I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter. It's so weird and coincidental that this chapter covered the topics it did, because I've been doing a lot of self-searching and evaluating of my own life lately. Chapter 5 kind of gave a few guidelines to follow not only in the Public Relations world, but in everyday life as well. I think that's a big part of why I am so drawn to this field.

• Living a values-driven life is important to me
  
• Effective communication is something that I strive to achieve in all of my relationships
  
• I believe that there is always an exception to the rule, as there is when looking at public opinion
• People can't change unless they want to, and that only takes place with negotiation, persuasion, and motivation
  
• Life is about building and maintaining relationships
  

And I am passionate about focusing on those aspects. I care about making things better. I am genuniely interested in understanding why people think the way that they do, and I actively try to make the best of every situation I'm put in. I just took a personality test with my team the other day, and there were four possible outcomes: activator, analyst, peacemaker, and organizer. Granted, any answer could have attributes that fit the personality to work in the PR field, I was overwhelmingly a peacemaker, and I really beileve that trying to keep the peace is largely what Public Relations is all about. I have a sincere interest in understanding groups or indivduals and to constantly check my surroundings in order to adjust and keep things O.K. I like doing that. My mind is not on a one-track course, and I also think that I am dynamic, an ingredient the field calls for.

The excerpt that we were asked to discuss from the Homeland Security site was not impressive to me. The first page gave a game plan that was really vague and which covered broad topic problems, and I found it funny when I continued to read and saw that the author was aware of the same conclusions. It seems like there is a lot of red tape that government has to get through in order to move information to the places it needs to be. I think that "red tape" is a problem in America on a whole: things aren't simple. There are so many precautions taken and additional securities put on things and barriers because people aren't trustworthy or on the same page about things. Society is corrupt. It's like we have this plan that we put in place in order to keep our country safe, but WE are the ones holding ourselves back from implementing it. It's like we have the solution, but we are the roadblock in the way of accomplishing it. I just think that different sectors have different priorities and are so unwilling to budge, that we're kicking ourselves in the ass. We're trying to fight an external war, when all the while we're adding a war within our own country.