is important because over time the world has become a lot more reliant on the internet, and social media to get important information about one another. There is now a lack of use of paper copies of anything, and many people prefer to use digital or web based papers and information. Because of this, I believe that future employers will begin to look at online resumes (instead of paper copies), and these online resumes could be complementary to professional Facebook pages. Therefore, what you post on Facebook could be directly related to your employment status. Clara is a classmate in our ALES 204 class, and she has posted an interesting blog post about her professional Facebook profile which is outlining the skills of someone named "Cooking Mama" - this shows how anyone can create anything on the internet, therefore we need to be critical when reading things on the internet.

Overall, we all need to be very careful about what we are posting online in the public domain because, as we have learned, the web never forgets. Once you post something online, it will be out in the public forever. Therefore, we need to be critical when thinking about what we are posting and we need to think about the future of our world when using social media sites. In conclusion, social media is the future of our society and will continue to grow at enormous rates - from which we will be in contant connection and recieve instaneous updates which will have both positive and negative affects on our lives overall.

Figure 1. Sphere of Social Media. Adapted from "Innovative Nurse - The power of social media," Kevin, Innovative Nurse.  Retrieved April 13, 2012, from http://innovativenurse.com/power-social-media-nurseup/. Copyright n/d by Unknown.

Links to my comments on my classmates' blogs:
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5

Mother-Daughter Relationships

This is my blog post on the choice of my topic. I have chosen to focus on mother-daughter relationships; this relates to my major (human ecology) and has been a focus in one of the human ecology courses that I have taken this semester. This topic is also widely looked at throughout our media culture; for example: Oprah has looked into this topic a few times on her show, and many people are interested in knowing more about it. Loana Valdez was also in this course with me and has posted an interesting article about the use of viagra on later life relationships in her blog - which was also one of the topics that was covered in our human ecology 212 course.

Lefkowitz, Miller, and Fingerman (2009) have explained: mother-daughter relationships are the most emotionally intense relationships within our family; they generally involve the highest level of closeness and conflict (p. 288). This closeness and conflict is animated by varying levels of feelings of solidarity or ambivalence between the mother-daughter dyad. It can be explained that the level of ambivalence within mother-daughter relationships reaches its peak during the years of the daughter’s adolescence, as well as within the later life years of the mother.

From the research that I have found on mother-daughter relationships, the mother-daughter bond has consistently been seen as being a life-long, intimate, and developmentally important relationship (Bojczyk, Lehan, McWey, Melson, & Kaufman, 2011, p. 60). There has also been evidence that there is a lifelong tendency for parents to be more invested in their children’s lives than children are in their parents’ lives (Connidis, 2010, p. 147). This has been demonstrated for many generations through the life course; this is especially true when the daughter reaches adolescence. Conflicts in the parent-child relationship are highest during the stage of early adolescence and tend to decline thereafter; this is because adolescents are striving for autonomy and a realignment of the parent-child relationship towards a more egalitarian relationship (Branje, 2008, p.1628). This level of tension between the mother and daughter can also be explained by the daughter feeling conflicted about her need for her mother and her need for autonomy, and differentiation from her mother; whereas the mother may be feeling that she wants to enjoy a close bond with her daughter as she is grows into adulthood (Herschberg, 2006, p. 60). All of these factors together create the peak of feelings of ambivalence within the mother-daughter relationship during the period of adolescence.

A picture of my mother and I at my grade 12 graduation.

(This is my own photo: taken on May 26, 2010)

References:

Bojczck, K. E., Lehan, T. J., McWey, L. M., Melson, G. F., & Kaufman, D. R. (2011). Mothers’ and Their Adult Daughters’ Perceptions of Their Relationship. Journal of Family Issues, 32(4), 452-481.

Branje, S. T. (2008). Conflict management in mother-daughter interactions in early adolescence. Behaviour, 145(11), 1627-1651.

Connidis, I. A. (2010). Exploring intergenerational relations. In Family ties and aging (pp. 137-152). Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press.

Hershberg, S. G. (2006). Pathways of Growth in the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Psychoanalytic Inquiry,26(1), 56-69.

Lefkowitz, E. S., & Fingerman, K. L. (2003). Positive and Negative Emotional Feelings and Behaviours in Mother-Daughter Ties in Late Life. Journal of Family Psychology, 17(4), 607-617.

Wiki Entry

This week for our ALES 204 course, we were asked to add to a Wikipedia "stub" page using our knowledge of specific subject areas, as well as what resources we could find. I have chosen to work on the stub "Life course approach", which can be found here. I chose to add to the stub about the Life Course Approach because it is a very prevalent theoretical framework that is often used in human ecological practices. As a human ecologist, you are required to look at many aspects of one person's life simultaneously - which is parallel to the Life Course Approach that looks at the structural, social, and individual aspects of one's life.

