Week7: My Impression of “Marshmallow Challenge”

Hi all,

Marshmallow challenge is a game that the teams made up of four people create a free-standing structure with some sticks of spaghetti, a tape, a string, and one marshmallow within 18 minutes, and teams compete with each other in terms of the height of the structure. Although the rule is quite simple and it sounds easy, to make the structure is actually so difficult. This game was held on this Monday and it seems that most of us enjoyed it. In this post, I am going to write how things went in my group, about the role which I played in the game, and about my thought and impression on the game as well.

On the first attempt, unfortunately my group failed to make a free-standing structure. This is because, I assume, we spent too much time to discuss which shape or structure could be worked or things like that. In other words, we did not have enough time to build a structure.

After Rab’s advice and lecture, we tried again and this time, we could make 30-cm structure, though this was not so high compared to other groups. On the second attempt, it seemed that we spared more time to construct. We planned to make like a firm foundation first (look at the picture below and see how stable our foundation was! lol), and then we wanted to add some other parts on the foundation in order to make higher structure. But, on our way to do that, the time was over.

I was like an idea generator I think. Since I was not sure what structure could be better, I just told many of my ideas off the top of my head. And also I tried to encourage other members to do something, but I am not sure whether my behavior made a difference or not.

Overall, the marshmallow challenge was really fun and what is more, I learned a lot from this game. It is really true that people tend to spend more time to discuss something rather than taking an action (and I suppose especially ICU students are highly likely to do so because we are (have been) encouraged to conduct discussions). In addition as Rab suggested, when we address a task, we often concentrate on the task at hand too much or in other words, we tend to miss other ways to approach the task. For example, we can find some information or tips by the internet. Or we can see how others are dealing with the task, get some ideas from them, and use the ideas. I felt that at least leaders should keep those things in their minds, and they need to seek many ways to approach the task. This will eventually bring them good outcome I believe.

Finally I want to express my appreciation to Rab for offering this very interesting game and also to my team members. Thank you :)