As I hugged and said goodbye to my mother, father, brother and sister and off we went into the great unknown. Well unknown to a kid fresh out of high school who didn't want to do the same things his friends did in high school, i.e. work or go to a community college. But when I got off the plane, to my surprise, I was only one of probably two or three hundred recruits waiting for further directions. When I was placed in a division of about thirty men, the recruiting division commander or RDC shouted to us that I was thinking to myself and I'm sure many others were also thinking "what have I gotten myself into?" Before going to bed we all had to shave as ordered by the DRC. Now this wouldn't have been a big deal if I hadn't grown half a beard before I left, needless to say I left in a mess and went to bed. The next morning the RDC had said, "If you fail any part of the test, training, physical test, or just screw up, you will start over from the first day of boot camp!" Not that I wasn't already scared, but thinking of doing it again would have been crazy. Then I knew I didn't have to be so inverted and make a couple of friends to get through boot camp. John Thibaut and Harlod Kelley's social exchange theory is when an individual's indulgence in relationships benefits and avoids those that are not. A relationship is evaluated in terms of outcome, which is the benefits minus the costs. A benefit could be financial success, social prestige, emotional comfort/security, or anything that would directly benefit you. A cost could be a loss of time, money, or a loss of opportunity, such as missing an audition or interview. Ideally it's better to have more benefits than costs, but I think that's what most people would do... middle of paper... relationships and how they progress and how they change. Works Cited Heath, Robert L., and Jennings Bryant. Theory and research on human communication: concepts, contexts and challenges. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum, 2000. Print.Lee, Jaesub. Chapter 6 Theories of interpersonal and relational communication. Powerpoint.Michaels, J.W., Acock, A.C., & Edwards, J.N. (1986). Social exchange and determinants of equity in relational commitment. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 3(2), 161-175.Farrell, D., & Rusbult, C. E. (1981). Exchange variables as predictors of job satisfaction, work commitment, and turnover: The impact of rewards, costs, alternatives, and investments. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 28(1), 78-95.Littlejohn, S. W., & Foss, K. A. (2008). Theories of human communication (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson & Wadsworth.