After Service

     Across my experiences with service learning at Kahl Home I noticed the themes of listening, culture, nonverbal communication, and emotions. In order to interact with the residents, truly get to know them, and show them I was interested I had to actively listen to what they were saying. I also had to really pay attention to their nonverbal cues to see what kind of emotion they were feeling. If I could tell through their nonverbal cues that they were getting annoyed or wanted to be left alone, then I would make sure I did that so I did not upset them any further. Another thing I noticed were many cultural differences between the residents and myself due to our age difference, and I really had to watch what I said and how I acted at times because of this. I also had to try to understand what they were saying when they made somewhat of “ruder” remarks towards my generation. Several of them made the complaint that my generation is disinterested in their history and are therefore ignorant. Several of them also made technology complaints, saying that my generation is addicted to technology and does not care about anything else.

     My experiences with the residents at Kahl Home will shape my future interpersonal interactions, because I have a better understanding of all the components that make up interpersonal communication and which components are most important. I have learned that listening is a very important part of the communication process. If you are having a conversation with someone, they can usually tell when you are disinterested and it almost always ends up hurting their feelings when you seem disinterested, which causes them to not really care for you. So when having a conversation with someone, it is important to always attentively listen, provide feedback, and not just be the one constantly talking. I learned that all of the parts of interpersonal communication really go together. The process does not work well without all of the pieces. For example, with listening, how I mentioned that if I seem disinterested in someone’s conversation it hurts that person’s feelings. This is tied to emotions, and emotions can lead to nonverbal cues such as a smile for happiness, a disgusted look for annoyance or anger, and a frown or tears for sadness. I need to keep in mind what I have learned and always try to give every person I interact with the same respect.