Sunday July 7, Day 2
Leadership, Team building and Presentation skills

By Jesse Dong

Today, we played a game of supporting each other in order to reach a lanyard from a distance without touching the ground. By doing this activity, each of the groups had to come up with ideas on how to get across. This forced us to brainstorm ideas, test each of the different strategies, and see if it was viable. Eventually, we were able to successfully get our group’s lanyards by balancing on one leg and tipping over to the other side while the other members braced the person getting the lanyard.

Since this task required a lot of physical contact, I was at first hesitant to do this, but after a while, I saw that completing the task was more important than my introversion. As the group (Zoe, Mya, Jonah, and I) kept trying new ideas to reach our goal, I felt more and more comfortable in doing the activity, and I put more trust in my peers. Looking back, I see this as a learning experience that put me out of my comfort zone in a good way as I cooperated with others to accomplish a shared goal.

I think that I could apply this mindset and outlook to tasks or challenges in the future. Rather than being hesitant and closed up in a box, I should instead be willing to try new things and tell myself that seeking new experiences would not hurt me, but would actually help. Being exposed to anything new is nerve racking, but you will not know if you like it until you try. Additionally, I also learned that cooperation is almost always a necessary task to efficiently get a job done; utilizing both open-mindedness and cooperation will bring me so much farther.

All in all, this physical cooperation activity really enlightened me and gave a different perspective on how I typically overcome obstacles. In the future, I hope that I will be able to take this new mindset wherever I go.

By Bailey Garcia

    Today is my second day here in Biosphere 2, and many great things were done today. To begin with, I did a few physical activities with other students in the morning which was pretty enjoyable. For the first activity Christy and Zoe made us do a few stretches. I am not much of a flexible person, so the stretches bothered me. Another activity we did later in the day was when all of the students had to stand behind a line and reach for their lanyard. The activity sounded impossible for me at first because I could not see how we were supposed to get our lanyards if we couldn’t go past the line. Working with the other students was very enjoyable for me because I learned that I work well with others. I did, however, get hurt a few times when I attempted to retrieve my lanyard. Those few times slightly discouraged me, but then working with others helped me overcome my doubts.

Lanyard Team Building

   My favorite activity in the entire day was going to the pool. Zoe, Jesse, Jonah, Christy and I were all together. A very scary moment for me was when I was on top of a diving board, which was about 29 feet in height. I was very terrified, but I thought to myself, “ just do it.” That was the best part of the day because I overcame my fear of the height. Also, once I got out of the pool, I got really hot again after about 20 minutes. I noticed I became very irritated, so instead of becoming negative with the group, I jumped back into the pool. Jumping back into the pool made me very happy again, and I was proud of myself for recognizing my change in mood. Due to this day, I cannot wait to see what happens throughout the week.