Personally I was a huge fan of werewolf. I like the class atmosphere and I know for a fact everyone in there liked it too. All the people seemed to be having so much fun and they all were engaging in conversation and just enjoying the experience. I know from personal experience what that game is like because I have played mafia and town of salem. All wonderful games that are great for breaking the ice between strangers. Also one student said that it is much better to play as strangers and I would 100% agree on that. The game started out sort of awkward and slow but once people began to participate in dialogue it was a lot easier for us to play along. I was virginia Wolf and the person I picked died very early.
My favorite part about the game was trying to figure out who was who and lying to the other players in order to gain a better hand. It was hard to interpret the truth because we didn’t know anything about each other. I am excited to play another game next week. I picked Forbidden Island because it just sounded interesting. I think this game is related to leadership because once the second person started talking people began to join in. People felt a lot better and were more at ease with each other.

Overall it was an amazing game that I truly enjoyed and I am looking forward to playing forbidden island next week. I wish the class times were more frequent, like maybe twice a week. That is because I felt a great relief of stress while playing and I’m excited to play more games later on in the semester.

On March 29th, I had the opportunity to attend a campus event that featured a motivational and life changing story that was Marcus Samuelsson’s leadership and upbringing to fame. This event was centered around his leadership that he spearheaded throughout his experiences in the culinary industry. Throughout the night, the audience members were able to understand through Marcus’s intense words, that his story was a lot deeper than just food. Marcus would go into depth of how his love for food, community, and culture would drive his life into the spotlight.
To start, Marcus shared the story of his upbringing. While many would naturally be disheartened to hear the details of how his mother died shortly after birth and how he became an orphan with his older sister in Ethiopia, Marcus instead focused on the leadership of the nurse who saved him and his sibling’s life. The nurse (through breaking the law) brought him and his sister into her home, which would lead to their adoption. There seemed to be a trend when it came to his loved ones reflecting leadership since once he was adopted, his new mother and father (as well as his aunts and uncles from all over the world) did everything they could in order to raise Marcus and his 8 siblings in a way that would inspire them and others.
Making a segway into his admiration for food, Marcus spoke on how his grandmother’s cooking and being able to travel around Sweden, England and Jamaica had inspired him to further pursue his love for food. From watching the leadership of others, Marcus was determined to take a risk toward his own goals of self-leadership and work as a chef in a 3 star michelin restaurant in france. While he didn’t know much of the French language, he did everything that he could in order to be the best that he could be. He worked in the restaurant (away from his family) for a few years until he was driven with passion to be more than just a cook. He wanted to be an entrepreneur and start his own restaurant. When he confronted his boss about this idea, he was abruptly struck down by him saying, “There are no blacks that can own their own restaurant. You should stay here and work for me”. This comment from his boss didn’t diminish his dream though, in fact, it fueled it. In a few months he would be moving to New York in order to start his own restaurant.
Marcus moved to New York and was immediately in awe of the busyness, noise and possibility that lined the streets. In order to stay on his feet in the expensive city, he lived with 5 other roommates in a small space where it was a luxury to be able to sleep on the couch. Additionally, he got a job at a luxurious restaurant in a similar manner to how he worked when he was in France. Eventually he realized through a conversation with his mother that the people who he was serving in the big apple (mostly rich bankers and businessmen) weren’t the clientele that he originally grew up with and found his passion of cooking for. Therefore, he took the biggest leap of faith in following his dream and finally opened his first restaurant in the tougher side of the city, Harlem. This was where he met the most soulful and loyal individuals that focused on Marcus and his business for more than just the meal.
Following the recent opening of his business, he was invited for a TV show called Top Chef and then later, rose in popularity to the degree where he served the President of the United States dinner. The most important part of this whole story is that while he reached his goal of starting his own business, he didn’t stop there with his leadership. Even more so, his leadership and fame didn’t change who he was on the inside, a caring and kind-hearted individual that wanted to share his passions with the world.
Overall, I think that taking risks in order to achieve goals is a great representation of self-leadership. The main point of leadership is the “leading” component. Being able to find it in yourself to take risks because you know that you will become a better version of yourself is a key aspect in self-leadership. Those risks are what inspire others to take those same steps outside of their comfort zone.
Throughout this year (at many points) I questioned what truly was the root cause of my admiration for science. I hoped that being able to find the root cause would help lead me in the direction of what industry that I choose for the next few years of my occupation and would provide me the most satisfaction in the work that I would be doing. I ended up finding something very similar to that of what Marcus found. My passion for science stemmed from the research that can be used to help others. This was something that Marcus was devoted to expressing as he continued to provide amazing food to people of all backgrounds. Likewise, my passion is to research in order to create something to help people from all backgrounds.
I am very honored to have been able to hear Marcus share his inspirational story of how to be a leader to others, you must first become a leader to yourself. While I was not able to speak with him 1 on 1, I know that my energy from the crowd was still appreciated as I was also appreciative that he flew to Miami University all the way from New York. I would like to find out more information about Marcus and watch more of his cooking on shows such as Top Chef, and also see if there is an interview segment about how his dinner went at The White House during the Obama administration. It was very insightful to be able to hear Marcus speak on the raw story that was his upbringing, but I would love to also find out how other Food Network stars have been inspired as well from his leadership. One last thing that I would like to do is to get his cookbook so I can truly see what aspects of cooking have driven him to be so passionate about food.

