2). Explain how entropy and equifinality impact small groups.

Equalfinality can impact our small groups when one party within the group disagrees with the method chosen by a member amongst them. We often have these disagreements in current U.S. Government since we have Republicans and Democrats having to work amongst each other. Imagine if you were going to hike a trail with a group of friends. Five out of six of you are willing to take the trail given to you through the map while one creative friend decides to climb over the rocks over to the right because he or she claims there is a shortcut on the other side. That friend goes alone even if the group disagrees with he or she going there but in the end both parties end up in the same place. Does this give any type of bond between the parties? Who can say? In the end both parties ended in success and that's what mattered. Equalfinality can create entropy since we all have our beliefs toward our methods. The worse case of entropy would be that one of the parties become so angry that they do not hike the trail at all and lose focus. I could imagine the hiking group having trust issues with each other during and after the ordeal. But if the hiking group takes time to understand and work with each other even with their differences their success would be worth much more than intended. Equalfinity and entropy should be watched after carefully within small groups, any imbalance could create failure in certain parts of the group.

1). Groups are living systems based on interdependence and interrelationships. What happens to a small group when parts of the system do not function well? Provide two examples from your own small group experiences that show the importance of understanding interdependence and interrelationships.

Small groups work in many ways and there are hardly small groups that we can find totally linear and exactly like others. Each small group has their common goals and the members of the group would become interdependent on each other so they may feel their line of work is fair and respectful. When a group member falls out of the group's system or process chaos or entropy can occur, this can also cause the interrelationship to fail slightly or worse yet become completely ruined. When I mention failure or ruin of interrelationships I do imply that trust is the factor.

A weight room is where my first experience in small group activities occurred. My friends Joe and Peter were apart of the weight training class and we kept each other motivated. Our interdependence was found when we realized that we needed to motivate each other to keep the spirits alive. Another factor in our interdependence was spotting during bench press, we knew that if we did not have each other we could not bench press like we wanted and even if we did bench press without each other it would just lead to failure. While we were spotting each other for the bench press I suppose you could say that spotting itself was a large part of the interrelationship, spotting was a signal for each of us to take turns and make sure we don't get killed by the barbell. This was a system that we had for each other in the weight room and our common goal was to motivate each other to become physically fit.

In my second experience I was apart of a Tae Kwon Do skit which was required as the final for the Introductory Tae Kwon Do class at SJSU. Our group only consisted of 3 members. Jay the Shopkeeper, Jeffrey the triple knife wielding maniac, and Me the lottery winning innocent bystander. Jay was needed physically to provide the setting (the mini mart), Jeffrey was needed as an attacker (by using his three knives), and I was there to demonstrate techniques that we learned through the semester. We spent about an hour and a half practicing the skit and we knew that our roles made the skit successful. We now have a closer bond with each other since then and would not mind doing a skit together again. We gained interdependence through our common goal and details of the skit and we gained a better interrelationship through the skit itself because we had our own type of signals towards each other that only we could understand our script for the skit played a factor in our interrelationship since we knew when and where to be during the skit thanks to the script.

Comm141p Section 80 1st assignment

Hello all!

My name is Timothy Lee and I am happy to be apart of the Comm141p section 80 class!

I enjoy Martial arts, gaming, and traveling (although I often lack the funds to travel).

I currently attend "San Jose Wing Chun" it is a Chinese martial arts school. For those of you that do not know Wing Chun was made popular by Bruce Lee and Grandmaster Ip Man. It is a close range combat system which was often used in Hong Kong and was developed by a Nun named Ng Mui. My Instructor is Sifu Ben Der and our schools Grandmaster is Sigung Kenneth Chung. Someday I hope to travel to Hong Kong and explore more Wing Chun Kung Fu schools in that area.

I chose to sign up for this class because I normally work with groups in person but am not used to the online forums and group work found online. I'm here to build more skills in online communication and become more focused on internet learning so I may overcome the urge of looking at Facebook while working.

Hope to have a fun semester with you all!

-Timothy Lee