Affiliation

A concept in the field of social psychology that seeks to explain why humans 'form close relationships' .... a social process that satisfies a physiological need by providing us 'with a network of support that will help when in need'  (Crisp & Turner, 2007 pp266).

I am not ashamed of saying that I had to re-read this explanation of Crisp & Turner in the "Networked Professional Reader" several times, as I found it very intricate as a foreign student to understand. I had to simplify and summarize what they wanted to mean with it. It came down to be a very basic and easy thought: We humans affiliate with one another in order to live at a good personal level when we feel the need. How could we reproduce otherwise and maintain a good quality of life without affiliation? Likewise what Stephanie says in her blog '...one of the essential aspects of being human; we eat, we sleep, we drink, we breathe, we relate.  Also Joanna follows the same thought mentioning in her blog, that everything could have started from Adam and Eve when a need of affiliation started and something new happened for Adam; love and creation with another person.


Yacov Rofe suggested that the need for affiliation depended on whether being with others would be useful for the situation or not. When the presence of other people was seen as being helpful in relieving an individual from some of the negative aspects of the stressor, an individual's desire to affiliate increases. However, if being with others may increase the negative aspects such as adding the possibility of embarrassment to the already present stressor, the individual's desire to affiliate with others decreases. ( Wikipedia, Need for affiliation ).


So we can understand why in our profession it's extremely important to affiliate in our Professional Networks, 'in order to survive as professionals' as it is a psychological need, for ALL people. ( The Networked Professional Reader, 2010/11)
Reflecting how I use affiliation in my profession, I can relate to what O'Connor and Rosenblood state when saying that our need of affiliation may differ and that we all have a preferred level of affiliation, controlled by psychological determinants and individual and cultural differences. 
I consider myself an extrovert person and I tend to affiliate more easily within my social networks (friends and family) but within my professional networks I tend to control my exuberance balancing what could come across a bit too strong in a professional environment. I prefer to safeguard my privacy analyzing more the others and giving me enough time to trust and find a shared level of affiliation with the people interested.


I couldn't really at first answer the question 'If experienced and influential individuals are likely to be at their preferred level of affiliation, why is it common for them to still assist younger, less experienced individuals?' Then I started to think about my little experience as young professional individuals seeking assistance. I thought of my teachers, they definitely had reached their preferred level of affiliation but would live giving help to the ones in need and less experience. They do it as a life choice. Also we humans have the need to form relationships ( professional and personal ) where we somehow tend to "teach" something to the person related to us. I'm not a psychologist but I could think it's a form of psychological human behavior where we feel the need to show off what we already know and be somehow admired by the people in our net. I would love to know more about this if someone has some more accurate clues and opinion.

For the question 'how do we attract those individuals into our professional networks that we wish to benefit from?' I didn't really came up to a proper answer. I believe each of us as individuals, establish what I could call a 'professional intelligence'. During our training/career path we come across situations where we get in touch with individuals we can benefit from, it's then up to us to build up a way to affiliate with them and keep a good relationship in the course of time. What I, for example, do, would be try to know everything possible about that particular casting director, musician, composer, choreographer, actor and try to establish a contact making them feel good about me knowing who they are. I know this my sound a bit 'proclaiming' but I found it a very good way to start out a professional networking relationship. How do you answer this question? Do you have another particular way to attract individuals in your networks? I would be very interested to hear your tactics ... if I can call them so :) 

Cooperation

~ Cooperation is the process of working or acting together which can be accomplished  by both intentional and non-intentional agents... in its simplest form working with harmony, side by side, in more complicated forms it can involve something as complex as the inner workings of human being. Alternative to working separately in competition. ~


I found this wikipedia explanation of Cooperation very clear and simple to understand. Also what follows the explanation of the word itself really helps the reasons why a person DO cooperate:

~ There are four main conditions that tend to be necessary for cooperative behaviour to develop between two individuals:

• An overlap in desires
• A chance of future encounters with the same individual
• Memory of past encounters with that individual
• A value associated with future outcomes ~

As the reader suggests I had a go with Axerold's theory of the Prisoner's Dilemma  and found that the TIT FOR TAT tactic was working. Although I then tried to apply the game within my profession not gaining the same results. Likewise Joanna thinks,I find that in the professional network not always 'mirroring' the person I cooperate with can give me good results in return... i.e. If I don't give back some sort of help after I got told of an audition by someone, the next time there will be one, that person wold be more likely not to help me again therefore I would not be gaining cooperation anymore from that person. This brings me back to the questions raised by Axerold in the reader: 

