Grant

Grant Siebring

I was born in Central Iowa, I've lived in the same old farm house al of my life, my family used to be dairy farmers but we gave that. I have been to several other states. I used to go to Colorado every summer when I was little. In the last few years, I have been to Florida, California, Arizona, New York, and Washington D.C. I also went to Ukraine and other parts of Europe when I was 5 years old, but I was too young to remember what happened. Growing up in Iowa, I spent a lot of time indoors playing Playstation because we didn't have any close neighbors. We ate a lot of corn and meet because thats what Iowans do. And now, instead of farming, my Father buys and sells farming equipment instead of using it. During the South America project, I learned how a co-op works, and what we could do to help a 3rd world farming community. We learned that Guyana makes coffee. I also learned how to make a wiki, and I learned how post a keynote on a wiki. I also got some experience in turning random facts and ideas into a proposal. I also learned how to work In a group even when one or two of the members contribute absolutely nothing to the project.

During the Middle Eastern project, I learned a lot more about the culture of the middle east instead of the economy like I did in the last project. I also learned that when we all do our own thing, we kind of fail as a group, but when we all decide on who will do what, we make a pretty good team. Some of the things that I was surprised to learn about the middle was that something that seems positive here, such as a thumbs up, may come off as an insult over there. I was also surprised to learn how much they value hospitality. It was interesting learning how their daily lives are also different, like how haggling is common in a market place and it's almost weird if you don't do it. Probably the weirdest thing I learned was that the left hand is usually used for body cleansing, and it is seen as rude and disgusting if you ever use your left hand to shake hands with someone or pass someone something with the left hand.

During the Asia project. I learned how to work around schedule conflicts. There were several days where one or two of my group members were gone and we had to find a way to pick up for their slack, or if we needed their work, we found new things to work on to keep the project growing. I also learned how to learn and work even when the subject is depressing. Learning about human rights is always a sad subject so when doing research for this project I just had to suck it up, read the facts, and keep going to the project would grow. I also leaned how wild brain storming ideas can actually help projects. Our project came to a point where we still had plenty of work time but we had no idea what else we could add to it, thats where my ideas were able to come in, which helped us improve our project. Over all, I learned a lot about working with a group and about human rights crimes in Asia, making me a better worker and a more cultural aware person.