Although it was a daunting experience overall, this course demonstrated the critical role that effective communication plays in any enterprise. Even though it's implied by the name of the course, knowing how information moves around an organization is crucial to the company's success. The usefulness of the course can be traced in part to the culminating project, which consisted of a communication audit. The audit was initially intimidating. It was a new way of looking at things compared to my prior experience with simple cause-and-effect diagrams and tabular data. Instead, I was able to weave a narrative out of disparate pieces of information. The shift in perspective that I experienced when approaching the organization from a "communication" lens was reinforced in subsequent courses on systems thinking and feedback loops. I was able to follow "symptoms" back to a more accurate root cause thanks to the system thinking principles, which greatly improved the quality of my audit and gave me confidence in my analysis and suggestions. The readings in this course were also excellent; I learned to value the opportunity to consider an institution's cultural significance from the romantic, functionalist, and critical perspectives. Throughout the semester, I kept these perspectives in mind as I studied and observed my workplace. Sharing the "world-views" of all six viewpoints is essential to developing the broadest possible philosophy, and this is one of the courses most enduring lessons for me. I'm delighted I decided to take both COML 504 and COML511 at the same time because they complemented each other quite well.