Illinibucks

Illinibucks Prompt

            For this prompt on Illinibucks, which are a fiat currency that the university gives each student so that they can jump ahead of lines, I would hold some things constant. What I would hold constant is that each student receives the same amount of illinibucks, and that theoretically there are not enough illinibucks so that nobody can use illinibucks at every event that they want to. I am also going to assume that these illinibucks are used to skip the lines at sporting events, classes, and food at the union. This would mean that some people could cash in their illinibucks so that they could get into a sports game first, class first, or even get their food quicker at Ko Fusion.

            What I believe would happen in this situation is that there would become a secondary market of ilinibucks for students who would not use them. This would be students who do not enjoy Ko Fusion, don’t care about going to class, and are not interested in our teams sporting events. I would assume that if people wanted more illinibucks they would be able to purchase them from the university. Also I would assume that many people would use these illinibucks for different things. We do not have the greatest sports team so I believe that a lot of people would invest their illinibucks into trying to get better seats for a sports game. Also some people do not care where they sit in class so they would use it for other things. Some students need to sit close to see in class so I think that they would need to spend more money on illinibucks so that they can see in class. I believe that since these students have a disability they deserve proper accommodations or else they would be at an unfair advantage. This would end up being a way larger problem than it would have been previously thought as.

            I personally would either spend my illinibucks on food lines or just sell them to other students. This is because I have no problems with sitting in the back of the classroom and have little interests in our sports teams. If the administered price for additional illinibucks was too low then everyone would have them and use them on everything. This would cause too many students trying to cut the lines at the same events and it would not be successful. On the contrary if the administered price was too high for illinibucks too only the richest students would be able to buy them so it would put students coming from low income at a disadvantage and I find that to be very discriminating.

            Overall I believe that the concept of illinibucks would not work at all. The information that we had was too vauge and one would not know how the odds of these illinibucks would work at all. We can only make assumptions on these bucks from the limited knowledge that we know. I believe that there is not enough of a market for students to truly want them, and it would just lead to more problems. A better example of a similar situation that I have seen is that of the “fast passes” offered at six flags. This concept is where there are a finite number of early passes that people can buy to cut lines and they are reasonably priced. If something like this was introduced at the university I think it would be a lot more successful than the illinibuck concept and would lead to a lot less possible discrimination.

Team Success

Team Success

A successful team that I have been involved with in my life would have to be my high school lacrosse team. My team was made up of around 40 members ranging from freshman, which there were few of, to seniors, which made up over half of the team. This was the varsity level so at this stage it was a cut sport. The team was comprised of the best lacrosse players at the school. The other levels at my high school was freshman, JV1 and JV2. Since varsity was the highest level it was very competitive and very intense. Our school took lacrosse very seriously and it was a pretty big deal.

            The leadership of the team was broken down onto a couple levels. There was the head coach, who was a teacher at the school, three assistant coaches, who were both college students playing lacrosse at a nearby college and school faculty, and captains of the team, who were seniors with high level of skill. Since we were in a very competitive division in lacrosse it reflected to how we had to prepare for our games. We had practice every weekday, with Tuesday and Thursday having two practices a day, and games on Saturday.

            Relating my experience to that of chapter five in “Reforming Organizations” I would say that my team experienced both the “One Boss”, and “Simple Hierarchy” configuration mentioned in this chapter. I would say this mainly based on how our practices would go. The “One Boss” is our head coach, who would direct practices and tell us who had to do what. He also had created his weekly plan for practices, game strategies, call plays, etc. he did everything that you would expect the leader of a team to do. That is why I would say that we had elements of the “one boss” configuration.

            The other configuration that I would say we resembled is that of a “simple hierarchy” we resembled this because of the fact that information, respect and work came from the top down. Starting with the head coach, then the assistants, then captains, then the rest of the team. How practices would work is that the head coach would create an overall plan for how the day was going to go and then have the assistant coaches break the team down into groups based on positions and run drills with them. The youngest kids on the team obviously always got the short stick and had to carry equipment, move goals, etc. but overall the configuration of a hierarchy definitely resembled how the team worked.

            A configuration that was mentioned in this chapter, and that I did not mention earlier is that of a “circle network” I don’t know if this fully described the configuration of the team but it definitely has something to do with the team. There were many different subgroups on the team involving those of captains, offense, defense, young guys, and seniors. These subgroups are people on the team who would spend a lot of time together on and off the field and had grown very close to each other. These groups would spend a lot of time together without the influence of the coach around and would close enough to where they could spot each other’s weaknesses and improve each other’s game in different ways than traditional practice could.

            At the end of the day there is a lot of different ways that a team could be successful. In my situation we did not win the state championship, which some would say is not successful, but we did gain a lot more. We improved our game a lot, had a lot of fun, and made a lot of good friendships. We also promoted the game enough that our lacrosse team has doubled in size since.

Opportunism

Opportunism

An example of somebody I know didn’t act opportunistically when they had a chance is actually an example of something that happened this week. It involves the business career fair that came to campus this Wednesday and Thursday. Many people look at this career fair as a great opportunity to meet with companies that would one day hopefully be your employer, and is a great opportunity to gain good networking and interview experience. Most students on campus go to the career fair in hopes of gaining an internship, job shadow or full time employment.

            I believe that the quote, “good things come out to those who wait” is a very good and true quote, but only in certain circumstances. This circumstance was not one of them. This is because a good friend of mine decided that he was not going to go to the career fair and wait for another opportunity for him to gain an internship. I disagreed with him on this because I, like many others, understand how competitive the current job market is and want to take hold of the current opportunities we have and try to make the best of them. Me and my friend are both juniors, and though the career fair is catered to seniors hoping to find full time employment, there are also a lot of opportunities to gain an internship and help build our résumés so that we can get a better job one day.

            I understand as of why my friend did not go, but I disagree with him. The career fair is a lot of work, and some look at it as a waste of time. A lot of people I talked to view the career fair as a lot of waiting in line, not really meeting the people you need to meet, and not very impressionable, and I fully understand that. I went and half of the time I was there I was waiting in line at different companies whom I wanted to speak with. Also once you get to the company’s desk there have been 300 people who have already talked to who you are speaking with and it is very hard to stand out amongst the crowd of those before and after you. Though I did not have the best time at the career fair I still believed that the experience that I had there will help me a lot more in the long run than if I didn’t go.

            Another reason why my friend didn’t want to go is because he did not believe that the work he would put in for it would pay for what he got out of it. The work as in revising his résumé, actually showing up, and then waiting in lines. I understand this because after all that work, speaking with companies doesn’t seem to have much of a payoff. This is because even though you speak to companies you are not guaranteed a job anywhere. I on the contrary believe that the input work is worth it because of the experience you gain. Going to the career fair, even if it does not get you a job, helps you prepare better for the next time you have to make a first impression on a company and hopefully makes getting a job much easier for you.

            Some people may look at people’s explanations about not going to the career fair as the same thing, excuses, but I believe that they are different. I believe that everybody has different opportunities in life, and the career fair is one of them. Though they may not take advantage of that current opportunity they may have other forms of gaining an internship or already have a job that they are content with. Overall everything is dependent on personal preferences and situations and I understand that.