Screen capture of my Wikipedia entry about Life Course Appoach. Screen capture from:

Susan Nielsen, personal collection. Original article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_course_approach, Accessed Mar. 23, 2012.

Wikipedia is a great source of information; it is often called the "online encyclopedia" and is known for giving very general information to anyone who is interested in looking. Although, it is very important to consider that the information on Wikipedia can be edited and posted by anyone from around the world who has a Wikipedia username. Throughout this assignment, I have realized how easy it truly is for anyone to post on Wikipedia. For example: everyone in our class was able to successfully add to a stub on Wikipedia about any subject that they wanted to, even though no one in our class is well qualified in the subject areas (most of us do not even have a degree yet). Therefore, when looking at and searching information on the Wikipedia website, we need to think critically about the information that is being presented and not accept everything as being fact. The information from Wikipedia may not be reliable, as well, it may not be valid. This has also been noted by Clara Tran in her ALES 204 wiki blog post.

Overall, Wikipedia is a great source of information for anyone interested in doing a quick search for information that is not going to be used for scholarly purposes - such as: looking up who the 5th prime minister was, or what breed of dog to adopt. As well, Wikipedia is a great social media tool for people around the world with mutual interests to share their ideas with the world through the use of this online encyclopedia.

Facebook Page for Career Advancement

This is a screen shot of my Facebook page that I just created for my ALES 204 course. Making Facebook pages such as these are a good idea for anyone who may be interested in getting their name out there in the world because a page like this may act, essentially, as free advertising for oneself. As we were told by our TA in our lab section: this facebook page can be thought of as a virtual business card. A page such as this would be created in order to let a future employer learn more about you as a person and your background before hiring you to their company. Loana Valdez also makes a good point in her most recent blog post about the use of Facebook pages by potential employers.

For our generation's future careers, this idea of online resumes and Facebook pages may be very important. Potential employers are now able to check all of your information (including: education, awards, past work experience, job goals, and basically anything else that they would be interested in knowing about a future employee) before you are hired to a company. For example, I have found this website through google that now teaches employers how to recruit people to their company through the use of Facebook! Therefore, I believe that now, more than ever before, constantly being aware of how you are being perceived by others will be a very important skill to have and may affect your chances of getting employed.

Introductory Blog Post

Hi! My name is Susan Nielsen, and this is my first blog post, not only for this ALES 204 class, but my first blog post ever! Therefore, I am slowly trying to navigate my way around blogger.com in order to make it through this class successfully!

This is a photo of me standing in an old graveyard in Edinburgh, Scotland
(This is my own photo; January 18, 2012)

I am currently in my second year of university at the U of A. I am in the Human Ecology program: majoring in Family Studies and minoring in Child and Youth Studies. Honestly, this is my first year of actually being in the Human Ecology program, but my second year of university overall. I started out in the faculty of arts, transferred to Nutrition and Food Science (which is also in the faculty of ALES), and finally, transferred to the Human Ecology program for this semester. I am currently taking courses such as: psychology, sociology, and human ecology. In the future, I plan on going into the masters' program for human ecology or possibly sociology and, in the end, I hope to become a professor so that I am able to teach, as well as work on research within my field. Here is a link to the U of A human ecology webpage (this is the school that I hope to attend for the rest of my undergraduate degree, my masters' program, and hopefully the PhD program): http://www.hecol.ualberta.ca/

Currently, communication has, what I consider to be, a big role in my life. I use facebook on a daily basis, I have facebook on my phone and I am constantly in contact with people through the use of facebook because it is free to use globally, rather than calling. I am also attached (figuratively) to my cell phone, which I use for constant communication with the most important people in my life via texting and phone calls. I have just started using Twitter for this class but it has become a form of social media that I now use every day and use to communicate with my classmates. This blog is now a new form of social media that I will be able to use to communicate with others across the globe, and I am looking forward to learning more about my classmates through the use of these blogs!

I believe that the role of communication is very important in the field of Human Ecology because it is a very interpersonal field that involves working with people of all backgrounds, cultures, and ages. Communication will be essential to our everyday work as human ecological professionals; and good communication will be key to facilitating even the most simple events. Communication will be most important when dealing with clients - understanding their thoughts and ideas regarding your services is the most important thing in human ecology because the most important member of the team is always the client! Another time that communication will be very important is when a team of professionals are trying to work together to attain a common goal for the common good of everyone involved. As we have learned in our human ecology 100 course this may involve many different types of communication, such as: body language, verbal, written, physical appearance (smell, look, setting), etc. All of these types of communication are very important and can give you a lot of different information as to what is happening in any situation - this is very important for human ecology professionals, especially when dealing with families who need our assitance. Loana Valdez makes a very good point in her blog about the idea of communication noise, which is also something that we learnt about in our human ecology 100 course last term, check it out here: http://valdezl.blogspot.com/  Overall, communication is very important in all aspects of human ecology and we would not survive as a profession without it.