Week 15th - The Great Activity

I actually enjoyed the activity we had today. To start with, this week Lorena and her team made a really fun activity and we went outside in order to complete it. First we made teams of three people and tied our legs to each other and walk to a certain place. Then we had to find as many words as possible in a crossword and afterwards rest on the grass and take some time in order to clear our mind and visualize the people that we love and care.

The part that I liked the most started afterwards. We were give two candies and were told to keep them and don’t eat them. We gave those candies to another person and told them why we were doing so. What I found out in this activity is that the candy really did not matter, what really matters is our friendship as a class and as a group and this kind of activities unite us even more, nice job!

The communication during this activity was great and I like how everyone cooperated and made this activity fun. It would be hard to imagine doing this kind of stuff at the beginning of the semester but I think that we had gone a long way and learned some very useful knowledge :)

Week 14th – 3rd Test

Today I had one of the most challenging tests I ever had in leadership class.
The class was divided into two teams and we were separated. We had to build a bridge, and every team must build half of it so it would be easy to unite. The problem here was that our half part must be symmetric with the other half in color and shape. Every four minutes a representative from both teams talked and another person listened. I got a chance to listen and then talk.
There was some knowledge learned from doing this test.
1. Keep everything as simple as possible (don’t try to do complex stuff)
2. Generate a common code
3. Make sure the message is delivered correctly.
4. The discussions that are generated outside must be delivered to the other members.
Since I heard the talk of my friends, and I generated part of the solution, it was easy for me to deliver the right message. After talking to my friends, they agreed that my explanation was good. I’m really happy ^^

Week 13th – “Soñar Despierto” :: Dream awake

My friends and I visited some orphans girls this week from the association “Soñar Despierto”. This experience was great because we did fun activities and the girls were really energetic. I like this kind of stuff because I leave my comfort zone and change routines. I still have a lot of homework to do but this Saturday I felt free from school worries.
I like the way Lorena introduce ourselves and how she started to do small activities like singing and dancing in order to break the ice between us. These activities were fun and at the same time, without even noticing, we got along very well. The rest of the time we spend it doing some activities like guessing “who am I”, listening to some singers and eating lunch and dinner. We spent approximately 5 hours together but I think it was worth it.

Week 12- The Test!

What test? OMG, twenty five hard questions in just three minute? Are you serious?
Ok, believe it or not, I had that test. The instructions for that test where that I should first read all the instructions before doing anything...
Instruction 25 said that I should not attempt to do the previews instructions because that would be a waste of time and paper. I notice this instruction (after completing the first four) because there was apparently no logic in the instructions and they were just too annoying (and extremely hard considering the time). Why didn’t I notice this before? I guess I did what I did because I thought the instructions where done (where it said to read all the instructions before...), but what appeared to be problems where actually instructions. I’m glad that I stopped at number four and completed the exercise in about 2 minutes but it could have been better.
What I learned from this exercise is that anywhere we go, or anything we do, we must analyze the situation in that precise time-space in order to have a good input and thus increasing the chances of getting a good response (never sacrifice this time, but also don´t overdo it). This has been done in medicine and rescuers for a long time, why don’t we do the same? If you just follow instructions, then what is the difference between you and a computer program, or robot?
I think we should do the following
1. Analyze the situation. Don’t miss any detail
2. What do I need to do?
3. Why do I need to do it for?
4. What do I gain or lose?
5. Are there any other alternatives, go to step 1 if you need to do so.

These instructions can come in handy in many situations.
I think this thread is getting kind of long... I will stop here for now.
Cya everyone!

Week 11- Conflict

When we are in our community we must generate ideas in order to improve our lifestyle, but what if our ideas don’t match someone else proposal? Do we fight? Discuss? Accept or Talk about them?
This was actually a very fun experiment. We had to protect four items out of a list of ten in a flood simulation. What would you have chosen? Well, the point was that everyone had different arguments because we see reality differently and we could not reach a satisfactory solution (The solution was democratic). Why did we fail? After thinking about it, we discovered that we were so self centered and didn’t really care about the arguments of the other people. Our method for coming up with an answer was wrong too because we were thinking about the items but we forgot to ask about the needs and see the reality from different perspectives.
Now that I did this activity I have learned the importance of finding out what people really thinks and wants before anything else. I think this is one of the most important messages that I have learned so far and it is really useful.

Week 10- Get some honey

We played a game where my classmates were divided into four teams and one person from each team gathered around a desk. On top of this desk there were ten rocks and people were allowed to retrieve as many rocks as they wished. This game consisted of ten rounds. At the end of every round the instructor doubled the amount of rocks without exceeding the amount of ten. When I saw this exercise I rapidly associated it with the method to capture honey where you must leave some honey for the bees. If we think about it for a second we find that the optimum solution is to retrieve 5 rocks every round.
Did we notice the trick in time? In reality it took a long time for everyone to find out. It started to go well in round four, but as the game passed on, people where thinking more selfish but finally in the last round everyone succeeded! (Too bad we took a long time to find this out -_-;;)

9th week- daily life

Once again, I’m writing in this blog, I wonder why...

