Just a random thought I had that I think I would share with you. It’s about philanthropy.

I don’t remember when or where I saw this, but it was a video of an experiment to determine what was the relationship between urgency and philanthropy. The conclusion was that people would stop and help out a stranger if he/she wasn’t in a rush. However, they wouldn’t do so if they were. This was true in my case today.

I thought about this as I was completing our stressful tutorial for one of our courses, Mechanics of Deformable Solids (MODS). Each tutorial involves working on a set of questions that takes about 2 hours to finish. So basically, it is a test. And this happens every week. At the end of the tutorial, I had completed the assignment early (I really want to call it a test but I guess an assignment is more appropriate). However, after discussing with my Teaching Assistant for the tutorial I realized I had made a mistake. I was completely aware that my classmates were doing the question wrong, but time was running out and I wanted to make sure I could finish the assignment before the tutorial was over. So, I simply sat by myself and finished the question correctly. This comes to prove in my personal case that urgency does have an effect on performing philanthropic endeavors, not that I am excusing myself or anything. However, after completing the assignment I turned around and explained why they were wrong and how to solve the question correctly. Of course, this was due to the fact that I was no longer in a sense of urgency.

- Peter Kao