30A – Final Reflection

1) Read through your posts from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had a long the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.

2) What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing?

• For me, I would say that the most formative experience of this class would be my evolution of the elevator pitches, and how I improved each time.
• The experience I will remember years later, which also brought me a lot of joy, is the Free Money assignment, and how much fun it was to watch peoples reaction as a stranger randomly gave them free money.
• The experience I am most proud of would be Growing your social capital because it forced me to make connections with others as I would if this were a real job. 

3) At the beginning of the semester, I mentioned that I wanted each of you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, at the end, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset?

• This class has done an excellent job of developing an entrepreneurial mindset because of how it has changed the way I think about issues around me. I never thought of how much goes into starting a business, and now I notice these small details everywhere I go. 

4) What is the one recommendation you would make to the students who are going to journey down this path in the future? What would you recommend they do to perform best in this course? What would you recommend they do to foster that mindset?

• One recommendation I would offer for students about to take this course is to enjoy the journey. While it may seem like an assignment, treat it like it is actually a business, and you will enjoy  the class more than if you were doing the bare minimum to get by. I would also encourage students to really develop a sense of time management for this class. In order to foster these mindsets, I would encourage students to understand that while most classes can be boring, this one is not, and will be exiting if you choose to adopt a positive mindset throughout the semester. 

Free Money

For this assignment, I decided to go outside of my fraternity house. My house is located right on university avenue, so there is almost always foot traffic in front of the house. I plan to approach someone who is walking on the sidewalk, and simply offer them the dollar out of generosity. My plan for the conversation is to simply offer a dollar and react to their reaction. If the person is excited, easy to give away the dollar. If the person is hesitant, I might push a little bit and helps them understand that I am doing it purely to be nice. If the person outright refuses, I will simply walk away. I believe I should be able to give away at least 3 of the 5 dollar bills. 

After conducting the experiment, I found that it went about how I had planned. I only had 1 person outright refuse me, but I did have 2 people hesitate before I told them it was free, and 2 people simply took the dollar. It was about as easy as I had expected, and it was obvious that people who appeared busy did not want a dollar, and people who were just walking did want a dollar.