Relationships

FRS 100: Freshman Seminar

Lesson 8: Relationships
Oct. 7, 2002

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to do each of the following without consulting notes or other resources:

Begin and maintain healthy relationships with various kinds of individuals.
Define or identify relevant terms.

Assignments

Before coming to class on Monday, you should complete the following assignments:

Revise and republish your life plan.

Activities

Our class activities this week include the following:

Think Fast: Describe the qualities you seek in a friend, a teacher, and a romantic partner.

Presentation: Student Activities (Dwayne, Heather, Johnnie)

Collaborative Learning: Pair up with another person of the same sex. Share the lists of qualities you made in your “Think Fast” exercise.

Discussion: During this time, we will discuss the insights and questions that have emerged during the “Think Fast” exercise and presentations. In particular, we will compare the lists from men and women.

Think Again: Use this time to work on your Life Plan.

Conferences: While the rest of you are working on the “Think Again” exercise, I will meet with some of you in one-on-one conferences.

Announcements: We will wrap up this lesson with announcements regarding upcoming lessons, as well as other relevant subjects.

Terms

Make sure you know the meaning and significance of the following:

relationship

Introduction

Having examined various strategies for succeeding in classes, we turn now to a serious of lessons concerning personal issues. We begin this week with a look at relationships. By now, you should have published your life plan on the Web. Please let me know if you are having any problems.

Discussion

Relationships

You may never have thought of relationships as a subject for study in college. Actually, the study of relationships is important in several fields, including sociology, psychology, history, and literature. You also will learn a great deal about relationships outside the classroom. Our personal lives, after all, are filled with personal relationships—with parents, with friends, with instructors and classmates, and, of course, with romantic partners. You can’t help but learn something about relationships when you are in one. In this class, we will build on that knowledge you already have about relationships to develop some strategies for choosing friends, getting along with professors, and generally maintaining healthy and enjoyable relationships with the people around you.

Conclusion

Now that we have discussed relationships of various kinds, we will turn in our next lesson to a discussion of some of the problems that can result from a special kind of relationship, the sexual relationship.