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 At first I was a bit confused by the game, I figured that if I continued to compete I would continue to get more coins than Serendip. I ended up with around 30 coins, and Serendip didn't have nearly as much. I had more coins in the end, so wasn't that the point? Well, apparently not. The catch was, if I cooperated with Serendip the game would continue for a longer period of time and both Serendip and I would get an equal amount of coins, but we would both have a lot more than if we would have competed against one another. Therefore, in the end it did seem like a win win situation. Why would I want to compete if I could get more coins by cooperating? 

I think that creating a win-win situation in class is possible. Of course there is grading at the end of the semester, and even if we didn't get the grades we would have liked wouldn't we at least have gotten something else out of the course? Maybe we learned to write a bit better, found our speaking voice, or just had fun. If we put something into the course and got something beneficial out of it, I think that qualifies as a win-win situation. 

When I think about a prisoner's dilemma  my relationship with my horse comes to mind. If we compete with one another (for example he stops listening to me because he doesn't want to exercise and I get annoyed and fight back by tugging on my reins and trying to force him to do what I want) it isn't going to work. If he wins I will most likely be on the ground and if I win he is going to give me a hard time every time I ride him because he remembers the last time I didn't consider what he wanted to do. However, if we cooperate and I let him do one of the activities he enjoys (like jumping) and balance that with some of the exercises he doesn't like to do, then that is when he will begin to cooperate with me. Any good relationship is about give and take, and although our first instinct is to try and get what we want, more often than not cooperating with one another makes for a much happier lifestyle. The truth is we can get what we want, but we can also give other people what they want as well.