February 14th: Me = Monkey

Day 29, 12:45PM: So, two interesting things happened today. First, there I was sitting in class, everyone staring at me. What to choose? Do I go for brown or green? What could Nasson possibly be trying to get me to do? Once again, in my favorite class Judgment and Decision making I found myself trying to outwit my professor. He asked for a volunteer, so of course I raised my hand. Professor Nasson then walks over and thrusts a bowl of M&Ms onto the table in front of me and says “Pick one.” So in my usual way, I examine the bowl and try to figure out what he wants me to do so I can do the opposite. I begin thinking, maybe this has to do with taking either one of the colors that has the most or the least, so I decide to take one of the green ones because there is the fewest green ones in the bowl. He looks down and asks me what color I chose and I respond ‘green.’ He says ‘hmm,’ and tells me to take another one. Great, I got him this time I think to myself, because he told me to take another, so clearly I didn’t do what he wanted the first time. I look back into the bowl and take another green M&M. He looks down and says ‘hmm’ again before walking away. At this point I feel confident that I did the opposite of what he wanted me to do and feel quite smug with myself. He then proceeds to say to the class “Ansel here just proved that he is as smart as…” and he clicks to the next slide in the power point presentation. Much to my surprise a giant picture of a Monkey pops up. Yes, a monkey.

Nasson then tells us how once we make a decision we tend not to change the decision and thus my choosing green M&Ms twice in a row proved the point, because monkeys do the exact same thing. So much for my complex analysis and outsmarting him. Moral of the story: I am as smart as a monkey. Yes, Me = Monkey. Talk about a blow to your ego.

Luckily the rest of the day had a more positive outlook. I met a girl named Emily a few days back at the US consulate thing and randomly ran into her on my way to class. She asked me if I was going to the gathering at the Uni Bar later tonight and I said no because I tend not to like bars and such things and would prefer not to get pressured into having that free drink they were advertising. So, I politely said I was not and went to class. Then, 4PM rolled around and I thought about it again, and decided that I might as well go because there isn’t any harm in wasting half an hour if I don’t stay there. I got there and went to say hello to Emily and say I changed my mind about going when she introduced me to a bunch of other people she was talking with. It turns out she is from Georgia Tech and is here this semester with a group of her and 5 of her friends also from Georgia Tech (aka, they’re all engineers or CS people). So I got introduced to Brian, Alex, Stephen, William, and Tyler. We then began talking about how it seemed like everyone else there were going on trips to Thailand and the Philippines the coming weekend and how we all also wanted to travel places. So, we talked about all taking a trip to Thailand together and decided to meet later to talk about it. We ended up going to dinner shortly thereafter and made plans for my next trip to Thailand in a week and a half (although this will later turn out to be a rather big problem).