Random Thoughts of Waiting for the Shuttle

Bo Hu (Michael)

Ann Bouma

ENGL 150 (Reflection essay)

Oct 28th 2012

Random Thoughts of Waiting For The Shuttle

As time goes by, I have lived in this apartment for two years. Some people left and some new faces moved in. How can I know this? The reason is the shuttle station. People have changed year by year, but the shuttle is always on time. Comparing this year and last year, I found an interesting phenomenon. Last year, almost nobody took the shuttle at 9:30. But this year, I found that the waiting line would be longer before the shuttle comes. More than this, people were usually lazy and came too late to catch the shuttle. In the current year, people not only came here very early, but also jumped queues sometimes.

For this phenomenon, the first idea that crossed my mind is that the environment's pressure can change people's behaviors. Quoting the economic thoughts, this reflects the relationship with supply and demand. When the supply is more than the demand, buyer is in advantage. When the supply is less than the demand, the buyer is in disadvantage. In this case, the buyer is the people who want to take the shuttle, and the supplier is the shuttle. If nobody wants to take shuttle, people don't need to be worry about missing it, and vice versa.

On the other hand, this phenomenon also shows human's crisis awareness. Crisis awareness is the nature of humans. Nobody wants to be left. When you feel you are safe, you will be relaxing. But when you feel your position will be lost, the crisis awareness will encourage people to make some measures to protect the condition becoming worse. That's why the people will come to the station so early or become queue jumpers.

In current society, there are many similar things with waiting for the shuttle.

First of all, I will say finding jobs. In the modern society, the rate of growth of graduates is faster than jobs growth. So people are worried about the unemployment. If there was an opportunity, the competition will be stiff. Comparing to crisis awareness, the upward mobility is a similar motivation for changing people's actions. People worked so hard, and are busy for promoting.

Car and gas are another example. When the auto industry is not very developed, the amount of the car is not large. So the gas price is relatively low. In the 21st century, the car industry developed fast. As the development of the economy, car is not a luxury for normal family. The demand of the gas was increasing directly. According to the relationship with supply and demand, the buyer is in disadvantage. The price of the gas is increasing, even higher.

The last one is water crisis. From the relationship with supply