Rhiya's Visit to John Polanyi

Today we had an in-class visit from Rhiya whose goal was to provide us with feedback.  As a group, we briefly went over our journey from initially being put into a group and given our culminating task, to where we currently are with ut propro chart. Rhiya gave us great feedback specifically challenging the way we define our public model. A public model takes shape in many different forms when it comes to parks. Baycrest Park falls under a public model where visitors are free to roam with little to no restrictions. However, Tommy Thompson Park is also a public model with many restrictions placed on visitors. There was a disconnect between what we felt like a public model was versus what others felt a public model was. We quickly realized that for our benefits to make sense we need to verbally describe what a public model means to us.

Another big thing Rhiya touched on was our habit of assuming other people's actions and feelings. We did this a couple of times with our benefits where we based them off the assumption that people will follow rules, revenue for the park would increase, or even the idea that people will respect nature. These assumptions are easy to create benefits around which I believe is the reason we used them. However, we know that making assumptions about what will happen in a perfect world will not grow our thoughts because we are not preparing ourselves for outside conflicts and variables. Not to say assumption is all bad because realistically it is not something you can avoid. Going back to our lesson on possibilitisim, there is a lot that we know but a ton that we do not know, so giving ourselves a base is the only way we feel we can start from somewhere. All in all, we really appreciated Rhiya’s insights and dissecting of our thoughts because of our constant hunger to grow and expand our ideas.