Reflections on the Square

The class was successful in creating the square; however, I do not think I was particularly helpful in the final creation of the square. I was mainly frustrated by the fact that those of us who did the blind square activity before, did not get to talk at first.

The initial chaos of the situation with many people talking at once made it difficult for the group to come to a consensus on what needed to be done. There was no true leader that emerged from the class until near the very end of the game.

Since initial confusion is normal for this sort of activity. I think that we could have done better if we said from the very beginning to elect somebody to be the class leader. The leader could have then centralized the decision making instead of people breaking off into their own smaller groups.

In a previous class where we did this activity, one group that I observed doing this, knew the names of their group members. It facilitated the square making, since there was no confusion like: "Am I number 25?", "What number are you?", "Where is number 11?", etc. If we all just took a few moments and got to know one another a bit better, we could have made the square a lot faster. Instead of "What number are you?" the questions could have been: "Eric, are you a corner?", "David, do you have a 90 degree angle?", "Tim, are you lined up with Joan?", etc.

I am not very proud of myself for the activity, since I did not feel like my opinion was being heard. I should have been far more proactive than reactive in the activity. By the time those of us who had done this before were allowed to speak, I felt that the group mentality towards who were the leaders had already been subconsciously chosen and I thought that since my opinion wasn't specifically asked for, it was unwelcome.