Jaycee Snelson Week 10: Survivor

 Jaycee Snelson Week 10: Survivor



Ever since I was a kid my family and I have always watched the show Survivor. If you have never seen the show, it's where a group of strangers are placed on an island in Fiji where they build connections, compete in challenges, and vote people out until one person eventually wins $10.000. This conflict between connections and strategy leads to many tough choices between keeping connections or voting out a close ally for the sake of your game. 


The game comes down to one thing. 


The power of choice.


Every decision, every action,  all accumulated to create your own unique life path. Even the smallest choice can snowball into a large accomplishment or challenge you must face. 


For instance, the choice to write this blog or not could lead to a million possibilities. On the surface the choice seems to only affect my grade. As much as I enjoy writing these blogs every week, as I’m sure most of you guys share similar feelings, I know that these blogs have a direct effect on what grade I earn in this class. But it goes so much deeper than this. The choice to write this blog could affect the rest of my academic career. Not writing the blog, as already discussed, affects the grade earned in this class. However, a bad grade could lead to a rejection from college or another choice of choosing an easier class choice next year. So, I chose to write this blog and all the blogs to come.


But how will you use your power of choice?

Will you make choices that you think will benefit yourself the most? Choices that you think will benefit others the most? Or choices that you think are for the greater good of everyone it could affect?


Comments

  1. Disha MurugupandiyanJanuary 30, 2026 at 8:12 AM

    I think you ask an extremely compelling question at the end of your blog that, as you mention, goes much deeper than whatever appears on the surface. People make choices for many different reasons, including to please others, themselves, or even on impulse. These choices can tell you a lot about the characteristics and qualities of an individual. Personally, I do make quite impulsive decisions at certain times that allow it since I like to be free. For example, if I planned out a vacation, while I would make a list of places that I want to go or activities that I wish to do, I wouldn't plan out a very specific and detailed itinerary. I would allow myself to have the choice at the moment each day. Having a very specific schedule to stick to would constrict me and I probably wouldn't enjoy my vacation as much. While there are definitely drawbacks to impulsive decisions , they're just fun. On my trip to Hawaii during winter break, my family and I traveled with another family, and we would play 8-10 rounds of the board game Sequence every night of the trip, no matter the time. We split up into two groups of four (Kids vs. Adults) and let's just say us kids pummeled them every day. The games were filled with lots of trash talk, so when the adults were in the lead for the first time, they joked and said that they should do something to celebrate. In the end, we all ended up at the nearest grocery store, shopping for ice cream, which we ate at 2:00am in the morning. In the end, that impulsive decision to just get up and get ice cream was fun, and definitely a core memory that I will hold forever. To answer your question, since we live in a world that demands so much out of each and every one of us, I want to try to make choices that make me happy. Although it is inevitable that I will have to make choices that I dislike at some points in my life, I would want to try to be as happy as I can.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Casmin BuiFebruary 3, 2026 at 11:25 PM

    Hi Jaycee! I totally agree! I don’t think we realize how truly influential the power of choice is on ourselves and others, whether they would be the choice of opportunity or the choice of changing your own life or someone’s life. That’s certainly a major idea about power, as some people define it as the ability to influence themselves or others. I really like how you incorporated this show into your blog!

    It’s hard to believe that we have the ability to change many aspects of our lives with just a few choices, especially in these times (and we live in the Bay Area) as competition for major universities skyrockets. On that note, with college applications only a couple months away, a lot of parents are “encouraging” their kids to pursue careers that are big money makers, a few examples being to become a doctor, lawyer, and an engineer. And ultimately, these repeated expectations to perform well in school and pursue a forced goal suppresses the desire to go into any other field. Honestly, I’m very lucky to have parents who support me and my sister regardless of our majors and future careers, but this issue is scarily common among my peers. I would love to hear what you guys experience too! Hopefully in future generations, the power of choosing their futures will be more emphasized throughout their lives.

    Wonderful blog, Jaycee! I’m looking forward to reading your next one :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Josh KarthikeyanFebruary 5, 2026 at 2:12 AM

    Hi Jaycee, the show Survivor is a classic! It is such an interesting show because of how it expands on our instincts as humans. Hearing you describe the “accumulat[ion]” of “every decision” highlights how our experiences do not come from individual moments. They compound from each other. For instance, to learn how to play the piano requires continuous effort until you get this feeling of understanding which I personally describe as my brain “clicking.” I think it is extremely important to always acknowledge this compounding nature to give motivation for doing actions that may not be as fun or exciting but still important in the future. I think this is also what makes humans very special. We have this long term thinking skill which most animals do not. By being able to understand that something is worth doing even if it does not give the most amount of satisfaction from our chemical receptors, it enables us to build the future today from the centuries of labor that we, as a society, completed. To answer your question I will use my “power of choice” as a way to reflect on my current situation and pick the option that will best let me grow as a person.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Atharv Dua Q3 Blog #13 - The Egg Came First

Image
Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Well, chickens hatch from eggs but chickens also lay said eggs. My sister wasted my time on this question today instead of asking the much more important question (how dare she not be contemplating the nuances of political philosophy on a Sunday afternoon): do we have the power or does the government? With the recent “no kings” protests, that’s the first thing that I thought of regarding power. Jean-Jacques Rousseau didn’t have much to say about the chicken, but he wrote a full book “on the social contract” (look at him making integrated quotes easier). According to him (and the theory of the social contract that he created) “man is born free,” but to protect our natural rights, we give some rights away to a government so that said government can protect our other natural rights. For example, in a so-called “state of nature,” there’s no one to stop you from murdering someone else, which is why we give up our right to kill people in exchange for...
Read more

Annie Zhu Q3 Blog #9 - Free Will

Image
  Many aspects of my life do not feel like choices I got to make. Born into an academically-driven family and living in the tech bubble which is the Bay Area, everything I pursue (grades, college, extracurriculars) seem like things that are naturally expected of me. As a result, I often forget that I do, in fact, have free will. Although there are several factors to consider when discussing this term in philosophy, for the purposes of this blog, I simply mean “free will” as in the ability to make deliberate choices which affect my future.  I believe that people always have control over their actions at any given moment in time. Admittedly, while this may not be entirely true, operating as if it is is more empowering for me. As a high-schooler, I often try to squeeze myself down one path in hopes of guaranteeing a successful future: a stable income source, fulfilling relationships, and middle class leisure. The truth is that those things can be actually achieved in many ways, n...
Read more

Casmin Bui Week 9: Always Being Second Place

Image
Power. Defined by The Merriam Webster Dictionary as the ability to act or produce an effect, the idea of power has many connotations. Like how fuel can power engines, a leader may also have power over their people. Nowadays, power has received a negative connotation because it has been fed in what many consider “the wrong hands.” Setting her quite… questionable actions aside, I think Azula was so beautifully written because of the amount of complexity in her character. You never really know what she will do next, but only that it will end up badly for you. Throughout the series, we see many different sides of Azula; her notorious evil personality, but also her vulnerable side.  Azula captures Ba Sing Se In the context of both today and in the 2000s (when Avatar was released), we can find many parallels of Azula’s “evil” character to recent political leaders. Kidnapping children? Terrorizing foreign regions? Azula already did it. Her ignorance to human suffering serves as a symbo...
Read more