Do you know who Steve Jobs is? I just found out this week. Man, this person is so great. His life is so great and he has done awesome stuff without a college degree. This means that you don’t need a college degree in order to succeed; you only need knowledge and the spirit to fight.
Our life is so valuable that we must not waste time, Steve lives every day as if it was his last day (there is no way to tell if it is). If a bad thing happens in your life, don´t feel bad and move on doing what you like and have hope that later on it will be good for you.
“A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love”- (Stendhal)

I also noticed that most of the good things that Steve Jobs did came from the fact that he had time to think about his life and he is very persistent. Thinking about this I decided to have the following goal
1. Have enough time to think about my life and what I want to do. Also have enough time to do extracurricular activities. Since I´m still in college, I have decided that 3 hours would be good (I will need to be super efficient in order to do this).

To end this entry, I leave you with Steve Jobs Speech, hope it inspires you :)

8th week – school of the blind

Have you ever been blindfolded and walked around in order to complete some task? This is my second time; the first time was mention earlier in this forum. I don’t know, but I think that I have a great ability to perceive space, and good imagination (this is why I can walk around blindfolded if and only if I know the place).

I notice that when I have to face something new, I tend to do things alone instead of finding the best solution. In another activity that I did I was to build a human bridge. In both activities I found that I can come up with the best answer, but I need to spend extra time, and I can’t find the answer at the moment. I wonder why that is. Do I need to be less nervous? Do I need more practice? Perhaps I need both.

There was another activity where we simulated that we were on a school bus going to six flags, but a terrible accident occurred. (Our eyes were cover and we were on the floor). I notice something interesting; generally we are so overwhelmed by small problems that we don’t pay attention to what is really important to us(including sleeping since I was tired XD).

Later everyone, I have hw to do :P

7th week – Our Turn

This week was our turn to give the leadership class. In my perspective we prepare good activities and gave the class successfully. At the beginning I was a little bit nervous but since I practiced my part and knew everything about it, I felt confident. I think that I need to study more connectors and step out of my comfort zone in order to be a better leader.

Here is a good problem that a team solved by luck :P
You have twelve gold coins. Eleven of them are equal in weight while the other one has different weight. You have a balance to weight them (A can be equal to B, or A can weight more/less than B). How many measurements would you have to do in order to find out which coin is different and tell whether the coin is heavier or lighter?

6th week - Goals

How many times have we set goals but never accomplish them?
This week we watched a video and read the goals of John Goddard. The achievement of this person is amazing. For more info check out http://www.johngoddard.info/life_list.htm

Three important tips from this guy are:
We should not waste time, for time is valuable.
We should start setting goals before we regret it.
Write down your own goals.

For now I have set a list of 30 goals; I still have a long way to go. I have found that generally I don’t give myself time to set goals and that I should start doing so in order to be more efficient.

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.

新しい 鋼の錬金術師をみるのははじまた、Ｘ３

鋼の錬金術師のアニメと映画は四日しか見ませんでした、この結果はすごく楽しかったけど過ぎるかもしれませんねぇ。じゃあ、とにかくこ今日は新しい鋼の錬金術師話しましょう。

何、最初から始まったって、どういう事。。。
残念ながら新しい鋼の錬金術師のアニメ最初からはじまった。私は鋼の錬金術師のアニメとか映画とか続き希望があった。
今回鋼の錬金術師のアニメは漫画だけ使われるって同じなるってけど私は漫画まだ読めません。新しい鋼の錬金術師今第五話だけ見ました、同じと思うよでも続くつもりです。
もし、貴方は鋼の錬金術師のアニメを見なかった、新しいの鋼の錬金術師のアニメを見て下さい。
じゃ、私はこれで、
たのしみに。

A new higurashi? Yay??

I don´t really know if this is the sequel of higurashi no naku koro ni kai, but hey, the title sounds the same (Umineko no Naku Koro Ni うみねこのなく頃に) XDD


I have watched part of the first episode and all I can say is that the animation has improved a lot from the prequel, but I don´t really know too much about the story line yet. This sucks, I haven´t finished second season and a third season is coming out, omg >.<;; I must catch up ASP...

The end of the semester, the start of a new perspective

Wow, the semester is already over? -_-;;
I have been writing in this blog as part of my social commitment class, too bad the semester ended so soon but nonetheless I will continue to update information in this forum.

