A Sense of Self

The goal of students is often to do well in courses, where performance is measured by letter grade. In cases where students are enrolled in many courses, it becomes more difficult to be focused on each individual course. Grades are meant to act as metrics for gauging student understanding, but does not always accomplish its goal. Group projects have varying dynamics; some of which promote gift exchange, while others condone opportunism. I have not been in many groups where other members were averse to contributing to the group’s success, but when it did happen, the situation was far from desirable. At least partially, the amount of effective teamwork that occurs in a group project is dependent upon the rules for the assignment and the punishment(s) for poor performance/engagement.  David Brooks’ “The Power of Altruism” is complicated when modeling academic group behavior. When considering the conditions of college classes and perceived life after school, where good grades lead to better job/grad school opportunities, the threat of opportunism is too strong for there not to be punishment for lack of contribution. The issue with punishing someone is determining where to draw the line between slacking and participation.

Throughout this post, I will discuss four, unique group project situations. The project is a group paper, like the one that we have been assigned.  The class has 30 students. Each group has three students. Two of the groups have a non-participating/poorly participating group member, who I will call a BAD APPLE. Two of the groups have specialized grading for each member. These four cases are oversimplified, and do not contain all of the possible outcomes, since participation is hard to evaluate. In many situations, I would imagine it is an inefficient use of time to try to determine who contributed to what and how much. Also, to simplify the table, each group with a BAD APPLE only has one, whereas in real life there is no limit. This model also assumes that BAD APPLES have faith in the other group members to get the assignment completed.

Case 1: Everyone gets the same grade. Everyone participates.

Case 2: Everyone gets the same grade. Some groups have a BAD APPLE.

Case 3: Each member gets a specialized grade. Everyone participates.

Case 4: Each member gets a specialized grade. Some groups have a BAD APPLE.

Same Grade. No bad apple.	Same Grade. BAD APPLE
Specialized Grade. No bad apple.	Specialized Grade. BAD APPLE.

Thought I have never graded anything in a university setting, I assume Case 1 is the easiest to grade, because in this case, only ten projects need grading. The students do not mind that they are receiving the same grade as their group members because everyone contributes. The students perform better because they collaborate and form a more cohesive paper. This is not to say that the groups are satisfied with their grades, but instead that they believe that it was okay to grade them as a group. This represents an ideal equilibrium, where both the professor and student are better off.

Case 2 describes a situation where the students who wants to do well in the course the most will complete the assignment. The fully-participating group members must make up for the less active member, broadening the division of labor, and creating a poorer paper than groups who did not have a BAD APPLE. The grader still has ten projects. The students may be disgruntled, which may lead to poorer evals. This situation is unlikely.

Case 3 describes a waste of the professor’s time, but it could also lead to a waste of time for the students. Specialized grading requires a means to evaluate the contribution of each group member, which is more trouble than it’s worth in this scenario, encouraging students to spend their time inefficiently. Also, following the idea of “The Power of Altruism,” students may act selfishly, and focus on their own portion of the paper, as opposed to making it cohesive, lowering the quality of the assignment.

Case 4 describes a catch all scenario, where those who slack are caught, and those that perform well are rewarded. The professor is worse off since they have to grade 30 students on 10 assignments. The students are possibly worse off if they act selfishly, which, following “The Power of Altruism,” is expected. 

Major Decisions

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “80% of students in the United States end up changing their major at least once.” Also, “on average, college students change their major at least three times over the course of their college career. I thought I was a part of the 20% minority that stuck to their initial major. In retrospect, I realize this was not the only factor that affected my decision to come to U of I as a Chemistry major who was trying to transfer into Chemical Engineering. Not only did I switch out of Chemistry, but I ended up switching to General Studies, then to Economics. I imagine that other students who change their majors go through similar experiences as it relates to their collegiate journey.

I am from New Jersey, so Illinois is a long way from home. I did not want to go to college around where I grew up, because I thought that it would limit my potential growth. I figured that I would naturally hang around people that I was comfortable with, or were comfortable with me, so I would be distracted from my studies. Attending a university where I would be forced to meet new people did not help me focus, as I thought it would, but it did force me to exit my comfort zone.

