all right I think we're recording what's up people it is um almost nine o'clock it's almost nine o'clock it's been a long day and so um on the one hand thank you guys for um your patience Grace um as I was putting all this stuff together um I uh my dog um it it's weird doing this um this is not my first attempt at filming this and uh it's really strange not having anybody on the other side of this transmission uh to interact with and so I just have to pretend um that you are here on the zoom call I have to pretend this is co era and that your face is up on the screen I do have my dog who has just managed to find a spot I don't know where she is I don't it doesn't matter she's my only audience and I can't even find her it's really sad she's got her Bon she's chill got the TV on nothing's playing but you know it's on Le nothing's playing as it pertains to sound um I want to orient you around what this is um on the one hand the production quality isn't going to be topped here at least not this time around um almost CH my own water um this is just going out really well um the production quality isn't going to be great um but we're going to get the job done and so the way that I'm hallucinating this particular moment is is that there will be three videos of which this is the first and in between the videos you will have an assignment um that is all captured on one document that I should have up on Gamers by this by this point and so the idea is you watch this clip and you take care of the first section on that assignment you watch second clip do the second you watch the third clip you finish it off to the third section and then you are good you're done um this isn't supposed to take a long time um at least that's not what I'm intending to with this 50 minutes is how long would have otherwise been in class so I intend for this to be about that long but you have a you have a pace you have an academic Pace that I may not know about and so if you felt that our 50-minute Gatherings you know throughout the week go by too quickly this is your time to slow things down if you feel that they're way too slow and that we could be faster than this is an opportunity for you to expedite that experience um and so I'm re-recording this video actually I've done this already but I just spoke way too um I spoke way too much so I'm going to try to be more intentional with what I say so we can honor your own you know your own time so this is a moment a lecture of an experience whatever word you might want to throw into this pool about communication as a definition um my arm just almost fell off the counter there um I'm so tired you guys pray for me um communication is a word that has a definition and yet communication is a huge idea that captures many different things if you are going to treat that as an umbrella um you're going to need to find a really big umbrella because communication covers a lot of ground um and so it's a pretty big ask to expect us to create One Singular definition of what communication is and yet I think it's important that we do because um actually let me tell you why um exactly um by sharing a story with you about one of America's top serial killers um name is something I always blank on so I have it written down in my notes right here so if I'm looking here just don't look at my notes uh Gary Ridgeway uh in the you know 80s and 90s um had killed collectively 49 women he was intentional about killing women um and he killed 49 of them um he was able to evade police um observation for the longest time but he was eventually found and um there was some really clever negotiation that man managed to um lure a confession out of him that he didn't just kill one or two but in fact killed 49 and that's bad um and there was going to be a punishment that he received and yet he was able to negotiate himself and um said that if he could receive a water down version of the punishment that he I suppose was in line to receive that he would disclose thec ations of every body that he had buried so that the families could have a proper uh remembrance ceremony and all that and so they agreed to that and the bodies are found and there was a court you know there was a trial and uh what's interesting is right before um I think the sentencing happened and if you're a true crime fan you Pro fan you probably know a lot more about this and I do but the judge gave a really interesting idea that he would author any family member affected by this crime 10 minutes to speak directly to the Killer and while not all family members took advantage of that a few did and there was one family member in particular I think it was a man whose daughter had been killed um he's notorious for being the only one in this bunch to actually forgive the Killer and you could watch a video on YouTube he's a guy who looks like s but also like a motorcyclist I guess he would be on his Harley-Davidson bike from January to November and would you know be at the malls taking photos with kids as dress up a Santa all the summer he just looks like that kind of guy but you know his message gets pulled in messages about forgiveness and I don't know that this is for Baden but he essentially told this guy that you've made it really difficult to continue believing the things that I've told people I believed in for years so for that reason I I do forgive you um it was really powerful but I don't want to I didn't want to talk about that just to highlight the Forgiveness moment I wanted to see if you could fathom what it must have been like to be in the mindset of any one of those family members who were granted the opportunity to share anything they wanted to share to the one who took the life of their loved one away now mind you you couldn't really Fight Fire with Fire here um it still would have been illegal for you to pull out a weapon and do to him what he had done to your loved one you couldn't do that the only thing that you would have been authorized to do is to give a 10-minute speech so the question I wanted to have you consider is do you feel that that would be enough for you and depending on how you piece together that or rhetorical moment do you feel that that would properly serve the justice that your heart would have been craving for at that point some of you might feel like if you could get your mind across and that would be enough others of you wish you could be put into a room just with him and a few Choice weapons no matter how you might feel the speech is all you could do and so what do you say and do you feel that that would be satisfactory to the Revenge that you would undoubtedly want to see and maybe if that example doesn't make a lot of sense it doesn't really resonate maybe this one will uh for four months ago um there was a report that came out about a 29-year-old from signapore who went by Mike that was her nickname she had been diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer and while she tried to preserve some degree of Hope for the majority of her time uh facing and battling with cancer she reached the moment where she had to recognize that her hope would be would be deceiving um it wouldn't be proper she knew that she was going to die and perhaps it would be less delusional to persist in her hope and to recognize what's about to happen is true and to plan accordingly and I suppose that with her she wasn't too satisfied with the idea of having the only time where her friends of family could gather would be the funeral for which she wouldn't be at um and so she instead opted to host what she called a living funeral and the living funeral was exactly as you might think it to be she was alive everybody came to her house and it was essentially a big really somber party that commemorated the life that she's lived up to that point and for context I'm 27 so she would only been two years ahead of me and people brought food people brought gifts um people brought all the emotions you would expect they would bring with them um usually you have moments like that when you're about to move away and while connection isn't impossible it is just more logistically complicated that wasn't the case with this she was going to pass away very soon and so for most of the people in the room this would legitimately be the last time that they could say anything to her face to face and toward the end of this party you know there are all the tears that you would expect all the hard things because they can't really say you know best of luck in your future endeavors there is no future and they all know that um Mike uh went to her room and picked up a whole stack of handwritten letters and gives them to everybody who who came and I wonder what she would have put down on him I just I wonder what she would have said and I wonder what we would say if we were invited to a loved ones living funeral and we were able to share a speech and we knew that this would be the last speech they'd hear from us what would you do what would you say and if we were to flip the roles here what if it were your living funeral and what if it was your opportunity to address all your friends and all your family in the same space knowing that this is legitimately the last time that you are going to be able to address them in that way what do you say and is there even anything that you can say that could speak to the emotions and the love and the affection that you have for each and every single person who came to that space to commemorate you she did pass away not too long after that and it puts a unique Spotlight on the role of communication in moments when it feels like that might be the weaker thing to do or it feels like you've been so stripped of everything that you would have wanted to do and this was the only option so it's not the one that you wanted but it's the one that you're going to have to be okay with happen um you can't prescribe any medication that could change fate um and of course as I said with the former example You Can't Fight Fire with Fire communication is the only thing you could do is it enough I believe that your perspective on that question will will depend entirely on how you've come to Define communication as a whole and I don't know if you ever took the time to actually sit down and think through what your personal definition of communication is and so let's treat this moment as that moment um the first uh thing I want you to do on this assignment that you'll find on canvas is to think about the language of your personal definition of communication and to put that down on the page or you could type it up if you want it doesn't matter um but what I want you to do is to wrestle with how you've experienced communication and to determine how you authentically come to approach communication and once you do that you can watch a second clip but until then just take some time and think through how you would Define communication and I will catch you in video number two