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   I really have to say our Esem is awesome before giving my afterthoughts. I had a discussion with two girls about Esem yesterday during dinner. Hearing them saying bad words about their Esem, I could not even say a single sentence except I enjoy my Esem so much. Anyway, it’s good to feel out of place at that time and I’m so glad to have such a class. Love you guysJ

Now, back to our topic in the class. We talked about competition and cooperation on Tuesday and it makes me think a lot. If asked to choose from competition and cooperation, I think I will definitely choose cooperation because it is more likely to mutually benefit people. But my unconscious choice amazed me when I was told that a piano recital will be held next Sunday in my piano class. My professor wants us to show what we’ve learnt, comment on each other and try to make progress by playing for others. Obviously, he wants us to cooperate to get improved, while I was so stressed after hearing it. It was embarrassed but I have to confess that I feel stressed because I am afraid that I couldn’t play as well as other people. It is weird that under such a relaxed atmosphere, my willing to compete is more than my desire to cooperate in some extent. Why do we, or at least I, prioritize competition?

I read the article about babies that night. It was so interesting because it relates to what I’ve learnt in psychology recently. In the class, we talked that research shows infants in every culture are able to perceive all phones when they are very little so they are equipped to learn whatever language they hear in their environment. By 12 months, when expressive language acquisition usually begins, they no longer can discriminate sounds they do not hear in languages input. So they become more efficient at processing functionally meaningful contrasts in their language and at ignoring irrelevant ones. And phonemic categories that are going to matter in their language are those they continue to discriminate.

I’m thinking about if this psychology theory contributes to the interpretation of competition and cooperation. Say, we were born with equal tendency to compete and cooperate. While as we grow up, the stress in this competitive society forces us to compete with ourselves and to defeat others to get better. Babies learn to walk by overcoming imbalance. Children study hard to get into a good school. It’s not to say we don’t want to cooperate, but since we are more exposed to a competitive environment, we are more likely to process competition thought rather than cooperation.