Now the time has come where I have to ask myself, what have I learned these past days? What have I learned or what things do I do different now that I didn’t do before; let’s say at the beginning of the semester?
This few days I have learned that a lot of famous and some other no so famous people have done a lot of work toward building a better world. Now what is the main difference between them and normal people, why don’t people get involve? I have been asking myself this question for quite a few days now and I have come to the conclusion, the answer is “will”.

To have this power you must sincerely be convinced that you can do it and that nobody else can. Now this may sound a little selfish but the reality is that it can help you boost your self esteem and in fact no one can do things the way you do, so you could help build a better future in your own way but with the collaboration of other people.

You could further improve this mentality if you try to find out positive things about doing such things. For example, if you do community service; going from school to school teaching kids about the environment and the important role they play in order to improve our ecosystem. At the top of my mind I can think of four benefits from it. First and probably the most important, you help the environment and inspire people to do the same. Second, you learn effective ways to teach and transmit messages in an easy and understandable way. Third, you meet more people and probably have a better chance to get hire since you did all this things. Four, it is surely more fun that watching TV and doing nothing plus it enhances your conversation topics. I’m sure that you (the reader) can think of many more examples ^_^

As far as school goes,
In the past few days I did the Johari’s Window. I haven’t have school since the new influenza virus H1N1 arrived but I did the activity and I definitely learned some things that I didn’t know about myself. I hope that we can share this material when we return but either way it helped me a lot. I truly appreciate the help of everyone that helped me build this window.

Now, how much have I changed during this semester?
I think that at this moment I am more positive about the world than I ever was before. I used to think that I couldn’t do something to help because I felt insignificant compare to those billions of people out there in the world. I also thought that the responsibility belonged to the government of each nation. At the end of this semester I must say that my way to look at the world has changed to a more positive one, thus these past days I’m watching more news, trying to get knowledge from it, and if I can, trying to find a possible cause and a possible solution to a given problem, just like math isn’t it?

I think that our daily life also influences other people, so why not, let’s all be positive and help other people and do community service because no matter how small is your help, you never know what impact it would have. Also as I mention earlier, all good action will turn into something good, therefore we must all help build a better world.

As far as the class goes,
Throughout the course, I think that the most significant thing was its activities and all the thinking after that. Most of those activities were game activities although there was a reading of positive change that I really liked too. Why do I think that these activities are really essential? Well, first of all, I think it is a very unique, fun and great technique to learn how the society works so we can take a few steps back and look at ourselves working to accomplish something. The most important thing was not only to have these great activities, but it was also important to think what would we have done differently if we knew the porpoise of the game or why did we act the way we did. The discussion at the end really helped too.

Another significant aspect about the course was its videos because some videos gave us a kind of indirect experience thus acknowledging the help of so many people who are trying to change the world. At the top of my head I remember Ryan’s Well, the eleventh hour and Live8.

At last but not least, I think that doing a blog is really great because it provide us with tools and a channel where we can express ourselves and look back at what we have written. Also, by evaluating other people’s blogs, I have found out more interesting perspectives and ideas that people have thus I hope that this blog also helps someone to get a new perspective of life or helping him/her get involve into making positive changes.

Now, if I was asked, what would I change to make the course better?
First of all I must say that this has been my best humanistic course that I have taken since college. I think the methodology is very good but there are two minor changes that I would have liked. In the former I would have liked to have less homework after spring break because I felt that there was too much work to do and in the latter I would have liked that after and activity we would have thought about it and then discuss it. By thinking about the activity first, I think it would be easier for us to express what we feel.

15th week- The Start of the Flu (En, Jpn, Es)

In this week I evaluated two blogs that were interesting because they offer me a new perspective of the class. I should also thank everyone that has been posting comments and visiting my blog.

On Wednesday we (I and 4 other people) went to Villada (an elementary school) to teach sixth graders how they can help the environment by recycling glass, paper and aluminum. The class that we had to teach had students that were attentive and participative so we cover all the material in no time and I think they really learned what they had to do to help the environment. I believe that these little steps will make us move toward a better world since these kids do not only learn about environmental care, but they also acknowledge that there are people who are working hard to build a better future.

