Decision Making

     Our class activity on decision making that we completed on Wednesday was based on the results of Exam #1. We were proposed by our professor to make a treatment of the Exam. Our group had around 30 mins in use to come with a mutual decision.
     In the beginning it was a real chaos. The decision making process was frustrating because we did not have  leaders, and students were interrupting each other and yelling to be heard. People behaved different during decision making conflict. I noticed that some students tried to avoid participating, and withdrew from the decision making process because they thought that there was "no chance of winning" for them. Some students competed to win and they tried to persuade that their solution is the best and they behaived inappropriate and even agressive. Personally, I tried to compromise during our class activity and strived "to get something" from the process. I knew that I wanted our exam to be curved and this was  proposed by the majority of students.  I think that compromising  method is the best method during decision making conflict because all members are equal and everybody is heard.
     However, to handle the conflict in our decision making process and get more desirable result sooner and with less conflict, I could have chosen the following ways:
     1) I could have chosen only two leaders who would stay in the front of the classroom and organize everybody ( leader # 1 would listen each student's suggestion and  leader # 2 would write all possible proposals.
     2) When each student was heard and we had all options written we could have voted for every single proposal.
     I think that having two leaders (not around 10 people in the front of the classroom who were overyelling each other) will be more efficient and the process of decision making will be more organized because each student will have the opportunity to be heard.

An Egg-Cellent Way to Plan.

Our plan as a team was to plan, design, and build an “egg-protection” device of our own engineering following the project rules.

RULES:

Materials:  1 raw egg, 8 straws and 2 feet of masking tape

Execution Time:  10 MINUTES

Process:  We drop our egg in its device from a height of 10 feet.  The egg must not break. 

Design Requirements:  The egg shell MUST be at least 50% visible in our design.

     Our first step in the planning process was to define our goals and objectives. We divided our responsibilities and within 10 mins our group completed the following:

1)      One member of our team wrote our team members’  names on a sheet of paper

2)      Another member identified the name of our egg

3)      I drew the design for our final contraption

4)      All together we built our planned design

5)      Kristina brought both, our paper and the egg, to the front of the room before the time was up.

    Step 2: we determined our current status compared to our objectives:  we identified resources (one raw egg, 8 straws and 2 feet of masking tape). In addition, we identified each group member’s strengths that work in our favor and each member weaknesses that can hold us back and as a result we applied each member skills accordingly.

    Step 3: we developed promises and several alternative strategies (primarily we had three different strategies and three different designs). We evaluated the alternatives to access strengths and weaknesses of each. Finally we came up with the final plan and design.

     Step 4: we analyzed the alternatives and made a tactical plan. We chose the alternative most likely to accomplish our objectives. In addition, we allocated jobs and roles. Each group member was participating: one was holding the egg, another one was cutting the straws, the third one was cutting the tape and etc.

     Step 5: we implemented the plan and, as I mentioned above, all of us were participating and the roles were clear allocated.

 However, we didn’t really have enough time to evaluate the results and take any corrective actions and, in addition, we didn’t have a real leader. That’s why probably our plan failed. We could have been more effective and successful if we had more time and a real leader.

Culture Shocks

     Since I am not a native born American, I was fascinated by too many new cultures when I arrived to US five years ago. I found many unusual and different culture shocks in New York and outside the City. It was time for me full of observations and new discoveries. For example, when I was invited to Birthday Party a week later since I arrived to US, I found out that this is a bad luck when you give somebody as a gift odd number of flowers; however, in our country it was a good sign.  It was unusual for me to celebrate Baby Shower, for instance, before baby is born, because in our country this is a bad sign. A new culture shock was for me a swiping metro card in the busses. In our country we do not swipe a card we just show it to a controller, a person who checks bus cards. In case if you don’t have a bus card you can pay cash to controller inside of the bus. The biggest shocks for me were following features:

a)      Paying taxes when you buy something?????!!!!!! We don’t do that in our country.

b)      Amish people in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania.  I was shocked the way these people live without technology, cars, electricity. It is a sin for them to take a picture of them that’s why we were told to put away all our cameras and phones.

     I found too many different cultures that differ from my own in this country and can talk about that days and nights. I appreciated my American friends who taught me how to adopt to this country. My adaptation was very fast and now I know what to expect in the most situations; however, I am still learning new things almost every day.