Being an effective communicator means taking accoutability when someone doesn’t understand the message your trying to give out but only in situations where you haven’t really communicated properly. To make sure that the person reciving your message actually understands it, you need to communicate clearly by being specific & getting straight to the point instead of trailing off topic, but if you feel that maybe you did communicate clearly then just double check to see if that person understands what you’re saying.

Great communication has many attributes, that includes being honest about what you’re communicating to others, being clear with your words and allowing yourself to be open and speak up. Having great communication can take people a very long way. For example, there could be an employer willing to hire someone & two different people apply for the job, one person may be really experienced with the tasks that come with the job but unfortunately that person cant communicate well (doesn’t let the boss know when he’s sick or not coming into work, or if he needs help with a task). But the other person could be not as experienced as the first but still obtain that skill of great communication, he’s able to speak up when he needs help & is certainly able to let the boss know where his & if he isn’t able to work certain days. In this case if I were the employer, I’d certainly rather someone who is able to communicate effectively work for me than someone who cant speak up about important information.

Last week Wednesday I was notified that I’d be working in a group with some other year 13s in the CTA class for building a sleep out. What we were mainly working on that day was the joists for the floors, We had to fit the nogs in between the studs to secure the floor, by doing that we had to hammer them in & secure them with a nail gun, after we had finished all the nogs we proceeded to apply the supporting braces for the joists, its a metal plate with 4 holes in each end that gets placed on the joists connecting the joists to the bearers, I recently learned that to work out where you put the supporting braces you just have to look at your floor plan and point out where the bearers are, then you’d just have to place two support braces on each side of the bearers and joists.

Necessity is the mother of invention

What I gathered from this quote was that you have to need something in order to create something, for instance it could be something materialistic like building a house, you need all sorts of materials & tools to build a house. It could also be something that just requires skills & knowledge, you might decide to write an article about something but before you do that you would need to gain knowledge about your topic. In reality you aren’t able to create something  from nothing, there always has to be a foundation for you to build on whether its in your mind, or Infront of you.

Last week Tuesday, Me & a group of the CTA boys had the responsibility of putting the scaffold together.

We started by going down the bottom to the big shipping containers and grabbing all the parts of the scaffold that we needed and bringing it back up to the changing room we just started building. We then started connecting the scaffold and we managed to get it all done by 3rd period, until we realized we couldn’t close the uniform shop door as the scaffold was too close to the entry.

So we quickly thought of a solution & that was that we all lift the scaffold and move it at least 30 mils away from the entry and as we did so, I would go around kicking all the boards in place underneath the scaffold so it would stay stable once the scaffold was put down again.

What I learnt from this experience is that it’ll be easier to build the scaffold from bottom to top, incase a problem like this happens where you have to move a big heavy scaffold over a couple mils which could lead to serious injury if you don’t have helping hands or the right equipment.

I admired the communication that was used this day, as it was a tough & physical job so you’d definetly need good communication just to make things a lot easier, I enjoyed working with this group & I felt that we put a lot of effort in to getting this job finished.

Be bold and courageous. When you look back on life youll regret the things you didnt do more than the things you did.

An aspect I liked about this quote is that it states the main characteristics you would have if you lived life without any regret of not experiencing something.

The understanding I gained from this quote is that I shouldnt let anything hold me back from doing things that could be in my best interest whether it means taking a few risks or not.

What I learned from this quote is to not let my emotions and feelings get the best of me & to just take a leap of faith because youll never know what something is like if you dont try it yourself.

last week I got the chance to make my own toolbox with the help from Lydah & Mere. We started off by collecting our measurements & then proceeding to cut our timber, as we started to screw the toolbox together, Jack (our supervisor) realized I was driving the screws too far to the edge. What I learnt from that problem was If I had continued to drive the screws just a little too far to the edge, my timber would start to split. Which would leave quite some complications.

“life isnt about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain”

 For example, if you know there is something you have to do but you aren’t feeling so positive, then do it while you’re angry, or while your sad. You’ll soon get used to it.