When should a person cooperate and when should a person be selfish?
( Axerold, R 1984, pp 11 - 14 )

I was trying to think if in my profession I had an example of a cooperation/non-cooperation situation and I think I found a good one:
Back in 2005 I was taking an MT summer course at the Urdang Academy, what then became my training school after that.
I was completely unaware of the fact that auditions where held at the same time to take part of the 3 years course. I didn't speak English and I couldn't even imagine myself actually training there. Within this week some cooperation and affiliation happened. I straight away got really close with another student that was taking part in the course and that also was auditioning for the school.
Because I was giving him help through the routines and songs, this guy nicely felt the need to give me something back ( he told me this later on ) so he personally asked the school director to consider myself for an audition, they listened to him largely praising my good qualities and in the end he got approved even though the auditions where already taking places and I was late with the process. So they gave me a "special treatment" giving me chances to audition on my own (very intimidating). With my astonishment and not really believing in succeeding, I took advantage of this cooperation and got through the audition getting a place offered into the school.
I can firmly say that simply because of my honest and innocent will to help someone else not necessarily getting something in return, I 'won the Prisoner's Dilemma match' obtaining something from this other person that ended up with nothing for himself (if not a great friendship that started from that moment on).


So is it really a matter of ALWAYS giving to receive, or we can be moved by simply giving HOPING to receive back in the future or/and to establish a good and healthy relationship with a work fellow? 
Of course this is a very generic matter, but a little bit like what Stephanie said in her blog of believing herself the same persona in life and work, that's probably how I see it as well and how I behave in life, I want to try to get across in my profession. 


As usual I like to include some images that visually help my concepts... I found these ones extremely good to sum up what I discovered ...what do you think?

References:
Wikipedia,  The free encyclopedia,  2011, Cooperation [online]. 
Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperation [accessed 26 April 2011]


Serendip, 2010, Prisoner's Dilemma [online].
Pennsylvania: Bryn Mawr College
Available from: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/pd.html [accessed 25 April 2011]


Axelrod, R. (1984) The evolution of cooperation. London: Penguin


Adeyinka, J. (2010) http://joanna-adeyinka.blogspot.com/2010/11/critical-reflection-on-professional.html (accessed 04 April 2011)


Thomas, S. (2011) http://stephaniethomas-blog.blogspot.com/2011/04/cooperation-affiliation-social.html (accessed 26 April 2011)

2c: Reflective Theory Task

Critical Reflection on Reflective Practice

Taking knowledge of WHEN we ACTUALLY reflect

This is something that kept pounding in my head after having a Skype session VERY REVEALING with Paula today. We discussed what my main concern was, that is wether I should keep taking part of this course in this particular time of my life. I felt as if I didn't have any material I could relate to to able to complete the tasks.

Being away from London, back at home, I've completely minimized my possibilities of succeeding in my career and the opportunities I before had when I was constantly active with dance classes, singing lessons, attending shows, receiving career advises, auditions, photo-shoots, networking with colleagues and people I had worked with. All this is completely missing now from my life here in Italy.

So my question came almost like a sudden revelation:

Am I waisting this course since I don't have anything I can base it on and I sometimes feel I force myself in order to complete the tasks? Should I postpone it until I come back to London in September?

First of, Paula reassured me about the fact that the course will stop during the summer, which is something I had quickly screened when reading the BAPP Course Reader and that I hadn't taken in. Something I do very often when I feel overwhelmed with something, I have a general screening and I brainstorm and then take in only the information I feel are more needed.

So that relaxed me a little bit as I am soon gonna start a full time job (as a shop assistant) that will give me some savings to then move back to the expensive London....This job would have given me a very little time to actually study and continue on the course. So luckily one problem solved!

Secondly I still had the problem I wasn't sure I had the material to complete the module...material of reflection...I started comparing my life back in London when I was fully into my profession even though most of the time I wasn't actually working as a performer. I was constantly linked with people I was gonna have benefits in my career from..teachers, photographers, actors, class mates, agents... I could vividly and actively help developing my career, at least I felt I was always doing something for it. 

Another good thing I had that now I miss is the 'sane competition' and comparison I had with my house mates; we were all in the same situations, all performers looking for jobs. So a very good thing was that when someone would relax a little bit, one of us, in the meantime, would be taking 3 dance lessons, 2 castings from their agents and a new photo-shoot done...What a kick!!! I never had the time to sit down and have doubts on my career, we always helped each other out with auditions informations, sharing music sheets and networking with one another.

