5th week- The Tests

This week was truly dreadful, who invented the concept of test? OMG, oh well, the good thing is that I feel that I’m learning a lot (I think that learning is better than getting good grades), perhaps this is my best semester ever in that sense.

What about the leadership class test?
As for the leadership class test, it was kind of strange but ok. I had to work with my team to solve some analytical problems. I think that our team did a great job since we thought outside the box and never gave up on any problem. I think we had some organizational problems but we should work them out this semester. We also need to find a strategy that can make us more efficient so we can get better grades.

Ok..., enough about test, lest talk about something else
Today we saw a video of a guy with cancer that was dying but surprisingly he seemed somewhat happy. His conference was not about his condition or his family but instead, he was giving his conference to help us accomplish our dreams and the dreams of other people. There was one sentence that catches my eye. He said that generally walls are there to filter people who don’t want to accomplish their dreams bad enough. Most of the times I think of wall as the end of the road but this person is impressive, by the way, the way he goes “through” the walls is even more impressive.
Now the question becomes how to break these walls. I think that it is extremely hard to break them, but we can find gaps were we can get through by being determined, proactive and think outside the box. If we are proactive we wouldn´t have to waste energies worrying about a thing that already happened or a thing that we don´t have control over, instead we would try to analyze the situation and get a clear picture. After having a clear picture, we could try to think outside the box and think of alternatives ways in order to succeed. Furthermore by being determined we could eventually find the gap that we need by never giving up.

Ok, it is getting somewhat late
Have a great weekend everyone, Cya next week.

4th Week-

Have you ever watched the movie, the Peaceful Warrior? If you have not, I highly recommend you to do so. This movie is about a person who dreams of being a national gymnast but he faces an accident and the confusion of his mind does not help him. The problem with this person named Dan was that his entire life was devoted to only one thing, winning the national competition. When Socrates (a person who is presumably made up by his mind) teach him that he should enjoy what he does instead of going for a lifetime goal that probably would not mean anything for him later on (after winning), he starts to do what he thinks is right. Sometime later he becomes the nation’s champion.

I think that it is great to have a dream and set goals since it helps you and inspires you to grow, but I also think that you should enjoy every minute you have since we are very fortunate to be here therefore we should like what we do or search for a better activity.

In my personal experience I will say that many times I have set a goal of studying Japanese to approve a test. The problem is that sometimes I stop enjoying the moment of studying Japanese so I become extremely inefficient. Other times I have the goal and I enjoy the moment of studying thus I feel that I could do anything and my efficiency greatly improves. So I have to say that we should start doing things because we like them and in case we don’t like them nor dislike them we should think of positive things about our tasks to become more efficient and greatly improve our chance of being successful.

And now I leave you with the next phrase from an Anime Series
君は出来ないんじゃなく、出来ないと思い込んでる だけ...
It is not that you cannot do it, but it is only that you are filled with the idea that you can’t...

Third week-

Paradigms, what are they? Who needs them? LOL

Are good, or are they evil? Well first of all, I will start this entry by defining a paradigm.

A paradigm is basically a set of assumptions or concepts that a person has of the world. Paradigms often blind us of the truth of the world because we think we know “everything”. Furthermore when people make a paradigm of other people or themselves, they can internalize that paradigm and make it their own. For example, if I say “I’m too lazy”, I might start acting as such because I think or other people think that I am so.

So far we have seen that paradigms are bad for us and that we should not use them, but, paradigms are not always bad.

A paradigm can be good when it helps a person to grow or when it enables him to understand a complex situation where you need to have an intuitive knowledge of the subject (like playing chess).

Ok, so are paradigms good or bad?
The answer is neither. What makes it them good or bad are their effects. If you have a paradigm that is biased or has negative influence in your personal growth, then you better stop thinking that way and start thinking about the positive things of that particular situation. On the other hand, if you have a paradigm that helps you in your personal growth or helps you “see” another reality; it is best then to stick with it.

Second Week- Leadership

In this week we talked about biosphere 2. I think that this is a really great and important project since it would be awesome to go visit other planets like mars because someday we could start living on mars. There is water in mars, and it is believed that some bacteria lived there, that is why I think we could go there in the near future. But there are two big problems that I think we need to solve.
As we know, biosphere 2 mission failed and at this moment the results suggests that small, closed ecosystems are vulnerable to unplanned events. In this case they suffer oxygen and food problems but they also suffer conflicts in human interaction.

Why did this happen? They had a physiologist on board, why did they have human interaction problems? I think the answer is complex as well as the ecosystem complexity.

In our class, biosphere 2 is a great example of the human society complexity and it shows us that we must pay more attention to our human relationships in order to have good leadership.