Most people at some point in their life have probably completed one of those surveys where you are forced to rank 10-20 different items in order of their personal importance to you. Some items that might be on this list are a healthy life, a good education, a well paying job, a family, a million dollars, a new car, etc. Surveys like these force you to prioritize many things that people desire and life allowing people to take a step back and reflect on what is truly important to them in their lives.

A few weeks ago in English class, we completed a very similar sort of activity. The list of items or desires was relatively similar to what you might see on such a survey. Some of the items included a happy marriage, physical health, an end to world hunger, providing worldwide contraception, gay marriage, no abortion, enough money to never have to work again, etc. However, there was a twist. In this activity, we were hypothetically given 100,000 dollars. Instead of simply ranking each item by importance, we had to divide up our assets and decide how much money we would be willing to give to support each item.

I found this activity very interesting. Usually in these types of surveys when you are simply ranking 1-20, there are only so many ways you can rank the items. The directions are very straightforward. However, there is much interpretation left in this sort of activity. One could choose to divide up their money in millions of different ways. There is no one prototype for how this should be done. Some chose to give at least some money to every category. Some could choose to give all their money to one category. Others may choose to divide up their money into four different categories they thought were most important.