Day 9: Leaning to Swim

May 15, 2012

Today we had class then we spent the rest of the day at the beach.

In class today we were learning about attributions, and preconceived ideas and beliefs that we give to cultural groups. Attribution is how we find reason behind an action.

During class we heard a ton of yelling. Some of the members of my class attributed the yelling to the natives attempting to take over a beach.

Before our trip we were warned that sometimes the locals do not react well to tourists so they kick them off the buses or the beaches.

So instead of thinking that the yelling was coming from people having fun at the beach, our minds quickly jumped to beaches being taken over and our afternoon being destroyed. We were planning on spending the day at the beach.

Luckily the beaches were not being taken over, so we were able to spend the entire day at the beach.  

In class today we also learned about egocentric bias. This is when we compare our own behavior to other people. Before class today, I didn’t realize that that is exactly what I do. I use myself as a reference point quite frequently in situations.

Since I like to travel and I plan to do a ton more in the future, I’m thankful that I’ve learned this quality about myself, because now I can work on improvement. I realize now that people are different because of the cultures they grow up in and it is not fair to compare them to myself.

In addition to trying to fix that flaw in my life, I worked on fixing another flaw in my life.

Confession time:

I am 20-years-old and I can’t swim.

I’m not exactly sure how I don’t know how to swim. I took lessons. I guess we must have just moved before I made it to the deep end.

So for the last 20 years of my life I’ve had to make up excuses for not knowing how to swim. I used excuses like:

- “I’m just really tired today”

- “I don’t feel like getting my hair wet”

- “I don’t really like lakes, I’m more of a pool girl”

These were all lies. I was just embarrassed that I didn’t know how to swim, but this summer I’ve decided to overcome this fear.

Today I learned how to tread water, do the breaststroke and do the sidestroke. It was a very productive day.

I learned a lot about myself, and others today. It was also a beautiful beach day!

I love Hawaii!