Over the course of Friday, March 3rd through Sunday, March 5th the largest annual geeky event in Oxford was held. In case you don’t know, I’m talking about RECON. RECON is a time when the League of Geeks and all of its member organizations get together (in the form of taking over the Armstrong Student Center) to host a weekend full of geeky fun. There were many things going on ranging from playthroughs of Blood on the Clocktower with Meeples to Cosplay contests and from a Phineas and Ferb marathon to many different and themed “Beat the Geek” trivia contests. Since you’re reading this review, you may be asking the ever important question of what activities I took part in? Well don’t worry, I’m going to talk all about my time at RECON.

Sadly, my time with RECON was limited by other commitments, but I made sure to make some time to visit Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. My time at RECON started just before 7 pm Saturday night, where I was able to see the Comedians Andrew Rudick and Ben Brainard. I have looked forward to seeing Ben’s performance ever since I learned of the possibility of him coming to RECON sometime last semester. I have been following his YouTube page for well over a year at this point and I have found him to be very entertaining and I appreciated his energy. After seeing him perform live, I have to say that he lived up to the hype. He was able to riff off of the audience’s energy and make consistent references to earlier jokes in ways that fit his style of comedy well. After the show, there was a meet and greet with the comedians, where I got the chance to get a picture with Ben (see below), but that was not the end of my Saturday RECON adventures.

I ended the night joining a friend in Pavilion C to play some board games and hope to win one of the many prizes that were being given away. At the Meeples hosted freeplay, there were tons and tons of games to choose from, even with countless groups already in the middle of games. My friend and I started with a simple game of Codenames with some people that he knew. This was a great start because I’m a big fan of Codenames and it is a simple enough game to play later in the night when everyone is starting to get tired. In the couple games that we played my team was able to remain undefeated. Playing a game got everyone in our group a token which we exchanged for an entry to win a prize. I later found out that the people I was playing with had also put their entries into the same set of metallic dice that I put my entry into, but none of us won them.

After the Saturday giveaway winners were announced the pavilion cleared out a bit and we were nearing the end of the day’s portion of RECON, so my friend and I picked a random game that had a relatively short estimated playtime. That game happened to be Point Salad. As we were setting up the game, we happened to recruit someone who knows how to play, which made the whole learning process at least twenty times simpler. For anyone who doesn’t know, Point Salad is an aptly named point salad style of game that involves drafting a deck of cards, sorry I mean a salad of vegetables. Each card has a vegetable on one side and an objective on the other, so each turn you can either hoard objectives or the vegetables that make your salad. By the end we all had some peculiar salads that weren’t much to boast about, but plenty of points to go around. My salad was primarily crafted with combinations of peppers, cabbages, and onions in a way that I’m sure Gordon Ramsey would scoff at. Thankfully he isn’t the judge of this game, and I was able to come out just a few points ahead of my competition.

That game of Point Salad may have been the end of my Saturday at RECON, but I was able to make it back on Sunday just long enough to play one game of Red Rising. I chose this game and found some strangers to play it with me because it was one of the many play-and-win games that Meeples was offering. Pretty much if you play the game you get a chance to win it. Red Rising, which is based on a book series of the same name, is a hand-management, combo-building game. There were a lot of moving parts to the game that I could not find a way to optimize in my favor. Although I thought I was doing a good job, I came in a very distant second place in a group of three. All-in-all the game was very enjoyable to play and I would definitely consider playing it again. This loss did mark the end of my RECON experience, but in total my experience at RECON was more than enjoyable.

I had been looking forward to this RECON for a while and it did not disappoint. This is the most time I spent at a RECON event in my nearly complete time at Miami and I regret that I was not able to be there for more of it. I got to see a comedian that I have liked for a while and I got to play a couple of games with some people that I know and some that I didn’t know beforehand, but I missed out on a bunch of things at the event that I wish I was able to go to, such as a couple of “Beat the Geek” trivia contests that I probably would have done well in, a game show, and the Miami Mouse Club’s presentation of “Disney Songs That Go Way Harder Than They Should.” I feel like these activities could have only added to the fun that I had at RECON. I’m grateful for the League of Geeks for putting on such a great event, and especially for Meeples for having a great and open free play.

This week in Tabletop Games and Leadership, we played Ultimate Werewolf. If you don’t already know this is a classic example of a social deduction game. We were assigned roles, either on the villagers’ side or the werewolves’ side, with many players having some form of special ability. The werewolves are hungry and each night the werewolves choose someone to eat, eliminating them from play for the rest of the game. The villagers are tasked with choosing someone to execute at the end of each day, hoping that they can find the werewolves before it’s too late. Some key roles that we used in our playthrough were the seer who could check if one player is a werewolf each night.