That's when Paula gave me my Eureka! I was reflecting.

She told me sometimes we don't give much importance to what we are actually thinking, feeling and reflecting on..we don't need to be in a West End show to be able to succeed in this course...we only need all the tools possible to achieve and learn something new.

"...having experience plus REFLECTING are the means by which you can start to come across new ideas, the means by which you can learn something new." 

(Reflective Practices - A Reader, Adesola Akinleye 2010-2011)

A guess I've used Schon's theory of reflecting-on-action here...I reflect on what has happened to me in the past and reflecting ON it making me engage with experience I have now that I can benefit from for the future.

All my concerns where somehow part of the course in terms of reflection on my being in this moment in time..I just didn't realize that.

The importance of WHERE we are to develop a career

Someone said 'An artist is always an artist' and I I have to say I disagree with this.
You can always feel an artist inside but in terms of doing something to develop your career it's extremely important WHERE you are to do so.
I thought that living close to Milan would have helped me in this task but I had to change my mind.
The job/auditions situation is completely different from London even if it's still a big city. I had some castings here but I stopped dancing, taking singing lessons and being active for my career in almost any way. Paula pointed out that often it's said that, for example, Americans are the best in performing arts but actually not all Americans have the benefits that someone can have if is from NY, L.A. or Chicago.  Where we are is extremely important and it's part of a decision process we (artists) need to have in order to raise our chances of improving our skills and our career opportunities.

A good example of Web 2.0.

Revisiting what I've learned and discovered so far, I found this BBC's article a very interesting example of how web 2.0 is a platform of communication SO IMPORTANT for what's happening nowadays and also how this generation is taking advance everyday more of the high technology we achieved.

One of those days...

As for today I felt I wanted to record my thoughts on a post rather than on my journal... maybe because I have it fresh and want to write it down ... I feel the need to discover I'm on this module/course and not that I'm waisting time and energy on this for nothing...I think we all have one of these days sometimes...or am I the only one? You could say...maybe just get on with the task rather than waisting time on this!!!
I found Amy Ruffel's post quite interesting and comforting ... I think she did feel what I'm feeling today!

Main thoughts/feelings for the day:

• Lost
• Do I have the right drive for this?
• Worried...due to the fact that I'm jobless...or not?
• Am I out of the field? Am I loosing contacts?
• Not inspired enough
• Wrong place to be for this?
• Energy wasted
• Confusions
• Will to do good
• Distractions
• Up and downs

As you could tell most of what I've written isn't very positive, although I feel I have a lot of energy I'm not using ... I feel stuck, not knowing the real reason why I do feel this way.

I'm sure this is an ongoing feeling and that probably tomorrow it could be better and re-reading this post would make me lough, but probably that's why I'm writing it down...sometimes I used to simply write down on a diary rather than a simple peace of paper what I was feeling when angry or something went wrong, in order to get the anxiousness and worries out of my system, and most of the time it worked, it's something very therapeutic.

So here I tried to make a scrapbook (or I should say a scrap-blog) of images that may help me feeling better...I do believe in the value of visual help...Well, let's try:

I FEEL BETTER ALREADY :)

2b: Journal Writing Experience

I have to say this has been harder than I thought. For this task I choose a performance I did in a famous TV program here in Italy where I got asked to sing to represent my council. Probably my mistake has been recording my thoughts on my journal after few days from the performance, this froze my memories a little bit and I struggled a to re-evocate what I felt on the spot. Definitely a lesson learned...writing down everything as soon as possible!

Unfortunately the show is only viewable online within the country but as soon as I manage to put up the video of my performance on YouTube I will post the link.

Description - First of all I have to say that coming from a Musical Theatre background I never really got interested in TV in general, I've always been more keen on performing on stage. Said this, after this experience I had to change my mind a little bit. I really enjoyed seeing how a TV show works and how it's constructed and I will definitely now be looking into this field for work as well.

As I said I got asked to sing to compete against another town, myself with a group of people had to participate with games, artistic performances (singing and dancing) and quizzes. Also the show was live in the RAI studios in Rome ( what BBC is for the U.K. ) so I enjoyed taking 3 days trip to the our beautiful capital.

