Desert Survival Kit.

After a flight from Costa Rica, where in the first 30 minutes of flying I spilled the entire glass of orange juice that I was served, directly on my lap, and therefore had to put up with another 3 hours of flying with soaking wet pants (I changed in the customs area in Houston), I arrived at Thunderbird. There were 6 of us from CR on that flight, and so I began getting to know my most immediate classmates. So far, I think we will get along well, which is good since we're going to spend two years just seven of us (the other arrived on a later flight). At Thunderbird, once we got settled all 178 students met for a break the ice sort of session. This is very different from CIU orientation (at least CIU official orientation) since there clearly seems to be an intention by the Thunderbird staff to get you drunk. We were given about as much wine as we wanted (my table of 8 finished 5 bottles and two of us only drank a cup or two). After all the "fun" activities, the real fun would begin when they encouraged us to go to "the pub" on campus to drink all the beer we wanted. I haven't proven this, but apparently, sticking to the global idea, the pub has over 100 choices of beer from all over the World.

We had a few sessions on Saturday, but mostly orientation stuff, as well as Sunday. Saturday night was another night of "games" with all you can drink beer as well. Of course, the pub was next on the agenda for most of the students after the all you can drink beer. Although we had a couple preamble sessions, it was mostly teaching us how to use some of the tools available for us as students, including our credit card with which we would be charged for the rest of our studies.

On Monday we began our formal studies. I am taking a course on Global Leadership (everything is global here), which has to do with the three economic structures of Economic Nationalism, Liberalism and Structurulism, and how they affect what we see and foresee in the International Political Economy (IPE). There are two good things about this, which make the classes interesting despite their subject. First, the professors are highly qualified (ie. BA Stanford. MA Yale. PhD Cornell), but they are also good communicators. They are interesting to listen to. Second, unlike my undergraduate, people actually want to participate and ask questions, or make comments that are actually very intelligent and very interesting. After class we are all a bunch of geeks talking about the class and what we think about what they are saying. People are experts in their particular fields, so it's really neat to get their input.

On Monday night we did a desert survival exercise. This was an interesting experience, because although we are in the desert of Arizona, we were in a cool classroom, pretending we were dying in the desert. I could tell you all the details, but the outcome was funnier. The excercise was intended to prove to us that as a team we would think better than as individuals. We did this by rating 15 items in order of importance individually and then as a team. As a team we had to vote. After fancy shamcy math we ended up with an individual score and a team score, and although it would be normal for one or two individuals to have a better score than the team, the team should have been the best option for almost all. In my team's case, we were the only team where every individual did better than the team. After the appropriate amount of laughter by the whole class when it was mentioned to the professor, we had to try to understand what went so wrong. One of the Costa Ricans on my team was the one who scored the best, and he was very critical and I believe concerned about me. He said all the appropriate nice things, but then he added... "but because you're smart, and you're loud, and you argue well, you dominate the conversation and don't listen to other people. The other people, myself included, therefore choose not to compete." In a way, he told me that I killed the entire team. I thought about this, and I know he's right in general. I like people who argue back, but I don't realize that I intimidate many people, and they choose not even to enter into an argument with me, when I want them to do that.

Of course, today's readings were all about how to encourage argument and discussion in the workplace where it would not be intimidating or insulting to people.