Holiday Spirit

We had our second PP55 seminar last Thursday, organized and led by Charity Fesler ’01 and Lisa Lazarus ’02.  The topic was “Communication Skills in the Workplace.”  It was really fun and interesting!  We started off by playing an icebreaker I’ve never done before, where you have a partner and you repeat the question “Who are you?” for 60 seconds.  We also analyzed the relationship between two characters on Modern Family, a fictional case, and between ourselves and people we work with in terms of identity, interests, power, perceptions and misperceptions, and patterns of interaction. 

From the seminar, I thought about some things that hadn’t been as obvious to me before.  For example, I hadn’t thought about the power of patterns of interaction and methods (such as meeting for coffee instead of in the office) that disrupt these patterns.  I also hadn’t thought about power in such concrete and immediate ways before.  For example, the situational power of where a conversation might be located and the rhetorical power of the people in the situation might influence the outcome of a discussion in subtle but significant ways.

On other fronts, there is a holiday party coming up for fellows, mentors, and committee members that is kindly being hosted by Kate McCleery ’75 and Bob Martinez ’75.  There is also a holiday door decorating competition going on at the Primary Care Coalition!  My office-mate and I have done the following so far, but it’s a work in progress…clearly, though, I love getting into the holiday spirit.  She made all of the origami birds - sadly that's not in my skill set.  I curl a mean ribbon though.