How We Managed to Make a Decision

   On the weekend before the class I looked at the syllabus to get an idea about what we will be talking in class and  maybe just to briefly read through the material. It says "Review Exam #1 / Decision making". Hmm, I wondered to myself, how professor can manage to put these two together if mostly he has not enough time to cover entire chapter in class? But I still took my text book and reviewed the chapter.
   The class didn't promise anything extraordinary until I heard professor saying  - "You have time to decide...". I instantly knew that it was one of the class activities and I told this to one of my classmates. It was a pleasure to see all these people come up to the blackboard and try make 80 people to listen to what they have to say. But the best job did the girl from the first row (sorry, do not remember the name) - not only I enjoyed her voice, but she also seemed so calm along the whole process, successfully leading the mass of overexcited people, trying to avoid the chaos.
   I personally don't like openly participate in discussions where such a mass of people involved, because you never know the outcome. Plus I do not like scream over someone who is already speaking loud. That is making me not being aggressive, nor assertive. But there were more then enough people wanting to win over the audience and have their voice heard.Some people tried to come up and eventually gave up and went back to their seats, but some stayed and proved to be real leaders.
   I was avoiding the process - I was very participant amount my neighbors-classmates. We shared our opinions left and right, what would be good for us and what else could be added to the list of "MUST HAVE" or "MUST HAVE NOT".
   I was not a mediator among extreme opinions, but our number #1 leader was able to manage it very brilliantly. I liked that she was not demanding, but was asking "what if..." - that kind of questions are very soothing to everyone's ears. Than I was absolutely shocked in a good way when one of the girls said "his opinion is important", referring to that person who did not want to vote on our proposal. Usually people in large quantities tend not to pay attention to those who do not agree with majority, and if not for professor mentioning that only unanimous vote will count it would probably be the case.
   When it comes to accommodation I think that in our decision making class everyone was trying to accommodate their own interests. And there is an example - when someone proposed to the class to make first exam to be worth less overall points, people who got more was complaining because their didn't want to loose their good grade over people who did do that good on the test.
   I believe that collaboration was more between the group and professor. Everyone were still looking at the professor and his reaction on what we were trying to get out of this, and some of the stuff got shut down eventually in a process of decision making. There were also voices among people sitting at the back of the classroom screaming "how about this?" and "how about that?"; at the end of the class I felt that everyone just wanted to get something then nothing and that is how we agreed to what we had written on a board, which wasn't a bad scenario for all of us.
   I am absolutely positive that every single one of us learned something new from the "experiment". It is a real life situation and I am glad that no one got hurt along the way.