On Friday we had to do Johari window to get to know ourselves but unfortunately schools were close due to a new Influenza virus. This virus seems to be very deadly therefore the Mexican government has cancelled all classes from schools in Mexico City. I hope the situation gets better soon.
---
月曜日には友人の二つのブログをチェックしました。
このブログはとても面白いし新しいクラスの見方を見ましたし、たくさん経験あったし。
今まで、皆さん有難うございます、書いてくれて、よんでくれて　有難う。続けって下さい　＾＿＾
それでは、
水曜日には小学校に行きました。私たちの目的は小学校の学生には大自然を守らなきゃならない気分を作る手伝った。
大自然を守る為にリサイクルをしなきゃならないと言いました。　私たちのクラスには学生はすごく頭いいんだ、だから、一時間に全部教えました。
この服務はいいと思う、学生には大自然を守る方を習ったし、私たちは大自然を頑張る分かると思う、だからこそ未来には学生がんばるかも知れません。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
金曜日にはJohari窓をしなきゃならないけど新しいインフルエンザ病毒現れただから学校を行けませんでした。
この病毒はすごく悪いとおもう、この場合良いになる祈ります。。。

---
En esta semana evalué dos blogs de mis compañeros que resultaron ser muy interesantes ya que me brindaron una nueva perspectiva de la clase. Por otra parte en esta entrada, déjenme agradecerles a las personas que hayan puesto comentarios y/o leído mi blog.

El miércoles yo y otras cuatro personas fuimos a la escuela villada a enseñarle a alumnos del sexto grado la importancia del reciclado y como pueden ayudar a la naturaleza reciclando los diferentes materiales tales como vidrio, papel y aluminio. Después de terminar el taller me quede sorprendido porque durante el transcurso del taller, los alumnos nos pusieron mucha atención y participaron mucho. Desde mi perspectiva pienso que esta ayuda que le estamos prestando a la sociedad es de gran ayuda porque estos niños no solamente están aprendiendo a cómo cuidar su medio ambiente sino que también ven nuestro esfuerzo por tratar de mejorar las condiciones de vida del mundo y esperemos que en un futuro hagan lo mismo.

El viernes teníamos que hacer la ventana de Johari pero desafortunadamente todas las actividades de las escuelas del estado de México estaban suspendidas por el nuevo virus de la fiebre porcina. Este virus parece que es muy maligno por lo que les recomiendo a todos que tomen las prevenciones necesarias. Esperemos que esta situación mejore en los próximos días.

Summary 3

In this period I have learned a lot of stuff
Some things that I like to share:
1. We must not only do our best, we need to know what to do and then do it.
2. The communication is the best way to transmit our knowledge so it is important that we develop this important skill.
3. If we want to change a behavior we must first find the source of the problem and then try to inspire change building a complete mental map of the problem and the solution. Verbal persuasion is the key for most of the problems.

So far I liked most of the activities that we have done in class, and I found many of the videos inspiring.
My team and I have gone one time to school to talk to the kids about the environment and how we are negatively affecting it. The last time that we went, the teacher was really glad that we did so; I think the kids learned something useful. From now on, we must try to give our best so one day the human race understands the problem.
A few days ago, I was reading news from 2007 that said that 45% of all the forest in the world has gone away. Isn’t this outrageous? The human race has stayed in earth for just a little bit of time, and we have finished with 45% of our forests?!!! What is the expectation? In the next let’s say 20 years would we only have 10% left? I think that we must do something fast, before is too late.
I think that this class is awesome since it makes us more “human” and I hope that you that are reading this blog find something useful in it.

14th week - Presentations

In this week my team and I gave the first presentation of solidarity. Our character was Alfonso Carmona a church father of the church “Señor de la Misericordia”. I think that we were a little bit nervous talking about him because we did not have enough information about him. The activity that my team though was good, at the beginning I tried to make a game like the one of the farming but after thinking for a while I decided not to do so, because it would take too much time ( I am glad that I didn’t do that game).

There are some important facts to point out
1. Next time that I am in a presentation, I most know more about the character
2. I most give myself more time to finish what I have to do and practice it.

An interesting fact is that throughout the course we have been doing different activities, and so far in the presentations every team made one o two activities for the class.
I think that the presentations of the other teams as well as ours were well done but nevertheless were not perfect thus everyone has a chance to do better next time ^^

13th week- Semana Santa

In this week I didn’t do too much really since it was spring break, or as we call it in Mexico “Semana Santa”.

I went to Monterrey the whole week. I had some fun visiting family and I liked to walk at night, stare at the stars, chat with family members and go to the movies. Too bad the break is over, and now we must go back to school -_-;;

I remembered that we had to try to write our dreams for “Johari window” and so I did. Overall I told myself to re-remember my dreams first and then write them, and I had a grasp of a couple of dreams so I wrote them down.

Next week we must return to school, see ya everyone in school ^^

12th Week- War

The people that went for community service to “a roof for my country” have returned.
We learned from them that.
1. They worked in teamwork to help this people and they seem to be very united.
2. The people seem to be happy and they helped in the construction.
3. They were really kind and offer them food.
4. They show lots of gratitude.

I think that this project is a really good idea since these people who did not have a house before now have one and their life condition will dramatically increase. As for my peers, they were trying to give their best to build these houses and I think that they learned a lot from this experience.