In this game there is a certain level of mandated risk, because everybody votes on somebody to execute each day and in doing so the villagers risk executing teammates. Werewolves also risk eating teammates during the nighttime, but this risk is lower than for the villagers. To minimize these risks players employed various strategies in an attempt to win the game. Some people, such as myself, decided to just be open about our role in an attempt to gain trust, others shared a fabricated role to portray innocence, and the rest refused to share in an attempt to keep their important role hidden. All of these choices employed different styles and amounts of risk. Being open puts a player in danger of being an open target for the opponent, lying leaves you vulnerable to people finding out the truth, and silence garners suspicion.

The hardest part of the game for me was determining how to balance risk and reward when creating a personal gameplan. Because the only way for anyone to truly verify your role you would have to be voted off. There were, obviously, ways that you could be checked that would make your role more trusted, but not truly guaranteed. Every decision you make changes the risk landscape of the game. It changes what’s risky about you and your gameplay as well as affects the rest of your team, especially when there were things like the lovers and Virginia Woolf, which both involved a second death when certain people died. An example would be that I revealed that I was the PI, which comes with the ability to check if a player or either of their neighbors are a werewolf one time. Although I was trying to establish trust, doing this let the werewolves know that I was against them and is likely the reason I was eaten that night.

While playing this game, there were a couple examples of leadership and of my classmates being leaders. Like in the dancing guy video, at the very beginning of the first day there was a split second of silence before anybody spoke, then someone said the first thing, something about how do we want to approach this first day, then someone else said that we could go around saying our roles to try and figure out something suspicious. Followed by me speaking out with my role and a continued cascade of people speaking up, until just about everyone was speaking or at least had spoken. The first person to speak set off this chain reaction that essentially began the game. A similar thing happened for the first vote, people started voting pretty quickly after the first vote went out. Another instance of leadership that occurred was when the seer, which is a very important role for the villagers came out and admitted their role to say who they have cleared. This allowed them to guide the conversation in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise and lead the villagers to finding the werewolves sooner. In general, this game’s biggest tie to leadership is in the decision-making process, because it allows players to make decisions openly and be affected by the decisions of others. This relates to its next biggest tie to leadership as well. This second tie would be the team strategization aspect, in which members of each team have to try to strategize without knowing each other’s true role or intentions.

The deductive reasoning required for this game is one of my favorite parts. I love to try and untangle the web of truths, lies, and partial truths that the other players are spinning. I also like to try to spin my own little web, but I am not always good at lying and am very risk averse, so I am never sure what lies to go with and when. Although I didn’t get a chance to contribute much to the dialogue, it was still interesting to see how everyone else was slowly unfolding the nightly happenings. Something that I wasn’t a fan of was the night stage. It makes sense for the game, but it feels long and drawn out while you as a player are not doing much, even if you have a role with an ability. However, this is a relatively small drawback that shouldn’t deter new players. This game is one that I think could fit very well with general audiences, because the rules are relatively simple and it’s about interacting with others. It also could do well with people who like to solve puzzles and use reasoning to solve problems. Because of this, I think my roommate Blake would really enjoy this game.

Time stories was my favorite game we played all semester. Due to the many choices and paths possible in the game it ties to leadership very easily. Though group decisions are extremely important like most things generally one or two people stick out as leaders by the end of the game.

The hardest part of the game is how in-depth it is. Notes are very important to remember where things are and what items you need and have. It gets very complicated very quickly. In our play-through, we took lots of notes. Despite this, we made the wrong choice, leading to our character’s demise. Luckily, this is a game where multiple tries are expected.

I’d recommend this game to anyone who loves DND. Role-playing adds a lot of fun to this game, and someone who does not appreciate in-depth games wouldn’t enjoy T.I.M.E. Stories. This game was my favorite all semester and I am hoping to get my own copy to play with my friends when I have the money.

Ladies and Gentleman is a game that involves trust and leadership from both ends. The lady must trust the man to take leadership and earn money during the day while the lady has to take leadership when it comes down to deciding what to wear. To win the game the lady must be the best dressed at the ball. In order to be the best dressed the man must make enough money to buy her the clothing she needs.

The hardest part about this game was communicating with your partner. Our play session had randomly selected partners, this complicated things as not every partnership worked well together. My partner didn’t understand how to play the game so he made very little money, this resulted in my lady ending up in a very mixed up outfit. In my attempt to get as many stars as possible I accidentally got a dress made by a different designer. In the end I wasn’t able to attend the ball because due to having too many designers I didn’t have a dress.

I’d recommend this game to people who love roleplay games. While roleplay isn’t necessary for Ladies and Gentleman it adds a lot to the game. In the end, you get as much out of this game as you put into it also I’d recommend reading the instructions very carefully.