Custom «Applying Problem Solving » Essay Paper Sample

Even though it is not a must that every person experiences problems in his/ her lifetime, majority of us must encounter and/or tackle problems in our day to day practices. When faced with such problems, different individuals may have different approaches in solving these problems even though at times these problems may look alike. There are several approaches that can be applied in solving problems among them are the persuasive and scientific thinking (Kirby& Goodpaster, 2006), which are going to be discussed in this essay using real-life problems that I have encountered to illustrate them.

The first problem, which I used persuasive thinking to solve, is that my class teacher, who was also the one taking us through literature classes had asked for a makeup class after he had missed classes two times consecutively. We therefore agreed that on that Saturday, we would come to school earlier and leave by ten in the morning. Meanwhile, I had an appointment with my friend and we had to keep on communicating since she was visiting for the first time. To ensure that we would be in touch, I decided to carry my handset to school. At he back of my mind, i knew pretty well that my teacher would be mad at me when he found out that I had a phone n my back so I told myself that I would keep it on silent mode. However, I got to class late morning and forgot to put it and thirty minutes into the lesson, the phone rung and all eyes were on me. I knew that was the end of schooling at that school since we had already been warned that whoever is found with a cell phone would be suspended for a whole year.

I encountered the second problem while I was doing my project on environmental analysis when one of my supervisors challenged me that my thesis did not match anything in the project and that I ha to redo everything. It not only disappointed me but it embarrassed me as well since students with poor grades would come with their parents at the end of the academic year so that their progress can be discussed with their parents. It being my first comment since I started to work on the project, I gathered information from the library and the internet so as to make it better.

In solving the first problem, I was called upon before the principle so as to explain why I had a handset in class. I then approached this using the persuasive approach. First, I established credibility and showed him that despite the fact that I was a student, I was much unbiased and my thinking was very rationale (Kirby& Goodpaster, 2006). Second, I acknowledged the position of the principle that I was wrong and admitted my mistakes. I then used facts to explain my reason as to why I had to carry a phone to class by giving him a course and effect theory. Having established the roots of the principle in a respectful and careful manner, I gave him rationale evidence that satisfied his curiosity and finally I asked for his response on the new position I had taken (Kirby& Goodpaster, 2006). Lack enough, I was not suspended or given any form of punishment and that is how this problem was solved.

As for the second problem, I had to solve it using scientific thinking whereby I first observed the environmental problems that I was going to tackle in my project, I then formulated two null hypotheses which I was to prove either wrong or right by the end of the project (Martin, 1997, p. 18). After this, I went out to the field where I carried out some experiments and researched on a few things before verifying the results (Kirby& Goodpaster, 2006). Based on the results that I got from the observation and the experiments, I drew a conclusion and as I represented it before the class, all eyes were on me again as my audiences were astonished at how best I did my project.

Generally, solving problems has never been interesting for most of us since we do not want to admit that at one point in life we may be faced with tough situations that require that we act appropriately to settle them. Persuasive thinking in solving problems require that an individual establishes credibility with his audience, use facts and statistics in order to construct a positive rationale, satisfy his needs and finally ask for his response. For the scientific thinking, one solves problems by in four steps; observation, formulation of hypothesis, experimentation and finally verification.