This week was focused on being more connected with the WTS community and I think that we achieved that. Once I chose my team, Impacts of Economic Inequality, everything kind of fell into place. We exchanged contact information and I met lots of other people too. Playing games in the dining hall was a great way to talk to and meet people. One of the ways I met a lot of people was when I played a game called Anomia. Once I played it, I learned a lot about how other people in What’s the Story think and how they solve problems. Finn taught us how to play the game and, while we got a little bit competitive, we became closer as a group. I also played a game called Psych, which tested my knowledge of the people I had just met.

The team I have committed to is Impacts of Economic Inequality with Stephie, Finn, Alaena, and Erik as our mentor. We are looking at how income inequality affects people in Vermont. Personally, I am looking at and interviewing people with opposing viewpoints to our groups, to help with embracing ignorance. Some of the people I am looking at and reaching out to are Robert Roper and Kurt Wright. My groupmates are looking at are colleges, universities, and VSAC, what the government and other organizations are doing, and looking at government connections. Today, our team helped make a definition for our topic and yesterday, we decided the question we are answering. The question we are answering is, How does economic inequality affect Vermonters? The team I have committed too is a hardworking group that gets our work done.

We have made big steps in terms of our story chasing plan. We decided to choose three people to interview and have at least one done by Thursday. We set the date for Thursday at 8 pm through Instagram or possibly Google Hangouts. In that chat, we will set the date for the next one and discuss what we have learned. We are also connected on Slack and have exchanged numbers as alternative ways to communicate. Our team’s plan for chasing our story is dividing and conquering. We will do research and share our findings every week. We will use a shared Google document to share our findings and insert links and bits of information we have found. We have a general outline for the second week of research, but will figure out the details later. We will reply/comment on our groupmates interviews to stretch our knowledge and learn more. Then we will write 250 words about what we learned in our interviews. We are looking at the person’s experience with economic inequality and their background(income-based). After our meeting on Thursday, we will create Week 2 documents for ourselves. We created an Instagram page to share with others and for people to learn more. My groupmates will help me learn and grow. Staying overnight was a great learning experience and I can’t wait to do it again.