Who Are in My Community? - Boy Scouts

Members of the Community:
The members of the Boy Scout community are very friendly and kind people.  They're made up of the boys that participate in the program as well as their parents and other adult leaders.  They belong to Troops that meet usually once a week.  At these meetings they plan outings and partake in activities to earn rank advancement, awards and otherwise improve their skills.

Characteristics:
The community has many good things about it.  It allows for boys to learn different skills they'll need in life such as leadership and teamwork.  It's a great way to meet new people and go new places.  They give back by preforming community services through different events.

Unfortunately there are some problems with the community.  Most Troops are having problems with retention, especially when boys get to high school.  They go off to participate in other activities such as sports.

Stage 1 Complete

What are some of the things you learned about yourself as a student or a professional in Module I? Did you surprise yourself in any way? Were you proud of yourself? Were you at all disappointed in yourself? Why?

Self reflection hasn't really been a strong suit of mine; I tend to be rather hard on myself.  I feel like there are things that I should have done better on and don't always see the things that I did well.


One of the things that I feel I did well on, however, was helping others.  I have quite a bit of experience working with the things we covered in our Tech class and made sure that I was able to share that knowledge.  There were several times where I would finish my work quickly and went around helping my fellow students with their work.


I was very surprised when I got a certificate for being an "assassin" in our BC class.  I didn't think I stood out that much with my work.  But after hearing that it was also for my helping others in class, the reason made a little more sense.


Even with being recognized as I had been, I know there are still things that I need to work on.  One of the biggest things I need to work on is not putting my work off to the last possible moment, especially my homework.  It was a big problem for me in high school and soon spiraled out of control to where I wasn't even doing my work.  I've managed to get every assignment in for the module, but I could definitely have started on them sooner when I got home.  I also tend to be a bit quiet in a group, letting people give their input before I do, almost to the point where my ideas come a bit too late.

Whispers of Yesterdays

I haven't lived where I'm living now for very long, so it hasn't really affected who I am all that much.  The house I grew up in played a bigger part in how I behave than anywhere else I've lived.  This house was in the middle of a court up a steep hill.  It is a quiet place, out of the way from most traffic and noise.  Most of the people who lived on the court were older couples, leaving my brother and me to be the only kids on the street most of the time.

More often than not it felt like living up there was a place to be forgotten and hide away.  It was a place to get away from, almost as if it were to trap you there if you would let it.  And most of the time it would trap me there.  I became more and more reclusive as the years went on.  I would lose myself in television, movies, computer games and video games.  Chores and homework would fall by the wayside for less productive activities.  I would rarely leave the house.  Sure, I went to school, participated in Boy Scout events, and to visit friends and family, but those things were few and far between.

My mother ended up thinking that I had motivational issues and signed me up for therapy.  This really didn’t help much.  I found that it was more of an issue of usefulness than motivation that kept me from doing some of the more “important” things.  Why clean my room if I knew it would get dirty again?  Why do homework for history when I’ll probably never use that information?  I would do what I thought mattered in the long run.  This sort of mindset has followed me throughout my life.  I don’t feel like doing something unless it makes a matter for a long period of time, but this makes it so I put a lot of energy into things that I truly want to do.

Spreading the Gap

Earning money any way you can, that's the true nature of capitalism.  But is that nature hurting others?  I think it may with how someone goes about earning their money.

Credit card companies make their money by the interest they charge their customers.  The money they make off of this interest allows them to expand the credit they can give to other customers.  Though these companies have traditionally looked away from giving credit to low income houses, they've recently started to look to them as a way of making more money at the turn of the century.

And it's not just the credit card companies that are doing this, other businesses have made a lot of money by making offers to the less fortunate that appear to be good deals.  These offers only encourage the less fortunate to become deeper and deeper in debt.

An example of this is with Byrider, a used car lot which offers financing to those that aren't as well off.  Often they will sell a car with a high interest rate.  If the payments aren't being paid off, then they will reposes the car, keeping the money they have already gained.

Other places that offer rent-to-own deals do things similarly, though they aren't as obvious.  Renting to own can appear like a good idea, but over time you end up spending more money than you would have if you bought it at the beginning.

While these companies are earning their money, they are creating a larger and larger gap between the wealthy and the poor.  This is making it harder for those less fortunate to get out of the situations they're in, spreading the opportunity divide.

But it's not just the companies fault for this spread.  People need to educate themselves about the good and evil of credit.  They need to understand what credit is, how it's used properly and how it can hurt them.  A big part of that, and probably the simplest thing to learn about is interest.  Interest is where most people get bogged down by the numbers, not realizing that even if they pay the minimum payment, they'll not be making a dent in how much they owe with interest building up.

It can be hard to know where to start learning about credit.  In high school it was mandatory for all seniors to take economics as a semester class.  The class itself taught us the basics of how economics works, but not much of a practical use of this information.  I feel that a class in practical economics should be taught in every high school.  This would at lest give young adults a starting point for their knowledge so they can better themselves in the future.

Playing Games

How we spend our free time and our interests tend to define who we are with others.  The titles people give us based on what we do can range from insulting to a playful joke.  I'm usually seen as a gamer and a nerd.

The games I play don't tend to be the usual board games you might see, such as Monopoly or Clue.  I play games that are usually referred to as "specialist games".  These games usually have background and story that one can indulge in, also known as "fluf", that isn't really needed to know to play the game, but can make the game a little more fun.  I primarily play Magic the Gathering and Warhammer 40,000.

I started playing Magic when I was in middle school.  A friend of mine would bring a few decks of his and we would play at lunch.  Playing at lunch became a bit of a tradition that carried out through most of high school.  While the game is fun in itself, it has some things that can help build cognitive skills.  Math is a big part of the game, as both players start with a live total of twenty, and when it reaches zero they lose.  They have to use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division primarily, but there are also a little bit of using variables as well.  Another thing that it helps develop is critical thinking.  With so many combinations in the game that can be done with different cards in order to win, one has to plan out what they're going to do in their turn as well as a few turns ahead.

I started playing Warhammer 40,000 in high school. This is a table top war game where one builds and paints models to represent characters in an army.  It also helps build cognitive skills.  Similar to Magic, it uses math and critical thinking.  You also need to use spacial thinking and statistics with the placing models and figuring out how well you can do based on what you need to roll on a six-sided-dice.

The thing I like most about these games is the social aspect of them.  I have met and kept several close friends who also play these games.  Being social games, they help build more interpersonal skills, such as how to deal with others with a disagreement as well as just generalized small talk (Though they may be focused around the games).