What Did I Really Say

This entry is about an assignment we had to do on how listening is important.

What Did I Really Say?

My favorite class ever was called Business Character Values. While we learned a little bit about the business section, we primarily focused on character values. We went over a numerous amount of topics such as compassion, morals, and ethics. All of these plus many more inspired us to become a better person but one lesson really stood out.

The teacher, Doctor McKinley, had the mindset that out of chaos, anger, and confusion comes answers. We didn’t know it at the time but we soon found out he could not have been more right! One day early in the first semester he started playing the mind games that caused our perplexity. Setting the tape recorder he used every day up, he started the class period stating something that could be taken a couple different ways. Reacting exactly how he anticipated, the class automatically started accusing him of saying something completely different then what he said. Doc smiled. “Is that really what I said?” he asked as a chorus of angry yesses resonated through the room. He had us talk out why we thought he said what he did then replayed the tape recorder back. Through this lesson he taught us that word choice matters. A word may have one definition for yourself, but someone else will have a completely different connotation of that word.