This week was a very ‘mellow’ week. I had a couple assignments to do in order to prepare for Friday’s “Fun-Day” meeting. Other than that, I spent the rest of my free trial on Codecademy practicing and relearning how to code Python.
Monday: We had no meetings on this day, Noah was feeling a bit ill. So I dedicated my day to working on Codecademy. I was focusing on learning Python Syntax (again) to refresh my memory. Learning the Syntax is basically the baby steps. You learn how to make comments, variables, and integers. Coding is basically a big math equation, just with a few extra words and characters.
Tuesday: I had two meetings on Tuesday. The first one was just a check in with Noah and how I was doing. The assignment he gave me was to write a paragraph about what I have learned so far through Codecademy. Next, we had a group meeting. Again, we just went over our weekend and what we were looking forward to. We also went over the things we needed to have done by Friday for our group discussion. Our discussion is going to be based on what does being a ‘good’ business look like, and how would it benefit society and the environment. In order to prepare for the discussion, we had to read a paper on the Tragedy of the Commons, watch one of two TED Talks, and watch one of two YouTube videos.
Wednesday: Again, we had no meetings scheduled for this day. So, I spent the day using the last bit of my free Codecademy trial. I then moved on to learning about Functions in Python. Functions consist of several lines of code, and only runs when it’s called. If you put data, also known as parameters, into the function, the function can ‘spit out’ data as a result, almost like the answer to an equation. In this lesson I learned how to ‘call data’ and ‘spit it out’. That took about another 3 hours for me. I only got in touch with the Control Flow and Boolean Expressions.
Thursday: Since we had no meetings, I spent my Thursday watching the videos and reading the paper on the Tragedy of the Commons. The TED Talk I watched was about the benefits of doing good. This woman had a deep understanding of business and the effort that goes into it. She explained that businesses have to take environment and society (wealth, likableness, and price) into account. The reason they should do this is because not only does it benefit society and how their company is seen, but also gives then more economic bonuses and advantages.
For example, AirBNB: They give refugees free housing. This gives them a good name, therefore gives them more benefits. From any stand point, you don’t want to give your money to company that is doing bad or has a bad rep; you would give your money to almost an exact same company that has a better rep.
Another thing that helped me a lot was the other video, based on the science of good business. What is more important? Environment, economy, or society? The man in the video explained that the environment rules everything. The environment, the Earth, started everything. It started society, and society started the economy. Without society there would be no economy, and with no environment, there would be no society. So basically, the chain starts with environment, then goes to society, and ends with the economy.
Friday: Today was our Friday Fun-Day meeting. We started the meeting off by talking about our plans for the weekend and how we have been. Also, it happened to be Vee Ander’s, one of the mentors, birthday today. So after talking about our week and our plans. we as a group decided to sing happy birthday. Of course with the lag between our computers it was a very awkward song, but Vee appreciated the effort.
To start our discussion off, Vee posted a link to a poll group. I can’t remember the exact questions that were asked, but one of the questions that stuck with me was “How do human rights play into the common-pool theory?” I was thinking about what to put down as my answer. It took me while because there are a lot of situations and factors that do play into the common pool theory. So I decided to generalize my answer. I said that an oppressed group usually doesn’t have a voice, so a privileged group can either give them a voice or could “ruin” any of the rights that the oppressed group had. This is a good example of the common-pool theory, because it applies to everything.
Let’s take the “toilet paper famine” of this year. Obviously, if you have more money, you can afford more toilet paper. So would one buy all of it for themselves, because they have the resources to, or would they leave some for the less fortunate. After that discussion, we went over the videos we watched, and which ones were our favorite. I said that the video that explained the “chain” was my favorite. The reason being was that it visualized the chain into a chart. For me, personally, charts really help me visualize data and information (noting that coding charts has been my job for this internship). Overall, this Friday Fun-Day meeting had been the most productive and fun one to-date.
There are no comments published yet.