The other activity that we did was the construction of the tallest tower
The class was divided into 3 teams who had the following instructions in a card
*Build the biggest tower with plastic cups and u cannot share this card
And the specific instructions were
1. Do not use violence
2. Nothing
3. You can steal and destroy


I was in the second team and at the beginning of the game we notice that the third team was unfair. When I saw this behavior I immediately started to help the first team out and told my teammates to do the same. They didn’t do the same for quite some time until they finally understood that we had the same porpoise and that we must share resources.
Good things that I noted
1. The violence that was presented was not too severe
2. At the end we had a union with the first team
Bad things
1. Violence was presented
2. There was not a global good negotiation
3. The union of our team with the other team did not happen until almost the very end
Some interesting stuff
1. As some countries do, we started to build human and object barriers so our “enemies” had a hard time going through.

If the union would have been faster, perhaps I could of have a chance to look at the whole picture and then make a smarter move. The things that block me from doing so is that I thought of the third team as my “enemy” and the union of both teams did not happen fast enough. Therefore I never had a chance to look at the “whole” picture.

11th week- The Artistic Week

This week we did a painting. I was given the instructions to tell my partner to draw a painting by using purely geometric shapes. My partner could not look at my painting and I couldn’t look at my partners painting. I think that overall we did a good job because we finished in time and the drawing was not too far away from the original but I feel that my partner did not feel the same way. I must admit that the communication was not outstanding but good communication occurs when both parties communicate well. I think that we must not feel bad when we do our best to do something, if the outcome is not what he hope for then we can learn from that experience and grow stronger.

The second part had to do with orange negotiations. Basically in this game two people wanted to have at least 10 tons of oranges but a farmer only had 15 tons. They needed this amount of food in their business. In my team we didn’t want to talk about what did we needed them for since we were supposed to be rivals and instead try to fool each other by giving imprecise data. At the end we didn’t figure out that we wanted the oranges for different purposes and that we could both have what we wanted. I learn from this experience that we must pay more attention of what we need the stuff for and if a problem arises we must try to solve our needs first.

10th week

This week was outstanding. My friend Sokwhan came from Laramie Wyoming Colorado to visit me and my brother during his spring break. I really enjoyed the time he stayed since we played a lot of games and went to many places like “Ixtapan de la sal”. The only thing that I hope is that he enjoyed it too since we didn’t have vacations thus we came to school three out of the seven days.
Now, as for the class...

This week we played the game of Farming. The class got divided into five teams and we had to simulate farming for our town. The only risk of this game is that if a team didn’t farm enough food for two periods then they would disappear. The farming that we did could either be during a dry or humid year depending on luck. During the playtime there could be some natural disasters and some outside help.
I won’t tell all the details of the game but the best solution of the game (probability wise) counting all the restrictions is
7 of Yucca, 1 of wheat and 2 of beans every year.
Except if you knew the weather was going to be humid in which you would plant
7 of Beet, 1 corn and 2 potatoes.
And the teams should always try to get 251 or 501 and help other team to get to a production of 501. Note: 501 is the most stable position out of all. E.g. if a team gets 351, that team should gain 200 or give 100 to maximize the production of everyone.
Ok, I think I went a little too far into optimization ^^,
I notice one important behavior though. All the teams were helping each other so that no one dies and the team that had advantage knowing in advance that they will always have humid years helped other teams.

This week we also watched Live 8. I really felt impress by their work. We are talking about famous artist working together to improve the conditions in Africa throughout the world. I didn’t even know that such an event existed in the first place and after watching part of the video I notice that a lot of people are trying to improve Africans life condition. I think that we should do similar events in México and try to change the culture to a giving culture.

9th week

During this period we evaluated ourselves as a team and as a group. Overall I think that we did a good job since we tried our best.
By evaluating we
1. “Saw” the perspective of our peers in various activities throughout the month.
2. Found some very interesting experiences and new ideas.
3. Build up more trust.
4. Find the ideas that the whole class might share and which ones are personal.
I must say that although I haven’t done everything that I had projected since the beginning of the class period, I might have changed just a little bit.
I hope the class keeps going as it is. Out of all the humanities classes (like 7 so far), this is the only one that is worthy. Thanks you Luis Gerardo, teammates, everyone else in the class and you for reading this post.

Summary 2

This is the point were I start to become aware of the situation, and where I start to think that a change must be made in order to make this world, a better world (or at least not worst). Throughout this month I have learned some important facts about human life conditions and the problems of the earth (mainly us).

Some important ideas that I learned:

It feels good to help other people, perhaps this power is the fuel for some people to truly keep helping others. There is a problem though. If you help someone, the person or people that one is helping need to know exactly what we are going to do and for how long. Furthermore, if we are doing a project, this project better be sustainable or else people may feel awkward after a failure thus distrusting any further attempt to help them.

