Daniel Alvarez Gorozpe

I feel good when the door cracks

WHAT DO THE RESULTS OF THIS SURVEY ON ORGANIZATIONAL SPACES TELL ME ABOUT HOW US,
THE STUDENTS OF THIS COURSE, FEEL ABOUT THE TEC’S ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?

By Daniel Alvarez Gorozpe

On Michael Buble’s new album called Crazy Love, there’s a song called Feeling good which came to
my mind immediately after seeing the Organizational Space Report. Unable to give a reasonable
explanation I looked for the lyrics, the following words caught my attention: It’s a new dawn/ It’s a
new day / It’s a new life / For me/ And I’m feeling good. And aside from an explanation for my
reasoning, I came up with a fact: surprise relies on our own ability to make new things out of the
old ones.

So, you amaze yourself by daily life experiences such as: a storm during spring time, a teenage
pregnancy, a foreigner who asks you how to get somewhere, “it’s obvious” you say to yourself,
“it’s new” replies the foreigner to himself; in the end, you both share surprise as a mean for
communication: there’s something you don’t know that I may.

Now, concerning organizational spaces, I believe the experience on being someplace familiar
doesn’t go that far from that simple premise about surprises. Even though you had been living at
your house for quite a while, from time to time, when somebody comes to your house for the first
time, points at something you hadn’t notice before due to your natural tendency to make routine
assumptions: for example, the entrance door cracks every windy day, after a while, you may stop
noticing the noise; one day a friend comes on a windy day and says: hey, your door needs oil, you
may say, no that’s how it works, or, I hadn’t thought about it, or yes I knew. But what you didn’t
know was that this person would tell you something different about what you already knew. In the
end, things evoke different signs: a door crack implies it needs oil, it’s a windy day, it’s your door,
air can move things, moving things make noise, noise can be analyzed and the given analysis will
never be the same. Interpreting the signs is a particular activity that shares collective analysis
(shared evocations): def people can identify windy days, and possibly, imagine the noise of a door
cracking by staring at it and came up with the same reasoning: it needs oil.

Human outer perception relies on our five senses, but what about interpretation? How is it
possible to choose one room from another, even if they are built for the exact same reason?
That’s how you are able to feel more comfortable on your bed than on somebody else’s, be a
graffiti artist and choose particular canvas walls, go to a wooden desk rather a metallic one, and so
on. But if you’re asked to describe the reason, you may have a difficult time coming with those
conclusions: emotions may be determinant catalysts for decisions. More than we accept them to
be so.

Therefore, I am able to say Centro de Medios is not a happy place but a place where people feel
happy about themselves; Aulas 4 is not a busy place but a place where people can get busy; Aulas
3 and Residencias are not boring places but places where people cannot find something fun nor
 Daniel Alvarez Gorozpe

interesting to do despite they have an agenda there; and finally, the parking lot is not a hostile
place but a place where you let yourself be hostile. This leads me to my first conclusion: every
space enables an emotion on students regardless its likeability.

Although these results did not surprise me, they helped me to have a more accurate notion of
students’ associations between places and emotions, which are always both arbitrary and
inevitable. And the fact that a room can communicate: crowded, ¡oh, no! licenciado, mi carrera, by
just being there, and the most visited places are also the “happiest” supports my second and third
impressions on organizational space culture at the Tec Campus Queretaro: Students come to
school to feel comfortable. And, as subjective as emotions may be, they have a measurable impact
on the use of Tec given spaces: the parking lot and the Centro de Medios are both Tec given
spaces; however they are different because one makes me feel happy and the other angry. People
spend more time on Centro de Medios than they do on the parking lot.

Finally, I would like to explore a basic physics approach on organizational space culture: “the law
of cultural gravity” applied to space interpretation. Newton’s laws of motion are:

 In order for the motion object to change, a force must act upon it.
 A body experiencing a force experiences acceleration, which increases proportionally to
the mass of the body. (F=ma)
 Whenever a force exerts a force on a second body (F), the second body exerts a force (-F)
on the first body.

For this organizational space culture approach, they can be summarized as follows:

 An object in motion cannot stop itself.

 The heavier the faster the strongest.
 For every action there is a reaction.

The ultimate analogy of the force of gravity in communicational affairs may be the necessity to
express oneself. However, expression implies a mean of expression which cannot be unified into
one absolute law beyond language; let’s use Physical space (PS) as the main constant where
language happens due to the space cultural implications scientific approach. Reason (R) as the
variable that determines whether a student has to be at the given physical space; and Emotion (E)
as the individual motive that influences natural perception. Given these variables, we can state the
following laws:

 A Physical space cannot speak for itself without human interaction.

 Reason may be a cause for human interaction on a given physical space; however is not
the ultimate perceptual element.
 Emotion may be the ultimate perceptual element; however is not conceivable without
reason.

Therefore:
 Daniel Alvarez Gorozpe

 E=(PS+R)

But if emotion can be calculated by a formula, then not only sensorial perception is
underestimated, but this whole study seems nonsense since associations cannot be traced back
(nor measured beyond the assumption of their certainty, which is not attached to permanence),
they were completely arbitrary and impactful. How can this be possible? How can perception be at
the same time untraceable and measurable?

I consider my previous conclusion to be one out of many more possible ones. Since I am able to
say this reflection makes me feel happy towards exact sciences, since they are not able to explain
everything; sad towards social sciences, since they believe they can go beyond exact ones; angry
towards science in general, since it is considered an unconditional objective approach; and finally,
scared of the biased perception inherent to this analysis: my perception can and will modify the
results of this culture space organizational study. Why? I am a student at the Tec, I am a
professional on communication studies, I am a human being.

So for me, concerning my perception on this particular study, the “falling apple” on organizational
spaces is human interaction (spaces are to a certain extent ways of human expression, therefore
attached to perception): human expression cannot stop itself until a counter expression comes
along. But I have not found one single “counter expression” that instead of empowering an
original expression actually stops it. Expression is culture force of gravity; it cannot be stopped,
avoided, nor fully explained, despite being inherent to every human activity.

I have to go now. Someone may be knocking on the door. Hopefully it will not be the wind again.