Archive for year: 2014

With the hunnapu tribe Everyone worked together to redesign their roof while (wow cant remember his name haha) watched them weave while he slept. The tribe thinks he is self centered as well as not pulling his weight in the tribe He is now seemed as useless.

One person from each tribe had to participate in the challenge in which they played for comfort or nice fishing gear which was a massive award. Wes and Keith battled against each other (father vs. son) in which Keith actually had the upper hand until he dropped a tile and had to go back for another one. It was neck to neck even as the father caught right back up but Wes won for Coyopa. When Wes won, Keith showed great emotion for his son, and said how proud he was of him, which caused his son to cry because his father does not show his emotions for his son or at all which was nice to see. Just because they are fighting for the same thing, they can still remain bonded while still rooting for their team. For this loss, Josh and keith went to exile island which wes thought they would complement each other.
Coyopa picked the fishing gear that the other tribe left behind while the host questioned Jeremy what he thought about his wife getting eliminated and basically is now after John Rocker. Hunahpu now thinks Julie is a trader because they think she is going to stick up for her boyfriend when he is wrong.
Julie feels alone and is an obvious open target but her bf is the one who put her in a hard /difficult position.

While in exile island Keith and josh ate snails and actually had a great time together but with no spooning going on lol.
With the new fishing gear props were given to john rocker for catching catfish but the guys in the tribe have been throwing the girls under the bus such as baylor since she is considered the weakest link but they still think she can be used.

With the Immunity challenge, each pair really fought hard and played fast.
Hunahpu won for the third straight time in which Nataly called out john rocker for talking smack and tries to convince coyopa to go against him and vote him out. He said if Nataly was a man he would knock her teeth out. Which i thought went way to far and he should have apologized. Josh thinks its scary and unhelpful for the tribe that john looses his patience that quickly.

Baylor did not think his comments toward Natalie were not right at all and its beginning to change her perspective of him.
Girls and john want to blindside dale but really john wants to take out Baylor. Josh then makes a decision to take out john.
Jacqueline is now seeing shifting within the tribe and are starting different alliances and a lot of things are going on. “Going with the flow is hard with this tribe”-Baylor
Baylor got 2 votes
While john got 4 votes
John was eliminated which i am so glad. He was such a **** and did not work well with others, i also believe he was a homophobe and as well as a racist(i researched)
Especially when he got aggressive with Natalie.

This week I noticed something specifically with the Hunahpu tribe, wearing blue. I feel like this episode was full of conflict and high pressure, in the end Drew was, thankfully, voted out; a concept called groupthink mentioned in our book that essentially means the group is thinking way too hard about how to solve their issues that real solutions don’t seem as applicable. The Hunahpu tribe really showed symptoms of developing this problem. There were three aspects that really surfaced this episode which I aligned with our book; To develop groupthink the “group is highly cohesive…as a result members could discourage disagreement , or perceptions of rightness or their competence…”(187). The Hunahpu tribe has been trying to be alliance the whole time, at least the consensus was to try to be honest etc. However some of the team members overestimate how well their teammates get along and Drew completely has dubbed himself “King” by telling not asking everyone that they will vote Kelley out, which trying to tell people what to do gives them two options, to not fight or to fight. So people who are usually passive wouldn’t feel as comfortable speaking up as others willing to fight.

The blue team also has structural flaws that “…inhibit the flow of information…” meaning that because Drew thought that the girls created an alliance they didn’t use their perspectives when making decisions. All the boys thought they were the leader and essentially lost potential to pool from different experiences and knowledge banks as I call them. Lastly, the situation that these groups deal with is extremely volatile . Essentially because they are on TV, millions of people are watching them, their teammates are counting on them the stakes are unusually high and mistakes are more likely to occur. Members, like Keith made rash decisions because he thought Jeremy took the Idol before he could get to it first. He lost an ally and it could possibly have a critical chance of getting him kicked off.

I feel like there were also some symptoms that were expressed more individually mainly came from Drew, but also Jon and Dale. Drew had these symptoms which led to his vote out: invulnerability(he said if you want something done right you got to do it yourself), rationalization(no on else had the balls to ask a stupid question so I will), stereotyping outsiders(he said he didn’t trust the girls to make a good decision), pressure on dissent(when he try’s to force everyone to vote for Kelly and that’s it.). Others like Jon were under and illusion of unanimity thinking that everyone liked Drew because he did.  Lastly Dale expressed Self Censorship because he felt because he wasn’t in the same social group as the younger competitors he needed to agree with them and build some sort of trust otherwise he would get voted out. Even if he agrees with the group plan. He essentially censors himself from possibly giving the group another perspective or solving their issue.