My parents had, and still have, the ultimate power in where/if I go to college, especially at a relatively expensive school. I had the illusion of choice, which prompted me to, at times, strategically misrepresent my preferences. Deep down, I had reservations regarding what major I would have. If I could go back, I would have tried to figure out what career path I wanted, as opposed to choosing a major based upon which subjects I excelled at in school.

Though I did not always think about it this way, many of my decisions regarding college were morally hazardous. I was afraid to say that I did not know what I wanted to do; that was the truth, but I did not want to stay home for a semester. All of my friends were going to school. My parents always expected me to go into college the fall after I graduated from high school. I never felt like I had much of a choice regarding my future. Also, I knew that ultimately my parents held all of the cards, which in this case manifested as dollars, so it was their choice; I just had to convince them that going far away aligned with their priorities. Countless times they asked me if I was sure that Chemical Engineering was what I wanted to do, but I could not show that I would sometimes waiver in what major I chose. I assumed that they would have discredited my interest and made me go to school somewhere cheaper and closer, since I was not absolutely sure.

I thought I wanted to do Chemical Engineering, because I researched new technologies in my spare time and I wanted to bring new tech into the classroom, sports, and day to day life. Also, I wanted to make a lot of money, and I knew that STEM fields would get me that. I didn’t think that my parents would be okay with me not choosing a major outside of STEM, presumably because they wanted me to be financially well off. U of I has a renowned Chemical Science program and it was far away, which aligned with my interests.

            My father works in IT, and he has a lot of passion for what he does, so I figured computer science would be interesting to everyone. Also, I just really did not want to transfer. I did not do well after my first year, and I grew to hate the way Chemistry was taught, so I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps in the Fall of my Sophomore year. Correspondingly, I transferred into LAS-General Studies so I did not have to pay the extra fees that Chemistry majors do. I would still be able to get what I want in going to school out of state, but also my parents approved of U of I’s STEM programs, so I had their blessing. After taking only one CS class, I learned that it was not for me, and that my happiness was most important in my career. I didn’t want to hate my life, even if it meant sacrificing future income.

            The second semester of my sophomore, I had chosen Economics instead, because I could finish the major in 5 semesters, and I figured I could still be on the cutting edge of technology, even if it was in a different way. I didn’t know that much about the major, aside from 103 which I thoroughly enjoyed; it was a leap of faith. If I could go back, I would have coupled Econ with English or Political Science. It’s never too late to educate oneself, but I have a 4-year deadline to graduate.

Even though I did better and better academically each semester, I found myself having to prove that I was where I needed to be in my life. I cannot quite explain this intuition, in order to follow my hunch, I had to pander toward my parents’ interests to convince them that this was right for me. There was no way they would accept my “intuition,” which led to me never telling the truth about why I wanted to stay at U of I.

** ** ** ** **

            In this post, I wanted to work on telling a story that could be understood by other people. The point I was trying to get across is that sometimes it seems natural to misrepresent reality for what we want. I think I may have failed to connect the passages directly to the course. 

Mirror to the Past

Even though only two of them ended up being about sports, I thought to write about sports for just about every post. Sports organizations, especially from high school, are easy to analyze since they were some of my first experiences within organizations. From what I have read, other students tended to write, especially in older posts, about high school, presumably because they have already been thought about. Also, as a senior in college, I have already thought in depth about what happened. It’s easier for me to see what caused some of the issues that we ran into after time has passes.

Sports are often common experiences amongst people. Most people who I interact with have experiences with a high school sport, band, or club that competes against other schools. When people discuss jobs, or other organizations not associated with high school, they have to explain some of the inner workings of their positions, whereas with high school sports, we know that there is a coach (manager), other players (coworkers), and normally a clearly defined goal (winning). There exceptions to these rules; some teams may be more or less hierarchal or may have a plan to not lose, but these exceptions come with the aforementioned assumptions.

