Soliya final reflection

Soliya has been a quite different platform from a lot of things that I have been exposed to. I never had the same experience talking to someone on Facebook or skype. It was very beneficial as a cross-cultural program. I was part of an exchange program back in high school where my class and I traveled to Denmark for 10 days and then the Danish students came to Egypt the semester after. We all had to travel there in order to be able to complete and benefit from the program successfully, but with Soliya we were all in the same place virtually. It was different because we were able to connect on a different level and to find people who think the same way as you are thousands of miles away. It was just 2 hours a week, so we would discuss the topics and then I can actually apply what we said to my daily life right away and see for myself if its correct or not.

The topics we discussed were very interesting. They varied from identity, religion, politics, conversations we have with people around us, emotional interactions, appearance, situations where we felt like a minority or we were threatened by our identity in a certain way and how did we react, to the impact of social media. Each of these topics raised a lot of new information that I personally didn’t know and made me think in a different way than I used to before hearing everyone’s opinion on the matter. For example, when we talked about the impact of social media some people felt like it was time consuming and that people ignore their studies or religious duties because of social media. I however, disagreed on that fact because while people ignore their duties it’s not social media’s fault but it’s actually ours because I can waste my time playing games or reading a book if I want to. Another person actually felt like social media raises more cases of racism, homophobia, because groups are getting together, for good or for bad. Then came up how social media affects body image. I always thought that social media affects women negatively when it comes to body image. It objectifies women somehow and lures them into putting a certain image of the perfect body. But one of my group members disagreed with me and actually thought that social media affects women positively because it allows us to look at different body types and images of others on social media and it allows you to accept yourself and others at the same time. I never actually thought of it that way until that girl actually pointed it out.

So, this was just a small glimpse of how our sessions went and how everyone had the freedom to say whatever they think on the matter while being respected and valued by others. That’s what I loved most by program and I would definitely love to sign up to it once again to engage with more people and open myself to more opinions, topics, and cross-cultural experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solyia reflection 1

Solyia has been a quite different platform from a lot of things that I have been exposed to. The chatroom consists of 5 girls and the instructor. The first session was a bit awkward. Everyone introduced themselves to the rest of the group and shared a few things about themselves. The instructor then asked each one of us to write down 7 things that make up our identity and then we took turns to share them with one another. After that the instructor gave us 5 minutes to write down questions that we would like to know about one another to get to know each other more. A girl asked what everyone wants to become in the future. Someone else asked what TV series we loved watching. I asked if they had one super power what would it be? me and another girl agreed on reading other people’s minds another girl said she wanted to be invisible because that way she could go through the airport and hop on a plane anytime she felt like it, and I actually thought that this was pretty cool because I love traveling as well and I never actually thought of that. And that was it for the first session.

The second session I had some technical issues. I logged in and didn’t find anyone in the chat. It took a while until people started to show up and actually start the discussion. The topic of this session was emotional interactions. Mostly how someone’s questions can make a conversation better or worse. If you ask a person good questions it will seem like you are an interesting person, in terms of hobbies and interests and you might easily find a lot of things in common. The second part of the discussion was dedicated to “appearance” and how consciously or unconsciously has an effect on how you view a person. Appearance says a lot about a person’s personality, religion, and lifestyle. There was a fact that I read once that said that the first thing people notice about someone is their shoes. Your shoes say a lot whether this person is wearing a sports shoes, high heels, and whether their shoes are clean or dirty. Also, in Egypt appearance does matter as in some places they don’t allow hijabi women to enter certain places, which I believe is very unnecessary. People should be able to wear what they want without having any constraints on whether they will be allowed to enter that place or not.

Games Reflection

Reflecting on games is quite an enjoyable task. Growing up, and still up till this day, playing games whether online or on my phone is part of my daily routine.

I played five games, one was about poverty, the other was the sleep deprived mother,  one was about partying, child abuse, and defying gender roles.

The poverty game was designed very well, I liked the colors, the way the questions and choices were popping out, it had some sound effects as well. When it came to the way the game made me feel, I felt really bad especially that I was never in that situation. Putting myself into someone else’s shoes was pretty hard. Each decision had harsh consequences and I had to give up everything in order to survive. At times I wanted to help others, but I did have the choice to because I won’t have enough cash to survive afterwards. So, I had to be a terrible and harsh person most of the time to everyone in order to make it to another day and wait till the day I get my paycheck.

The sleep deprived mother game was designed on google forms which made it very simple and sweet. The game made me realize the consequences of having a child to care for and the responsibilities that come with it. No matter what choice I make, I still end up losing sleep. There is no way that you will actually end up having more than a 6-hour sleep and you pretty lucky if you actually got them.

The partying game was okay I didn’t really like or hate it. I felt like it’s a bit boring most of the questions were about you in a huge party and friends keep on offering alcohol drinks, would you or would you not accept their offer and then your answer would take you to the next section, so I felt that it’s a bit repetitive. Also the background picture was the same throughout all the slides, so think I would have changed that a bit to make the game more appealing. On the other side I liked the fact that the game included some informative videos that were quite interesting.

The childhood abuse game made me feel really bad for orphans and how they don’t have a home even if they get a foster home, it’s never a final stay for them.  Their faith depends on the family they stay with. if they are lucky to have good foster parents they end up being good people, but if they don’t, they get treated terribly and get abused or they end up on the streets because they don’t have a home or kind people to take care of them.

As for the defying gender roles game, i didn’t think it was realistic at all. I get that some families are very traditional and they are strongly influenced by society’s dictated gender norms and roles when it comes to the treatment of boys against girls. I know that some families pressure their girls to do things that they don’t want to do like stay at home and not get a proper education or get married at an early age. However, parents in the store will not control what game their child buys as a kid. I myself grew up to like boy’s toys more than girl’s. i loved playing with remote control cars and planes, i used to love playing soccer at school everyday. i didn’t enjoy playing with dolls and barbies or sit around to gossip with the other girls at school. However, when i grew up my parents made me a curfew and made me go home early just because  ” i’m a girl”. and also when I graduated high school my parents didn’t control my major but they didn’t allow me to go to university abroad again because ” I’m a girl” so there are some struggles we face and each family shows it by there own way of parenting, but not exactly the way it was done in the game.

Project Idea

My idea for this project is to create a game that helps people with managing their time. As a professional Athlete and a full time student one of the main challenges and a skill that i have acquired over the years of playing rhythmic gymnastics is time management. The game would consist of various situations where the player would have to choose how to deal with them and their consequences.