Post #8- Altruism in Service

In many of my previous posts I have referenced my experience in training with the United States Marine Corps, and going through the process of becoming a Marine. Altruism is a virtue that runs deep in the United States Military. Many give the ultimate sacrifice to protect our country, which no economic value could ever suffice for that kind of service. I had an extremely unique experience in looking at the psychological effects of altruism in a training environment, and how that is altered when economic decisions are reintroduced as a part of life. To better explain this some background information is needed.

The specific program I am in is for current college student who are looking to pursue a career as an officer in the United States Military. The training is broken up into two, 6-week, training increments. Upon completion of the second increment you officially earn the title of Marine, and commission as a second lieutenant upon completion of your last year of school. During a 6-week increments you are stripped of all your civilian possession, given all necessary gear for training, and are allowed no access to any information outside the training environment. The first three weeks of training are non-stop, 18 hour training days, 7 days a week. After the first three weeks of training, we were allowed 24-hour "liberty" periods to have complete freedom to do whatever we needed to prepare for the next week of training. During these liberty periods many candidates go off base to get hotel rooms, and enjoy some of the luxuries they had been deprived of for the past three weeks.

In the first three weeks, the atmosphere of training is tense. Anyone can be sent home at any time for a variety of reasons including failure to adapt to military lifestyle, performance issues, or integrity violations. Every person who chooses to take on this challenging training has similar personality traits, namely an extremely competitive mindset, a type "A" personality, but, most importantly, unwavering unselfishness. Despite the fact that many of us are competing for a job after college, the drive for candidates to help out their peers is excessive in many aspects. We work as one cohesive unit to accomplish each challenge thrown at us in training. Without distractions of the personal life, cell phones, economic decisions, we were able to remain focused and maintain an altruistic atmosphere.

Upon completion of the first three weeks, my platoon left in high spirits, feeling a sense of accomplishment, and ready to reap the rewards of three weeks of hard work. Over liberty, many reconnected with their families, friends, and essentially the rest of the world. On top of that, we were once again exposed to making economic decisions such as where to purchase a hotel, what gear to buy for training, and where to get food. The intrinsic nature of selfishness that goes into economic decision making shifted the focus of many candidates. Many lost focus on the end goal and developed a more self-centered mindset in such a short time period.

Returning to training the following Sunday, there was a noticeable difference in individual attitudes, as well as the general moral of the company. People made decisions more focused on the well-being of themselves, rather than the well-being of the platoon, or company. Many were less willing to help with small tasks, and more often candidates had to be "voluntold" to do something rather than individuals stepping up to help out others. We had no distractions during the first three weeks and focus was relatively easy to maintain. Now that candidates had once again been exposed to the selfishness of economic decision making, there was somewhat of a psychological shift in the way we functioned as a team.

There was noticeable improvement with the issue addressed above in the following liberty periods. In the article given referencing altruism, and its effects on production in the workplace, there are several scenarios similar to the experience I had. One example that had a striking similarity was the example referencing an 18-month old, and his/her willingness to help in the presence of a reward, or not. At Officer Candidate School, when we were finally rewarded for that first three weeks of training, a willingness to help other significantly dropped.

Service to others brings a perspective to people that drives productivity in the workplace. Good deeds, are often followed by reciprocal good deeds. Working to help others drives an individual's focus towards an unselfish outlook that greatly benefits the team as a whole. In order for our work force to improve overall productivity, we need to first look at the motivations of the individual worker, and drive those motivations towards a team-oriented ideology.

Blog post #7- Risk and Uncertainty

Every decision that we make, regardless of whether it is and financial, social, or personal decisions, has an impact on our future. For the most part, the greater the decisions, the bigger impact it will have on your future.  Certain people make their decisions with an eye towards the future, more so than others. Others prefer to focus on the present and make the decision that is most optimal in the present, with little regard for how it will affect their future. In my own personal experience, I have had brief periods when my decision making has had little regard for the future, and other periods when every decision, small or large, was made with an “eye towards the future.”

