Game of Trades

In class today we played a game called the Game of Trades. The objective was to use your given materials--for instance my group's were scissors, a blank piece of paper, a dotted piece of paper, and five paper clips--and create 4 or 5 items with the materials given and by trading said materials. We were only given one class period to complete this activity, and due to a fire alarm our class was shortened. But while playing the game of trades I think my group's biggest weakness was lack of communication. We had trouble figuring out what things to trade with/for, dividing tasks, and finding our footing in the beginning of the game. Once we began to really figure out what we needed, things started to fall into place. But that only happened with 10 minutes left in the game. We started to collaborate with another group by promising them parts of our bagels for their completed structures, which I think would've worked out had we had more time. One of our strong suits was 'thinking outside the box', or in other words thinking of other ways to obtain materials and even fully made structures to try and win. But in the end time was our enemy.
This experiment revealed that the American Dream can be a lot harder to achieve than it seems. There seems to be a lot of bartering and even scheming to get what you want, which is not what I think of when I hear 'American Dream'. Trying to make ends meet can be difficult, especially when what you need is so specific. Overall I think this activity brought to light that the american dream may be this wonderful ideal, but it is much harder to achieve then what it seems.