When explaining an organization that is unfamiliar with outside people, it’s difficult to choose what information is critical to their understanding of it. In other posts that I have read, I do not feel like I have enough information of the situation to connect with their experiences. In my post about my business venture, I found myself finding ways to make two sentences out of a concept that may take me three paragraphs. I would rather not write a thousand-word blog post, and I do not think my classmates would like to do the same. As far as my writing structure, I find it helpful to outline what I plan on writing about before I do it. Usually the outline is only about 100 words, but it helps get my thoughts in order and have a flow that another person can understand. When I do a brain dump, my points can get convoluted. I wrote countless papers and I am especially interested in Marxism in literature, so I tended to keep that hat on in my previous posts. Recently, I have been trying to link the prompts to classroom discussions and recent experiences within organizations.

Furthermore, I tend to write about the inefficiencies of past organizations, as opposed to efficiencies. I may just be seeing the glass as have empty, but at times, it seems like a waste to focus on the positives. In theory, it’s good to give the positive things and the negative things equal attention, because knowing both may yield a more objective interpretation of the organization. Also, most of my posts discuss instances of the problem of motivation. Different people are motivated by different things, and it is always a challenge to change my technique depending up the situation. In the moment, it is far more difficult to determine what will or won’t work than retrospectively.

 By incorporating the positives of organizational situations, readers will get a wider scope of the orgs I present. For example, on my basketball team, there was a time at the end of each Saturday practice for people to discuss problems that we were having. At times, conversations got heated, and even as a captain, I found myself frustrated and aggressively expressing my emotions. Our team had three captains, and I was the “nice one”, so when I got upset it seemed to mean a lot. Everything that players brought up did not get incorporated in our day to day operation, but at least everyone knew how everyone else felt. As a teenager, it taught me that I had to speak up when something bothered me, because otherwise it could go unaddressed and make me feel worse.

Most people that I see in class seem to be involved in at least one organization, and if they are not, I am sure they have feelings about UofI or Illinois politics. I would not mind a prompt where people discuss how the organizations that they are a part of affect their college experiences. 

Illinibucks Pay to Win

I am having a bit of difficulty determining how to answer this question, because the scope of the rules regarding the Illinibuck market vastly changes my approach. My intuition is telling me that the market is simpler if students cannot trade Illinibucks between each other. Since everyone is allotted the same amount of currency, the issue of unfairness between consumers is less apparent. For example, if students can trade Illinibucks between each other and they can be used for class registration, people who did not wish to use their Illinibucks could possibly trade them to their friends, who have more desired classes. This could lead to the “High School Class President” problem where more popular people have a larger Illinibuck pools, and correspondingly better access to the front of lines.

A possible remedy for this issue is for there to be a diminishing value of returns for Illinibuck expenditure, but this would make the market less free and it would not make it completely fair for less social students. The issue then becomes: Where should diminishing returns set in?

I do not think Illinibucks should be used to be able to move up in registration times, no matter the price, even if it is set by the university. If the price is too low, Illinibucks become less relevant. For high prices, students would only be able to move up in line for one or two classes. This encourages students to use their currency to be able to register into popular courses. In order to match demand, the price of registering early for the popular course would be close to the value of allotted Illinibucks. Without an auctioning system, time would still determine who got into the class, which is what I am assuming was the issue we were trying to be resolve.

Perhaps the Illinibuck system would be better suited for space reservations in the library during finals and moving up in line in dining halls. These cases have lower stakes than registration, but it would possibly be more convenient to use the currency than to not.
               During finals week, the UGL is a hotspot for study groups, which are always booked up a few weeks before finals, but there are not many limits on how many reservations a person can make. Also, as it stands, there is no way to reserve any of the smaller tables at the UGL. Illinibucks would be a way to limit the amount of reservations a person could make, but it would also be a vessel to institute a reservation system for each table in the library. It would be a time consuming task, and someone would have to be in charge of space reservation for the entire library, but it’s a possibility nonetheless. With an auction system, people who really feel like they need to study there have that availability guaranteed. There are other places for students to study, so this could also encourage students to find other places. Even still, fairness is a concern.

Some days, I am especially hungry, and if there were a system for moving ahead in line, I would use it to get ahead in dining hall lines. I spend a lot of time in lines waiting to eat, when I could be spending my time doing other things like procrastinate and study. Paying a flat rate to move ahead in line would get me past people who did not use their Illinibucks to move up, but I still would have to be behind those who did. There are not many places that I can think of, other than registering for classes, that require “standing” in line. From my experience with lines in college, they can be pretty avoidable.  