This week’s episode of survivor was not too intense, everyone was relieved that John was voted off. Julie was a bit upset but she just shrugged it off because she knew she still had to be apart of the Hunahpu Tribe and keep her game face on.

There were really no problems going on, even when Jon beat his girlfriend Jaclyn which got her sent to Exile Island (he was confident that she could handle it), except when Tribe Coyopa was desperate to win something because Hunahpu kept winning.

Later on in the episode, Drew starts getting a little frustrated and just wants to win the whole competition already, so his plan is to get rid of all the girls because he thinks that they are bringing the tribe down. Then when Coyopa wins its first challenge, Hanuhpu started to think of who they should kick off the tribe. At first they weren’t too bummed, but once they started to hear Drew talk about his idea of kicking off the “useless” people, they all had different thoughts about him. Hanuhpu couldn’t really decide at first they wanted Julie to go because her loved one wasn’t even in the competition anymore and then they decided that Drew should be the one who leaves. Drew was being selfish, even though yes the whole game is to win money, but first you have to work together as a group and he didn’t really do that. In order to have a good working team or tribe, you must work together, think on the same level, support and help each other (even though you know one person will win this competition) and to cooperate and avoid pointing fingers because you are all in the competition together.

Julian started of Friday’s class by taking us through the process of constructing an outline for any type of paper we may have to write in any of our classes. I found his tips very useful, especially since I have a couple of papers coming up due pretty soon. I will most definitely use the outline he provided us with on my papers. After Julian’s presentation Jaimie had us broken up into groups and had stations set up that let us experience what it would be like to have different types of disabilities that we learned about in the readings. All of the different activities truly stressed the fact how much of a challenge even everyday activities can be for those people who do suffer from those specific disabilities. The two activities that truly stood out for me in a personal level was the activity of trying to read the colors and the wheelchair activity. The color activity came off as an easy one when I was reading the instructions, but when I actually tried to read the color that was inside of the word instead of reading the word itself was very challenging for me. It was crazy to see that something as simple as reading a color was so hard to do it that particular situation, it really made me feel for those who truly suffer from learning disabilities. Even I get frustrated at myself when I can’t seem to get an assignment, but then after time I end up understanding the material. I can only imagine how much harder it has to be for them, and the fact that it is not because they are any less smart than anyone else, it’s just because that certain disability does not allow them to process certain things the way they would like to. The other activity that also stood out to me was the wheelchair activity, although I did not spend as much time on the actual wheelchair, just looking at how my classmates struggled was enough to see how much of a struggle it may be for an individual who is on a wheelchair. At the end of the day we all got to walk away from that wheelchair, but they do not get that chance. It was also surprising to see that the actual university was not at all equipped for people in wheelchairs, and that is probably the case with not just many of the schools but just buildings in general. Although these activities might have made me a little depressed in a way I still really enjoyed being a part of them.

 

This week’s readings focused on Gender and Sexuality in higher education. I found both of these topics very interesting, especially the readings that had to do with gender. The topic of gender mainly focused on how the success rate and choice of continuing on to higher education is more commonly seen in women than in men. The readings made it clear that there is a very recognizable gender desegregation not only in the actual attendance but also in certain fields that students choose to major in. A couple of the readings focused on the gender desegregation in the STEM fields, which include: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These type of fields are for the most part considered to be that of men chose to major in, although some women are seen in these classes they for the most part feel unwanted or out of place. Many of the women also feel like they have to down-play themselves in order to be in a sense “accepted” by their fellow men classmates. This was very surprising to me to see that women are feeling unaccepted in these fields and go on to down-play themselves just to fit in. I feel like women who are smart enough to be in these programs and enjoy them should be proud to show off their intelligence and boost those numbers up for women everywhere. The other subject focused on was sexuality and the LGBT community and their campus life in higher education. It focused on the points on how just 50 years ago someone being openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender was not at all accepted. Although now it is becoming more well-known it is not completely accepted. In one of the articles the focus was on transgender diversity and how specific individuals took on the role of being a transgender in this society. It is great to see that people do choose to be whatever they want even if they may not be totally accepted in this society. I think that some people will always have a problem accepting people who look or act differently and sadly that cannot be completely rid of, but there is a great progress that can be made so any person can feel comfortable and are able to be who they really want to be.