I learned that the system or the society that we live in may not always be as fair as I thought it was because sometimes it could be misleading and/or partial. For example, wealth is not distributed well enough in the world, and some people that really try to be successful, fail because they don’t have enough resources.

I think that above these problems of equality and wealth distribution, the greatest problem that we face nowadays is the destruction of the world and the consumption of natural resources. I think that these problems arise from other two problems which are:
Overpopulation: We have had an overwhelming amount of natural resources in the past century thus it seemed as if the world could really support us all. This problem is enlarged with the ignorance of some people that are not aware of the situation or that simply do nothing about it.
Economy driven society: We no longer care about the care of the world. Instead we seem to care more about the economy. This incorrect idea that we have might be a product of our minds since we think that we are disconnected from nature and we live on an artificial world made by mankind.
To be able to overcome these problems, the society most change the way it thinks. For the time being, we could help by teaching our awareness to other people.

I don’t want to think that we will become aware of the earth’s problems when it’s too late, but it might happen. As an example, when we played the world resource simulation game (with the newspapers), we realize that we were in great trouble only when we stared at the floor (after being told to do so) and saw what had happen to all of our resources. I think that the movie 11th hour documentary clearly shows that there is a problem thus more people need to watch it in order to become aware of the situation.

Conclusion
I think that I have learned a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about. I also started to become aware of some of the problems that we face today, while doing fun activities in class and writing in this forum.

After thinking for a while, I have decided that while I am in Luis Gerardo class, I will teach kids and adults of what we should do to protect our home (the earth). Thanks Luis Gerardo for everything ^^.

8th week

In this week we played two fun games. The one that I liked the most is: The Climate Change Game .

In this game I reached level 10 with good popularity and great environmental care.
What I learned from this exercise is that if we really try to help the nature, we indeed can, will is the only power that is needed. I think that this game was just way too easy because we knew how things were going to behave, but the reality is that systems tend to be more stochastic and the deterministic behavior is hard to measure. Still it was fun and now I know that we should try to be less destructive.

In this week, we also watched the 11th hour movie that deals with the destructive nature of human kind. This movie literally make us open our eyes to “see” that we are relatively a new species but we have caused so much destruction by selfishness thus if we continue with this madness we will eventually destroy ourselves.





I agree with most of the information that is present in this documentary because everything is based on evidence and scientific research. Most of our actions nowadays are economic driven thus we are part of a materialistic society that keeps destroying the world by polluting the earth, changing the climate, deforesting the forest and taking away too many natural resources. Also the human population keeps increasing exponentially because we are using non-renewable resources of energy so the problems of resources will become more and more evident as times goes by.

I think we should change the way we look at the world. The world should not be viewed as an infinite source of resources; instead we should try to live in harmony with nature. It will be too dangerous to corrupt the ecosystem because it gives us (for free) a lot of things that we need like fresh air, food, etc. The problem is that we generally take these benefits for granted hence putting at risk our own existence.

7th week

Resource world Simulation Game
In this game, every student grabbed a piece of paper and placed it on the floor. After doing so, we had to wonder around for some time while the teacher removed some of them. When he made the sign of “stop”, we had no choice but to step on a piece of newspaper.
The newspaper represented the resources of the earth (every turn there would be less resources).
The behavior was as follows
1. Everyone started the game without sharing and they try to find their own piece of newspaper.
2. When there was like 70% of the resources left, everyone started to believe that sharing was a good idea.
3. When we had like 30% of the resources left, everyone started to bring the resources together (pieces of paper) in a false attempt to stop the removal of the resources
4. When we had less than 15% of the resources we stared to share massively in order to continue playing the game.
5. After a while, there was just one piece of newspaper to share among thirty people or so. This time we knew that it was not possible to share it together; therefore we decided to split the resources in parts, so we could still land on a piece of paper.

After playing this game I realized that this pattern is very similar to the pattern that we as humans do to the earth. After we finished the game, Luis Gerardo told us to look at the floor. When we did so, there was nothing but destruction. All the resources that we had at the beginning were all gone and there were just some fragments of what was there before. I think that this is very similar to what is happening today to the earth. Every day, there are more humans, more pollution and fewer resources in the earth.

Sixth week

In this week we participated in two exercises that where fun and interesting. For the former we watch a video dealing with the poor water conditions in Ayole and the efforts that were made to fix successfully this problem. For the latter we played a fun game that had to do with life. In this section I will focus more on the thoughts that I had on the game rather than those of the movie.

In the game we made teams of four people, we randomly (or at least that’s what I think) received a character (photograph of a kid that had a red or blue frame). The game was full of traps, simulating difficulties in life that a person may or may not have throughout his life. The characters that had blue frames always succeeded to avoid any penalty when they landed on these spots, while the red ones where not so lucky (no one except the teacher was aware of this partiality). At the beginning of the game the professor told us that we were going to play this fun game and that the winner will receive one additional point in the grading scale while the looser will loose one.