Initial Reflection - I approached the whole thing with a bit of negativity. To start with I only had a bit more than a week to prepare the song, I was feeling not vey well and I was going to choose between this and another job as an extra in a TV commercial. Of course like OFTEN happens in our business, after months of a non-job period, more than one come at the same time!!! So I picked the TV program as I was gonna be seen nation wide and I din't want miss on the opportunity.

It was strange because even if it was a total new experience for me, I felt at ease around the studios. Of course rehearsing the show with a live band and a famous orchestra leader made me feel nervous, also the loss of my voice and my sickness didn't help, but somehow I managed pretty well.

List - My list was a bit contradictory, it was full of positive words like sun, happiness, will to do good, and words like uncertainty, asthma, sore throat, responsibility so I have to say it was a good mixture of feelings that balanced the whole experience... There can't be a good performance without fear and feeling nervous...it was the right dose of everything.

Evaluation - By the time I had to perform I got better (thank God!) and I felt I did a good performance after all. This was the section I did write the most on my journal, I think is has to be because it's where I discovered something I wasn't aware of until I was writing it down. Something similar happened to Alana's , I realized we where sharing the same "Eureka moment" like she described it ... we both realized something new only after having written it down on our journal...kind of amazing! 

A concrete idea of what Boud says: writing a journal in different ways for different reasons, all leading to the same result of learning.

My Eureka moment was to notice how the camera and performing in a TV studio is less nerve-racking than performing on stage. This can probably be easily understood because of the absence of a real audience, but for me being used to a theatre or having an audience, I was fearing the different scenario.
I thought it would have been harder to portray what I was singing if I didn't feel the need to "arrive" to my audience, people that are there listening and expecting to somehow receive something from me and my performance.
In few words I didn't feel I had to succeed expectations even though I still did! I discovered that having less people in front of me, and most of them not even paying attention to me, made me more calm therefore my voice was steadier and less trembling. But if I really thought about it I had a huge audience behind the camera!!! This feeling of calmness made me concentrate more and perform well (at least I was satisfied)...it was like singing alone in the shower but being aware of having a ghost audience...very weird feeling!

I did notice that, on a technical point of view, I should avoid singing straight into the camera. When the other singer sung and looked directly into it I didn't like the result, so I avoided that and liked it better when I watched myself later on...I felt it was more believable.

What if - The first thing that came to my mind was what if something went wrong, it was a live show!!!
I think I would have tried to carry on without making my mistake noticeable but I'm very happy I didn't have to reflect-in-action ! It's alway hard to react quick enough to overcome the problem...performing live force you to be ON what's happening with 100% of your concentration.
But what I would have loved to happen is if someone important would have been there and I would have impressed him/her... maybe offering me a job... enlarging my networking ... if, from this experience, another even better would have come out from.

Another view - I thought of seeing the experience from the other contestant's point of view. She was a professional singer that won that TV show for 3 weeks consecutively, so for sure she was way more confident and knew what she was doing better than me. She also had confidence with most of the people working there... since the show worked with people voting from home she, in the end, won the competition as her town was well into the show by now.
She was nice and not competitive for what it seemed but I'm sure she felt she had more chances than me...she gave me genuine tips as she saw I was un-well but I'm sure she still wanted to do better as in the end it was indeed a competition.

Theme - I valued the most the experience of singing with a live orchestra. I'd done it before but not having a whole orchestra for me. I definitely valued the networking I did during this 2 days, especially getting to know the orchestra leader which is very talented and knowledgable in fact of music ( and very famous for what it counts ) and gave me his sincere compliments and his bitterness about loosing the game. I definitely valued the fact that my profession brought me to Rome where the studios where, and also getting to know a group of people that travelled with me that I probably wouldn't have known otherwise.
But most of all, and this may sound a bit selfish, I valued the fact that this show gave me the chance to show and letting the people of my town getting to know me artistically rather than only personally...having trained away from home never gave me the opportunity to show my capability and artistry with the people I grew up with...I received loads of good comments especially coming from people I wouldn't have expected before...it has been a quite pleasant outcome for me.

I would probably prepare more next time as I could choose a song that better represent myself and my voice style, also I would rest more as I arrived very tired because of the long journey we had.

An overall great experience that in the beginning gave me loads of doubts, complications and negative thoughts...maybe I was giving myself excuses because I wasn't feeling going on TV...this was a good lesson for me as I should never relax and get into a comfort zone when I perhaps work less than other moments...a very easy place to go to for us performers!!! Someone agrees or disagrees with me? Please say so if you feel like it :)