Chapter 3, 9, 10 - By Jesus Martinez

        I believe that every group did a stellar job at producing their introductory power points. The fact that our classmates could not only organize but also create engaging presentations makes me look forward to future presentations. I found that despite the concepts presented being simple in nature, it's nice to have a way to pinpoint an exact word for what that said concept I had implanted in my brain was. For example, instead of having a societal bias, I could say that something was of the dominant culture. Another example could be instead of being like well Paul was a rich kid, I could say Paul was part of a higher socioeconomic status. I found it interesting that there are cultures in which doing one thing at a time is seen as the norm, versus multiple things at the same time. I had a firm belief in which everything is seen as individualistic, and not culture driven but I was proved wrong by our groups presentation. 

        When it came to group 2, I thought that their presentation looked more fleshed out than ours. While ours got right to the point, theirs really seemed like eye candy. My favorite parts of group 2's presentation were pseudo-conflict, which I can relate to which is pretty much when a group member agrees with the others but really feels conflicted with their views. I do believe that teams are vital to humanities advancements over time, but you should always think of yourself as an individual, and letting out your views toward the group can create a friendly, more efficient environment for everybody else. Group-think is something that affects all of us, whereas one may think you are just expressing your views, in reality you can just be influenced by your group of friends. This could also lead into group polarization, where your regular views are polarized by participating with peers which share your same views to a radical extent.

         For group 3, leadership was the name of the game. As is for everything, management is key to making a group excel. A leader could be anybody, from elected officials to your local bystander with influence over others, leaders don't necessarily have to be elected officials. When it comes to running an effective, long-lasting meeting, group 3 was right on the dot. You're definitely going to want to come in with a game plan, a list of ideas which can give basis to your meeting. You have to keep in mind your group dynamic, which is essentially how everybody is interacting to reach your goal for that meeting. To summarize, essentially having a great meeting requires a great leader and participants which all collaborate to reach an end goal as fast as possible. You don't always have to spearhead everything as the group leader, listening to your colleagues is a great way of transforming your ideas into an efficient masterpiece. I like the idea of a symposium, which was a set of oral reports delivered sequentially by group members before a gathering of people.