This is the assignment for the Survivor activity.

1. Survivor
In my FYS (First Year Seminar) class we did an activity called “Survivor”. In this activity
we were given a list of at least thriteen people and we got to choose four out of them that
survived. We had to choose who would survive because a disease had over ran the world and in a
bunker there were only enough supplies for four people. For this assignment everyone in my
class was put into groups. The whole group had to come to an agreement of who would live and
who would die. On the list there was a doctor, a scientist, a college professor, a pregnant woman,
a five year-old child, a lawyer, a lazy welfare worker, 2 hippies that were married and drug
addicts, a disabled person, an ex-military man with a mental disorder, an elderly woman and a
priest. My group agreed on keeping the pregnant woman, five year old child, the doctor and the
college professor. We decided to keep the doctor so if someone got hurt or sick he could help.
We kept the college professor because we made him a biology instructor who focused on botany.
Then we kept the pregnant woman and child so that in the future people could reproduce.
Everyone else we got rid of because we thought that they would either not help or not use their
skills to benefit the group. It was an interesting activity.
In my opinion, I would have kept the pregnant woman, five year-old, ex-military man and the
doctor. I would have kept the pregnant woman so she could take care of children. I would have
kept the military man because of his survivor skills and ability to hold authority. Then I would
have kept the doctor just in case someone got sick or needed medical attention. I wouldn’t have
kept the scientist because I would have had a doctor. I wouldn’t have kept the professor because
he doesn’t seem necessary. As for my opinion on the whole activity, I thought that it was really
interesting to listen to why some other groups kept who they did. It was a good exercise to see
how some people thought about the whole survivor situation. The only thing I didn’t like about it

2. is that it was all based on what whichever group you were in thought. I think that each individual
person should have also been asked what they thought. Then they should have given a reason as
to why they chose who they did. I understand that we didn’t hate enough time for that though.
Overall, in my opinion it was a good activity.