Illini Bucks

I think that the idea of Illini Bucks is very interesting. There could be so many options for students to choose from on how they spend their points and the options for the university itself to create new opportunities in regard to the points is unlimited. For example, the Illini Bucks could be used for acquiring some help with classes from the professor one on one. I know that we have things similar to this now where you could get tutored by a professor but with Illini Bucks you could get extra help as in tips on what will be on an exam and practice problems that will be help you ace your exams. Also, another thing that Illini Bucks could be used for is to purchase different events for your fraternity/organization/friends. By the university providing these events they could invest to make the events beneficial for the students and potentially provide an educational event which would help students in various ways.

Of course everything will depend on the actual value of the Illini Bucks. If everything will be overpriced and not worth using all the time then the students will have a tendency to hang on to them until later or until they really need them and if the things offered are underpriced then students might overspend they Illini Bucks causing the University a loss. In an equilibrium model where the points are perfectly balanced then the students won’t overspend or underspend resulting in an intelligent use of the points in order to suit every student’s needs. If it was for me and how I will spend my points, then I will most likely tend to save my points until I really need them. The rationale for this is that I know that there will be a time when I will need to use them for a greater benefit than rather to use them for fun. This obviously depends on the choices that are provided by the university. If the university provides a lot of options for you to improve your grades and do better in classes with the spending of points, then the opportunity cost will be greater for that choice rather than to spend it on entertainment choices. That is my opinion but everyone else has different goals and finds different things more opportunistic for them.

All in all if the prices are set relatively wrong then it will be difficult for students to find reason to spend their points. If the prices are set relatively too high and the activity doesn’t provide much for the student, then there will be no incentive to spend the points now and many will hold on to them until something better comes out or until they don’t have a choice but to spend them. If the prices will be too low then the students will se no problem in overspending and getting the most out of their points regardless if they actually need to spend or if they actually want to spend their points. Although, based on past experiences when something is underpriced then it is not always the best opportunity cost for your time. For example, buying a toy that is made in china is obviously cheaper than one that is made in America therefore it is not worth for someone to spend their time to purchase something from China when it won’t last them for a long time. The same principle applies here if something is offered at a cheap cost then it probably won’t be the best use of someone’s time to invest in. Therefore, I believe that if the university invests in making things a little above the equilibrium then it will motivate the students to take advantage of it and make a more educated decision in what they want to spend their money on.

Job Organization

When I was a junior in high school I had two different jobs at the same time. I used to work part time as a lifeguard at Lifetime Fitness and I used to be a sales person at Abercrombie and Fitch. Over the time that I worked at the two places I got to experience different types of managers along with different types of organizational structures.  

To start off I believe that my most efficient and successful team that I have been part of was at Lifetime. We had a general manager, a manager and an assistant manager. The general manager was as involved as the latter but she would do surprise visits at the pool to check if everything was in order and if the pool deck along with the windows were cleaned off good. The manager was in charge of the whole team of lifeguard most of the time and she would create schedules for each person when to clean, for how long and where needs cleaning. The schedules would usually rotate everyone off every 15 minutes, so I would clean for 15 minutes the pool area and when my shift was up someone else would come and clean the pool floors while I went back to lifeguarding. If the manager wasn’t there, then the assistant manager was in charge of everyone and setting up these schedules for everyone to follow. At the end of the month if we proved that the surprised inspection along with compliments from the members were positive then the general manger would gift each of us a gift card with usually $50 each. This was a great incentive for each of us to actually care about the work that we do and to maintain the pool and the pool deck clean at all times and up to the standards of the company. Due to the strictness of the manager and to the incentives provided by the general manager throughout the year that I worked there, no month went by without us receiving the bonus and getting compliments. Also, the communication between each member was impeccable, the manager signed everyone up for a group messaging app so we could communicate with everyone clearly and if the manager had a message to send to all of us she could do it easily. I found that through this app it was really easy to find a substitute for a day that I couldn’t show up and have a written response that someone would show up for my shift, something that lacking from my other job. This constant communication made it easier for us to become closer as a team and closer to our supervisors which I found to be an integral part of how a successful team and business functions.