Since part of our grade was at jeopardy, teams started to behave aggressively and for a moment it seemed as if each other miseries were other people happiness (for some people at least). At the end of the game the majority stated that the game was not fair but I get the feeling that they formulated that decision from empathy without truly judging the system.

In my case, I was in a handicapped team that lost against the other five teams. When asked whether the game was fair or not, I said that the game was fair because:
1. Everyone played under the same rules, meaning that they had the same possibility of receiving a good character or a handicapped one. Furthermore, we tossed a dice throughout the game thus we had a probability of 1/6 of winning and one of 1/6 of loosing the game.
2. We never disagree at the beginning or throughout the game that the system was unfair or that gambling part of our grades was not correct.

After thinking for a while I think the professor was trying to create a cognitive dissonance in the class, in addition, by jeopardizing a small portion of our grades some people may have internalized an attitude. But how good did it work? For people that stated that the game was not fair the empathy and some other feelings were greater at the end, but they didn’t really do anything to stop it meanwhile (thus accepting the reality). If they were playing the real game, this situation might generate even more cognitive dissonance, furthermore with little or not remuneration people might internalize the attitude deeper thus more people will be convinced that this game was fair.

Was my decision correct? Not really, while thinking of this, I missed part of the delusion.
1. We were not given an option at the beginning of the game whether we wanted to play it or not.
2. We were not given an option to quit the game
3. Our grades should be something we earn, not something left to luck.
After some thought, I got to the conclusion that this game was not as fair as I thought in that moment because I was missing these fundamental ideas. I also don’t think that it was completely unfair since, although not given the choice, I had the right to refuse to continue playing the game.

Then, what should I have done, without affecting the dynamics of the exercise? First of all I should have paid more attention to the pattern and the fact that our grades should not be left to luck, instead of thinking of winning or loosing, the probabilities behind them and the fate of our character. After doing this, I should have stood up when it was our turn (especially when we were not winning nor loosing), and claim that the game was not fair thus stepping away from it. (At this point I don’t think the professor would question my decision because it could jeopardize the dynamics of the exercise thus letting me out after unsuccessful tries to get me back in). Although this may not be the best way to deal with the game, I think its elegant and it wouldn’t break with the dynamics of the game ^^;;

After all the meditation, I think that this game was fun and it really made us “see” that the world is unfair and sometimes we must question the system and the society we live in.

Fifth week

This week was very interesting. On Tuesday our class played a fun game where half of the class had to walk blindfolded and the other half had to guide them (teams of two), then we interchanged roles. I don’t really know the name for it, but let’s call it “blind trust”. For the first part we were instructed to guide our partners to walk to a nearby lake (100m + 50m of stairs, 150m) pretending that they where the most precious thing in life. When we changed roles the other teammates where instructed to do whatever they wanted to (the blindfolded people did not know).

For the first part I felt that I was giving protection and that the responsibility of my partner was on my shoulder. While I was walking I felt somehow happy and powerful. That feeling was great and perhaps that is the most powerful charm for helping other people out, Satisfaction!

For the second part my partner started walking me around, but for no apparent reason my partner left me without saying a word. I was thinking that perhaps my partner had to do something but was to shy to say anything. Then all of a sudden someone grabbed my arm and made me run for no reason. Before this event, I was expecting some kind of unexpected situation because it wouldn’t make sense for the teacher to tell them to be kind to us. Although I don’t know for sure, I’m positive that the person that made me run was not my original partner. Since I felt the texture of the ground, my hearing increased and I remembered the scenery I could tell where we where with a precision of 5 to 15 meters of error even though we were running. Since this person did not bring me to far places, he/she had to be from our class thus I started trusting him and started running around at the same pace. After this, this person left me too.

Then a third person made me walk around this area. I think that he just wanted to have some fun bringing me to difficult places and at the end leaving me nearby another blindfolded person. Although the teacher told them that they could do anything (without me knowing), this person cared when I was about to crash. -_-;;

After we finish this exercise we returned to the class and discussed. I think that what we can get out of this experiment/game is that helping other people feels well. We must also remember that it is always a good idea to let people (who are receiving help) know how much time are we going to expend with them so when we leave (if we do), they don’t feel abandoned.

Another thing that I learned is that the majority, if we are given the freedom to do something, we won’t question if that action is right or wrong and instead, we tend to do what everyone else is doing. In my case I think that it is always better to question our actions and think about the situation, we must not rely on our rights/privileges or on our limitations.

