Day 15: Surfing

May 21, 2012

After class today we went surfing!

Our instructors were surfers who worked for the Surf the Nation organization that we had helped earlier on our trip. One of the girls, Kristin, employed by Surf the Nation graduated from Cedarville…what a small world.

Upon hearing that Kristen graduated from Cedarville, I thought of the Small World Hypothesis that we learned about in class today. According to the hypothesis, everyone in the world is separated by six people.

It truly amazes me that everyone in the world is connected through just six people. And with the addition of social media, people are only separated by four.

I really wasn’t planning on going since I’m not the best swimmer in the world, but as I was watching everyone else have fun, I decided to give it a try too.

In class we also talked about networking and how people come together. One of the ways people come together is through homophily, people are attracted to other people based on similarity.

Now that I think about it, I applied homophily today at the surfing lesson.

There were five possible instructors: an American woman, two American men, and two men from Bangladesh.

I wanted the women or one of the American guys. And now that I think about it that’s probably due to homophily.

My instructor’s name was Chris, one of the white guys, and he was super nice. My face must have been revealing some nonverbal cues because right a way he asked me if I was scared. I told him about my lack skills but he assured me that everything would be all right.

And it was. I didn’t drowned. I didn’t see any sharks. And I was able to catch a wave.

After surfing we came back to the conference center, ate some diner, and went to bed. We were exhausted!