Prior to arriving at college, mainly speaking of the high school years, my decision making in all aspects of life was mainly driven by what seemed optimal in the here and now, with little regard for the future. I consider myself lucky with the freedom I was given to make my own decisions, with very little limitations. With so much uncertainty in future outcome from decisions made in high school, the risk was somewhat unknown in this situation. Many high school students, like myself, do not have a clear path for them at such a young age, and have little to no preference for what their future career will be. This lowers the risk of many decisions being made because no clear outcome is preferred. I chose the classes that I found interesting, activities I found fun, and had economic assistance to make any, responsible, economic decisions I needed to without accumulating any debt.

Once I arrived at college the dynamic completely shifted. Since freshman year of college I have been working with the Marine Officer Selection Office to work to become a Marine officer. From the beginning of freshman year on, all of my decisions have been made with regard to accomplishing this goal in the future. Financially, this allowed for a lot of flexibility in decision making, but with a budget. My parents agreed to pay for tuition and housing, while book, food, etc, had to be paid by me. The Marine Corps has allotted me a stipend each semester to pay for these items. This has given me the flexibility to make economic decisions, to work towards achieving my goal, with limitations. This is very similar to a budget restriction incurred by a business, and I, like many businesses, had to decide how to allocate this stipend in the most effective way to improve my progress towards becoming a marine officer.

This career path also had a huge impact on my choice of major. The Marines don’t require a specific major choice for the program, so I had complete freedom in my choice. This eliminated any risk in major choice. Instead of choosing a major that may have been slightly outside my ability, for better job prospects, but with the risk of not succeeding in that major and having to switch, I chose a manageable major that allowed me to get my education without future career implications affecting my decision. This seems to be a rare situation, when compared with organization, as rarely do corporations find themselves with absolute freedom over their decisions, and no effect on their future outcome.

My situation is unique to many college students because of the fact that my ultimate goal drew up a path that limited the amount of decisions that I actually had to make, which allowed for more freedom in some aspects, and several limitations on actions. For example, instead of gaining experience in the economic field over the summers, to gain more knowledge on the subject, I was instructed to go to training for the Marine Corps in Virginia. So while this limited my ability to pursue other interests, it gave me financial freedom, once the training had been completed, to pursue any interests I had. My mindset is very similar to the millions of other who joined the armed services. While the actual service provides a lot of limitations and restrictions, many see “the light at the end of the tunnel,” so to speak. In other words, many armed services members see the freedom that serving in the military allows in the future as far as choosing colleges (paid for by the G.I. Bill), as well as other financial and secondary benefits. 

Post #6 Course Reflection

After writing several of these posts, it is clear the intention is for much of the content in the blog posts to connect with the other posts. One clear example of this is with the experience in organizations post, and the team structure post. In the experience with organizations post, we essentially gave our personal definitions of internal structure within organizations, while in the team structure blog post, we build on our own personal definitions of organizational structure by attaching them to whatever official definition exists for organizational structure in the textbook. We also looked at the efficiencies and inefficiencies of working in our specific organization, and what may be the underlying causes, in the experience in organizations blog post. In the team structure blog post, we built off of our analysis of efficiencies and inefficiencies by looking at the textbook's definition of traits of successful organizations.

Addressing course themes by connecting them to subject matter in our blog post is a semi-new way for me to pick up on course material in an econ class. Without, your suggestions of what course themes to connect to the blog subject material, I would find it particularly difficult to find other course themes to weave into my response to blog post prompt. Your suggestions of what to connect the information to, help me better understand what to look for in the prompt, from the perspective of the course.

At the beginning of the course, I wrote the blog posts the day of the due date, or sometimes after, with little to no planning. I now plan my response a day or so before the due date in order to give myself time to mull over my ideas and make sure they can form an adequate response. Then the morning before the due date I write the blog post using the outline I had crafted the day before. This allows me to better articulate my ideas without completely rambling on, as I did in some of the earlier blog posts. I developed this process due to the feeling of being slightly overwhelmed with trying to collect my thoughts in the right way, when articulating my blog posts early  on.

As far as writing the prompt, what I enjoy more than anything is clarity. I understand that many of these posts are intended for us to answer the prompt, but then expand on the ideas suggested in the prompt. I feel that this is best done by having a clear prompt, that asks a specific set of questions, and then suggests the best course themes that the blog post should relate too. This would allow students to not get caught up about the specifics of what the prompt is asking for, and focus more on expanding their subject matter to cover the course themes. A good example of this is by the prompt for this specific blog posts. This prompt asks specific questions, but allows for students to expand on any other concerns they may have with the class going forward.