In one of my classes I will have to do group activities. It's an American Pop Culture class. Last night she had us play this game. We were to categorize ourselves as one of four animals: The tiger, the hawk, the rabbit, or the turtle. She then wanted us to meet up with the animals we categorized ourselves. I saw myself as a turtle so I met up with the other turtles. We were the quiet introverts. There were only five of us. Being in the group made me feel not so alone and I often feel so alone in college.
The biggest group was of course the tigers, the extroverts. The hawks and rabbits were more in between. The teacher then had us talk with our group about how we communicate. Us turtles decided we were more mellow, lazy and laid back. Then the teacher asked us to meet up with the group we felt we were the opposite from. I was about ready to scream at this point. I didn't want to get near the tigers. The rabbits ended up taking me in though, and the teacher wanted us to discuss how we can make communication between us better.
I said to the rabbits that I would talk more if they were talking about things I was interested in. I was actually asked to tell the teacher this and then she said "but it should be your job to let people know what those interests are right?" I said, "yeah a little bit."
Then I'm thinking well...hmm...thing is my interests are so obscure that most people don't talk about them, but I didn't say that of course.
After that exercise I felt like I had just went through therapy, but I'm glad I went through with it. Also the teacher made the class aware of the differences between extroverts and introverts, which was good. She still expects us introverts to talk sometimes though.
I really think she is an amazing teacher even though it looks like this will be a socially demanding class. She's an activist who looks to make the world a better place, and I really like that in a teacher, and well anybody.