At first, I was confused by the question, but the application of this sort of decision is riddled with seemingly necessary rules and it is hard to plug up the loopholes. I’m still not sure that I answered the question the right way, but the prompt was thought-provoking. 

Make the Dream Work

This past summer I worked with a team in the iVenture Accelerator for student start-ups. In short, our business model was to sell books to parents and caretakers of children, between the ages of four and seven, to help facilitate dialogue about social identities, such as but not limited to race, sexual orientation, religion, and ability status. I wish I had read the last three assigned chapters before dabbling into entrepreneurship, since I would have been able to avoid problems that arose.

Our team was just one of twelve in our cohort, and we all shared a space in Research Park. It was expected that everyone in the iVenture program be at our space on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, as outlined in the first week. As a member of the program, I personally received $2,500 for the summer as a stipend and my team received up to $10,000 to use for pushing our business along.

For the first three or four weeks, everyone was there, unless they had a meeting with a possible investor or the doctor. In those circumstances, the absent person/team would make it known well in advance that they could not make it. I had assumed that the people in charge of the program wanted us to be there because seeing other people working on their projects around us was motivating. If that was the purpose, it worked because being around people working on their businesses helped network, but I also found it helpful to bounce ideas.

As it related to our team, we never had to worry about whether or not the other members were motivated. However, we had a few prior commitments that pulled our focuses away from pushing our project further along. For example, one of our members has a child, and because of that she couldn’t be in the office every day. My other partner and I understood that they had to take care of their daughter, but we went into the program expecting to have a full team in the office every day. Prior to the summer, we never signed a contract stating what days we would be available, but it was implied that we would all be there. In this situation, I am not sure if a contract would have made much of a difference because no matter what her daughter is most important to her. It’s understandable, but it undoubtedly made us less efficient as a team.

Though it was obvious that the reason why we were in the program was to get these connections, we did not communicate that to the greater collective, so it may have seemed like we were shirking since we were not visible. Directly, our presence does not affect their production, unless they wanted feedback, which was nearly every day. On one hand we felt bad since we couldn’t help more, but we weren’t contracted to be there by paper, nor was there any tangible punishment for not showing up. At times, we chose to stay home and work instead of walking 2 miles in the summer when First Street was under construction.

The latter end of second half of the program, our team met with publishers, graphic designers, and potential investors, so it was difficult to be in the office every other day. The process was new to our entire team, and I wish that we had more contacts early on, since we did not know if we were being charged fairly for goods/services. People tended to charge us much more when they knew that we were sponsored by the university compared to when they did not. Also, we were afraid to sign documents, because the price of a lawyer who was used to the language was out of our budget and we did not want to commit to what we could not afford, whether it be money or time. If I could go back, I would have educated myself on how the people I interacted with interact with other people. 

Was it worth it?

Since it was difficult to keep up the volleyball ruse, basketball was the sport that I had played throughout high school and almost in college. I find the decision I made to pursue a college trek centered around academia to be surprisingly wise, or fear-induced. The opportunities that I took, and still take, strongly correlate with the ideals of my parents.

          Retrospectively, I should have taken the opportunities I had been allotted to pursue a collegiate career in basketball, since I, relatively, had little to lose. My runway was long, and if I decided to transfer and take a 5- year path, I would still graduate at 22.

 In the beginning, basketball was only for fun. In some respects, it was a time and monetary investment to my parents, but I did not consciously let their wants influence my decisions. I still play for fun, and I wish I had been more willing to take risks on myself in an effort to play basketball professionally. Quotes often say that courageous, successful, strong people lay everything on the line for their dreams, but those quotes may just come from gamblers that got lucky.

 The marginal enjoyment that I would have reaped, with what knowledge I have about NCAA basketball, would have been way higher than what it was as a freshman in Chemistry trying to transfer into Chemical Engineering, who ultimately chose an entirely different path. I would have picked Economics as my major instead, because it seemed like an easier major. In one token, I would have been ahead academically, but I would not have the time to focus on school as much or join RSOs and become more involved in the university.