On the other hand, at my other job with Abercrombie and Fitch the we had a similar organization with a manager and an assistant manager but we just couldn’t function that well as a team. The managers weren’t strict enough with us and we didn’t receive any incentives for being good workers and for accomplishing our jobs well, so from the get-go nobody gave it their one hundred percent. I remember on my training day there, a more experience employee showed me how to fold the shirts and he told me that we should actually fold it a certain way in order to be up to the company’s standards but since the manager never cared at how they really looked he said that as long as they look somewhat decent they are good to go. I found that really weird in comparison to what I had to do at Lifetime Fitness, where perfection was stressed on at all times. At A&F the communication between different employees was also terrible, for example I asked one of my teammates to cover up one of my shifts that I couldn’t make it to anymore, he said he would only to find out later that day that my manager gave me a warning for not showing up to work and for not having anyone to cover my shift. So I called the person that was supposed to cover my shift for that day and his response was that he didn’t realize that he was busy that day and he forgot to let me know that I should find someone else.  

All in all, I found that the system who had a simple hierarchy where the workers reported to one leader and that one leader would communicate with the big boss worked the best. Through the simple hierarchy we were able to improve our teamwork and to help the business to run smoother for everyone. When in comparison to my other job where nobody had any respect for the boss and for the rules that were imposed by the company Lifetime seemed much more professional and a better team to be part of. None of the jobs I worked at had any dual authority because none of them believed in splitting up teams, although I think that this model would have worked very well for my job at Lifetime since the competition to earn the $50 at the end of the month was a huge motivation for everyone. The Simple Hierarchy was a perfect fit for me at one job while on the other one where it wasn’t as enforced it really ruined the teamwork perspective of the job.

The decision of a lifetime

I was born in Romania and my parents left the country without me in early 2000's. They one day saw the opportunity in a newspaper to apply for full citizenship rights for America in a lottery style system. They immediately signed up and within a month they got a response that they won the lottery. The problem was that the lottery only included two citizenships so they had a hard decision to make, they either disregard the free citizenships to go to move to a better life and then try to bring their kid there or to stay in Romania and not feel like they abandoned their son.

They ended up realizing that this was a great opportunity for our family and that they could later figure out how to bring me to America also. They eventually left me with my grandparents for a couple of years until they were sure that they had a place to live and a place for me to grow up at. Although I struggled to understand their thinking for many years after that and I even felt so abandoned to the point of me not wanting to come to America to live with them anymore I slowly over the years started to realize that they made the right decision. Over the 12 years that I have been in America we have frequently visited Romania and each time after seeing how bad the economy and the education system is I started to understand more and more at what one of a kind opportunity they had and that they at that time realized that in order to give me a better future they had to be opportunistic and make sacrifices.

This has been a life lesson for me and a lesson that my parents always tell me about. They always emphasize that at one point in my life an opportunity will come up and I have to be aware of it when it comes. This opportunity will never come twice so once I see it I have to act on it and take advantage of it. I have always asked them at how they were able to just act on the opportunity in an impulsive manner and leave everything they owned in Romania including me. Their response was always the same; although it was the hardest decision they ever had to make and they were both depressed for a long time after they arrived in America and even debated many times to just go back and be reunited with their family their friends and all of the little things that they liked about Romania. But in the end they always came to the realization that this sacrifice was not done for their own benefit but more for my benefit and for me to be raised in a more civilized society where I would have more opportunities to move up in life and achieve more.

Because of their advice I already had one opportunity when I was in high school I got invited to a chess boot camp where a lot of good chess player from around the world would come and either practice with us or host mini info sessions to help the more inexperienced kids get better at chess. At the time I would regularly go to chess competitions and often I would end up in the top 3. I felt pretty confident in my skills and I didn’t even think about me going to this boot camp since I thought it would be a waste of time and it wouldn’t be that fun to spend 2 months of time in the summer to play chess every day. But regardless of what I thought I realized that this was a great opportunity for me to get better at the game and to learn from the grandmasters that were going to be there over the summer. Me realizing that this was a special opportunity to develop myself and my taking it was truly a blessing because the first couple of tournaments after the boot camp I finished undefeated in each single one. After that moment I realized that no opportunity can ever go ignored and I have to realize that all of the opportunities in life are one of a kind and I have to take advantage of every single one when they come just like my parents did fifteen years ago.