Bad Apples?

So this week began with a “Pick-me-up” (Activity held on Mondays and Wednesdays to get the students a stimulating start to the day and get them going) revolving around the concept of “bad apples.” We listened to an episode of “This American Life” where the host was discussing with a professor about whether or not one person’s attitude can affect the whole group. The professor had held a test that yielded some interesting results about the idea. It seems that someone with a personality or attitude that could be labeled as a bad apple attitude, had a strong tendency to bring the morale and motivation of the group down a considerable amount. What made it so interesting, more so than you’d think, was how closely it related to our group here at Big Picture.

Throughout this year at Big Picture, my only one due to me being a senior, has revealed a lot about the nature of relationships with friends, classmates, loved ones, and authority figures such as the advisors here. There definitely a level of comfort here that can’t be attained with the changing schedules and classrooms of typical school which has created many positive effects on the students. However, there are two sides to the coin and there has been many incidents where tempers have flared and insults have been swapped in the heat of an argument. I myself don’t think these are necessarily the habits of a few bad apples, just the natural tendencies of a group of people that have been together for a long time in a closed environment, each with their own tasks to accomplish despite distractions. These outbursts are natural, uncommon, and perfectly reasonable given the conditions the people are in when they arise.

I believe that the bad apples are the ones who have no reason to lash out, slack off, or point out every little obstacle that could make a task seem impossible. I think that we all have our bad days, I’ve had a few and I’ve seen plenty around the group before on many occasions, some people tend to have more than others, are more easily tested than others. I find that I myself am a rather resilient person in terms of letting things “get to me” than the majority of people in Big Picture, even all of them actually. I have more patience for the others and have ways of avoiding the annoyances and not being concerned with any remarks that may try to get me down. I find myself using my methods to try and help others to cheer up when a bad apple move has put them down and I have been successful on a few, happy occasions.

While this is a place for working and getting things done, we have emotions and they’re prevalent in all the things we do here, at least in some small way.  We’re all sensitive to certain things and with all the time we spend together, many of us know what buttons to push as one student said so eloquently. So all I hope for after I finish Big Picture is that people know not to exploit their knowledge of each other for hurting the ones they work with every single day.