Summary 1

After thinking for a while I have decided that I must do the following
1. Be more efficient in what I do.
2. Give myself some free time.
3. Watch more news in order to notice important events
4. Prepare for the future
5. Help my family and the community.

I have learned that I must do things that I really like so I can be passionate about it and follow it till the end. I must think about the future and what kind of person do I really want to be.

I have found out that I have a mature consciousness but I still want to work forward, in order to be a better person. I will also try to work harder in order to get out of a laziness state and start being more productive.

In these four weeks I have found out that there are more people than what I thought trying to make a positive change to the world. For a long time I have thought that by working hard and helping the economy grow, the average living will also raise, although this is not necessarily false, doing something for the community also, might bring better results since we must work and live as a society.
I think that the main problem is generated in the education system.

I think that the ideal education system for Mexico would be.
1. Make more schools so more people get education.
2. Have more vacations and free time.
3. Let students progress in the education systems depending on their abilities (faster, normal or slower)
4. Pursue the ability of problem solving instead of memorization.
5. Inspire the kids in their studies and for the care of the common good.

I think that my social work this semester will be focused in giving classes to people so they can become prepare and start changing Mexico. I will keep in mind some of the points that I mentioned above, hopefully the education system in the future will move toward this approach.

Fourth week

This week we thought about what might be some reasons for the poverty in Mexico.
Some of the factors that were listed were.
1. Poor education and lack of knowledge in poor communities
2. Government since it just gives away money to poor people
3. Lack of job opportunities
4. Natural Resources.
5. Desire to succeed.

From these factors some people think that many poor people have desired to succeed and I agree with them, but I think that in average there are less poor people that really do something to succeed thus they keep doing what they have been doing for long time.
Why do many poor people have lots of children, even though they are poor? Why do some poor people become middle class or even rich if they try? I think that key is “will” and that we should instead inspire this will and open opportunities in poor towns than giving away money.

A nice question was brought up by the teacher,
What still is the reason for not doing community service?
In my case I have done some community service once in a while and the main reason for not doing it now is that I don’t really have time since I’m at school taking the ridiculous amount of 56 credits. Why do we need so much work? If anyone wants to do this then they will have to jeopardize not the fun stuff, but their base of their studies. In the past I haven’t done a lot of things for myself because I had to study, therefore I think that the education system in Mexico is much harder than the US thus it really needs to be modified.

Third week

We watched a video about the regular life of a human being. This video was full of facts about the average distance we will walk in our lives, how many litters of water we will drink, how much dead skin it would fall out of our bodies etc. In general this video told us the fact of how complex a human life could be from an outsider’s perspective. Having this is mind we should appreciate life more.

I also did a self conscious exam that tried to evaluate me in different aspects related to my own personal growth. Although I do not fully agree with some of the questions that were asked I ended up being in a mature level of consciousness as some of the students in my class. My rational rating was surprisingly lower that what I had expected but this might be due to some ambiguities in some questions.

Furthermore we watched a section of the movie “Lion King”. Luckily enough I found that part of the movie shared on internet, so I decided to reference it here at the bottom of this post. I found this clip to be inspiring because Simba finds out that he could be a lot more that what he actually is right now, and that he must do what he has to do.

Second week

We started watching a video that made us “see” the reality of some communities in Mexico. In here, a group of people were trying to search for a way to bring water to the community of Santa Maria. This clip was interesting because a lot of the people of the community wanted to have a bright future so they joined the project to help build a dam. In the first try, what they thought it would work, failed, but without blaming anyone they tried again but this time in a more organized manner. I think that the most amazing fact out of this is that if people really want to change their living conditions they can and in some of the cases they just need a little help to make a positive change.

The other set of videos that we watch had to do with Ryan’s well. When Ryan was six years old, his teacher told him that they could make a difference in the world and that in that moment lots of people in Africa where dying. This conversation inspired Ryan to build a well in order to bring water to these people. I really think that Ryan actions were correct and he can inspire us so we can also make a positive change in the world.

Here is a documentary video of Ryan.

First Week

My class has approximately 25 members from different majors. In the first week our teacher made us introduce ourselves and we played some fun games in order to remember everyone name. The interesting thing is that even though they were interesting and we could learn from them if we really wanted to, we instead raced each other.

Why did we do this? I don’t really know the reason for other people but for me since I’m bad at remembering names, I didn’t want to go in front and call some random person’s name since I barely remembered some of them. Another important factor is that I tend to over-think stuff in these kinds of scenarios thus missing the purpose of the exercise...

Even though I think that I failed this exercise of remembering names, the most important thing is that I got to know myself a little bit better. Later on we shared what we like to do and what we expect from the class in a virtual platform called BlackBoard (BB) thus we got to know each other better.

Furthermore we made teams of three and four people and talked about ourselves. In my case the team is made up of three members.