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.