          Resumes are important. Even though I haven’t had any “real” jobs, I am sure that a strong one can give me the opportunity of at least an interview. The other day, I was having a conversation with a graduated U of I football player, who majored in RST, and is having a tough time finding employment. He touts his experience as a football player when he speaks with potential employers, but the sport has been his main focus for most of his life. I thought his case was rare, so I spoke with other graduated athletes and learned that they had similar experiences concerning employment. At first, I thought they were underemployed, but what exactly is the professional utility of athletics, outside of the realm of athletics?  

          When I decided that I wanted to take less risks concerning my career, I was either not well informed in the investment banking/ startup culture. With a startup, I could have my hands on a unicorn, but it is more likely that I fail. This past summer, I was in a startup accelerator, and I learned that VCs and Angel investors minimize risk while maximizing reward. Often, a route they take is by investing in companies that they are familiar with. In a sense, this is oxymoronic, because history of American capitalism hints that similar firms may compete and everyone will not last. In a sense, one may see these types of funders as playing the short game, regardless of the size of investment they give.

          From the information that I collected, I was led to believe that the opportunity cost of college athletics is not worth paying, as a student whose family could afford expensive tuition, especially if I ended up making less than the median salary of people in my respective major. I could have made it to the pros, but that is unlikely. From an early age, we are convinced by family and teachers that we can do anything and should follow our dreams, but following dreams tends to be impractical, especially when it comes to business and athletics. The two are alike in the sense of opportunity cost; low risk = low reward and high risk = high reward.

            

School System Efficiencies and Otherwise

Within every stage of my life, I have been a part of some organization, but I never took an active role in them until I got to high school. As a general member, I found, and still find it difficult to relate to the group as a whole, because there are so many different personalities and paradigms for making the organization’s actions successful. I learned to determine the size of organizations in relation to the time it meets. An organization that meets infrequently, but has 20 active members, may seem larger than another that has 40 active members but meets proportionately more.

I consider my high school sports team to be an organization in its own rite, and correspondingly I was a captain. For anonymity’s sake, the sport will be volleyball. As a perceived leader, I realized how much power people in managerial positions may not have. My responsibilities were to make sure everyone went to study hours, had rides to practice, and performed to their maximum potential, while also doing all of these things and being a good representative of the team and our school. I learned that some of my responsibilities were contradictory, because, depending upon a team composition, the difficulty of keeping everyone and myself perfectly in line varies from ease to impossibility.

Growing up, I thought volleyball captains were a step below coaches in terms of judicial power, but I found myself unable to force actions out of other players, unless they saw a benefit in doing so. For some members, that meant proof that what I was asking them to do worked and for others that meant I had to do it with them. I did not know how to motivate everyone to perform better. Furthermore, I could not cut players who did not do what I said, so when I asked my supervisors for assistance, I expected things to happen right away. Change did not happen right away, if at all, because they had to do their own situational analysis so I questioned the purpose of my position. How can organizations be successful if they move slowly in their actions? Are organizations, like high school sports teams, have a shorter long-run more successful, or just more rash and ineffective? High school volleyball acted as a microcosm in my own analysis of public schools in my state.

I find the system of secondary education to be especially interesting, because the quality of education is not across the state. As my membership as a high school senior came to a conclusion, I began finding the educational system to be inefficient to my needs, but also my classmates and societal progression. With a macro approach, in an efficient, consumer-minded society, the reason would be that some students will work best with jobs that do not require academic education. It could also mean that it is societally more efficient to choose what jobs people must take. However, there are ideological and moral issues with both of these philosophies which have intersections nonetheless. If students are able to specialize their educations earlier, assuming they do not change their desired profession, they will undoubtedly be more proficient, but instead they must participate in a school with a rigid academic structure that does not align with their preferred education.  Not only does this make the education system more efficient, but it also gives people with lower incomes, who are more likely to resort to criminal activities, an opportunity to participate in more societally productive activities. Then again, it’s nearly impossible to know if a student will change their minds and decide to do something else if they are exposed to a new field of study. If, to combat this, the government (organization) chose to choose what they studied, inevitably, some people would be forced to pursue what they would not, and without violent force, they would be more inefficient.

I believe that, before all else, we should prioritize making our education system more efficient.