How I think to handle conflict with others

I believe the debate for our exam 2 is not so successful. Honestly, we didn’t reach any agreement. Even though we agree to drop the lower score of one of those two exams, we spent the whole class trying to debate the structure but reach nothing.

I didn’t mean to offense people in our class. I believe everyone has his/her rights and opinions in how to structure the next exam. Our opinions are based on our scores, language background, our education level and other personalities. Therefore, we can’t have 100% agreement on this debate. The reason is simply. Like I said, everyone has different opinions. We can’t guarantee that there is a 100% agreement that the results would benefit all of our classmates.

Let me borrow an example which concerns most of the American people. When the Republican and Democratic parties vote for our new health care plan, there are more than 200 (sorry forget the exact figure) Republican representatives who vote against the plan proposed by President Obama. Even though there are almost 50% who did not agree on this plan, we finally still pass this act and bring this benefit to the American people. Why do we do this? This is because the result is a balance solution. The majority agrees and the rest have to obey.

The reason of we can’t have 100% agreement is that there are always problems that we can’t solve them perfectly. It requires a few people to sacrifice their interest in order to let something happens. This is because one thing is not always good for all people. The health plan benefits most of the American people but would raise the taxes for the middle class. From their perspectives, it’s not a good plan since they have to pay for the other’s benefits. Similarly, the proposal, such as no essay part, is benefit for non-native people. But it would definitely be unfair to other native speakers or good writers. To reach 100% agreement means there is no solution for this problem. The only way we can handle this is to reach to a balance, a solution that benefits most people or an agreement that most people (like 99%) would agree. This is what I thought a debate would be.

How to design an unbreakable egg?!

Well it's unfortunate that our group failed to accomplish this mission. The goal is simple: to let the egg falls down without breaking it. The material we use is limited. We have straws and sticky tape for like 2 feet long. To be honestly, this is a difficult task because an egg is very likely to break through from that height. The critical part of this experiment is we have to absorb the pressure when the egg hits the ground. After we discuss all the possible solutions, we agree that we have to make some cross to support the egg. We tried to put the straws around it and stick them. However, the tape is not sticky. It came out not as we expected. Then we modified the experiment. However, we only have limited time and before that we spent too much on discussion. Even though we didn't accomplish the mission, we have an acknowledge that planning is important because it would save much time during the process and increase our chance to success.

Are we living too stressful?!

I am not a native American. When I was in my home town China, I started to learn American culture from all different ways. Movies, television, Internet, McDonald’s and Starbucks, all of these represent the American culture.
There are different perspectives from what we have in China. One thing that I found it most different is the life style the Americans behave. They are very time efficient. They not only work fast in their works but also live hurry in their life.
The advanced technology helps people to work much more efficient in US than other developing countries. This is positive because we are more productive than the others. However, the way we live here, especially in a metropolitan area like New York, is quite stressful. People need to hurry for subway, for lunch and even for shopping. They spend less and less time to relax, to keep healthy and to enjoy communications with family or friends. In China we always put family first. We pay a lot more attention for our family or friends. This change is not easy for me to get used to even though the life in China now seems to become similar to the life in US.