Blog Post 4 Red Paper Clip

Unfortunately, I was not as successful as Mr. MacDonald in my endeavors in bartering red paper clip and failed to end up with something as cool as a two story house in Saskatchewan. I started bartering last week with my roommate. I managed to trade my red paper clip for a blue pilot pen. Arguing that my paper clip was valuable was probably the most difficult for me. I told her that it would be useful in holding her papers together without having to use a stapler (leaving holes in the paper), but mostly hoped that she would pity me enough to make the trade. The next day after acquiring the pen, I was sitting in class and decided to make my next move in class with the kid next to me. I started the conversation by praising the wonderful pen and how well it wrote. I talked about the grip and the outstanding ink color then asked him if he would be willing to trade anything for it. He had extra Scantrons in his backpack and said he would trade one for the pen. Knowing I was going to be in a class with students taking a test the next day, I had a feeling that someone might forget and an extra Scantron would be extremely valuable so I made the trade. Just like I had predicted, someone in the row in front of me forgot a Scantron and began to panic. I told her that I had an extra one if she wanted to trade me two dollars for it. She started to hesitate and I knew I was going to have to make a solid argument. She said that Scantrons did not cost anything above one dollar and that her paying two dollars was not reasonable. I then argued that if she were to leave to go get one she might be late for the test, and she soon accepted to make the trade. Next I was attempted to make a trade with a very skeptical vending machine. After several minutes of hard bargaining, I finally convinced him to trade a bag of Gardetto's for my two dollars. Sadly I did not get a new house or anything of that magnitude. Through this process, I was able to successfully go from being the owner of a boring red paper clip to a very proud owner of a delicious new snack!

 http://www.umt.edu/launchpad/RedPaperclipChallenge.php