Alex Titus

My Renaissance
Renaissance is needed to cultivate and develop your life to the fullest. A reawakening that
not only changes your thoughts, but your actions into doing what is necessary for moving
positively forward in this world. These actions that you choose, challenge and change the person
you are and the path that you were on. Accomplishing these task are, what I feel to be, one of the
best ways to make the changes that everyone wishes they could create. For instance, after being a
high school student who takes a few years off to party, hangout and basically just coast through
life, to then start getting back into their education is one of the hardest choices that a lot of
people try to make (like myself). When taking this route, you are not only going to struggle, but
you are going to want to quit. Youll want to give up and scream at some of the processes
essential to complete school and a lot of people end up doing just that. If it was easy, everyone
would do it. If it was easy to work a full time job, stay fit and healthy, be a good citizen, be a
good friend and family member, take care of all of lifes responsibilities, then every single person
would have a masters degree and a high paying job. Guess what, that is not the case, and the
strong willed people are the ones that choose this renaissance to go through. They push through
every assignment, the long nights studying for each test, working full time to pay for college,
tedious group projects and taking years of classes, all to get a degree. A degree that gives you
more opportunities to get the career or job that youve always wanted (not guaranteed I might
add) to live a life of financial freedom. This is the renaissance Im currently facing, and step by
step, Im getting closer to the end goal.
This Business 1010 college course was a lot different than what I first imagined it would
be. I took this class to learn more about business and the process it takes to run one. I thought
this was going to be a more cut and dry class, for example, you need to take these 10 steps to run
a business, or this is the process you take to become a business man. It did basically the opposite
of that and showed me that there is not an easy step program to create your business. It has
revealed to me that business is a broad range of things and there are copiousness types of
business to prevail in. Also, business is not something that happened when money was invented,
it started when civilization started (this was not a perspective that was ever considered in my
mind). For example, to think about the Viking in the 8th century exchanging goods and services,
creating a civilization, using business to prevail and grow their society was honestly never
something I considered. Of course, thinking about it now, it makes sense, understanding a simple
fact like that and acknowledging the full aspect of what business is, is what this class has done
for me. Opening my mind and helping me see outside of the box of business and realizing it is
more of an ocean of knowledge and opportunity.
The practice of making ones living is a definitions of business. The practice, something
you consistently do and get better at is the way in which a living is accomplished. It has been
going on for centuries, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Egyptians and all the great civilizations that
have ever lived thrived through business. It still is boggling my mind to accept something so
concrete to the construction of civilization, but lets go back to the Vikings again for a minute. In
The Vikings reading by Thorstein Veblen, he says, Under these circumstances it is plain that no
Viking combine could hope to prosper in the long run unless it were strong enough to take an
international position and to maintain a practical monopoly of the trade. This stuck out to me
because the Vikings had monopolies in their society. In the 8th century people knew how to create
a monopoly, which guarantees you a successful business because you are the only one selling
that specific product or running the only business of its kind. It makes me think of todays
Walmart and how no supercenter compares. So in a sense, the Vikings had their very own
Walmart of sorts. I can only imagine being the Viking Walmart family that runs the land because
of their tremendous wealth. It is a good thing we dont let monopolies happen today otherwise
business as a choice might have been obsolete and the country couldve been ran by only a few
families.

The Ancient America reading, The Memoirs of Conquistador by Bernal Diaz, might be
one of my favorite readings. The fact that this exists and made it through the test of time so we
can learn how the Aztecs live is such a remarkable piece of rubric. Reading this first person
history feels like you are there, in the moment, going back in time to a place we can never
actually see. This history explains that the Aztec people had a substantial marketplace in their
city. When he writes, Some of our men, who had been at Constantinople and Rome, and
travelled through the whole of Italy, said that they never had seen a market-place of such large
dimensions, or which was so well regulated, or so crowded with people as this one at Mexico.
That is incredible, the market places in Rome and Italy couldnt compare to Mexicos market.
Such a market now a days could be compared to a mall, but not just any mall, something like the
South China Mall which is one of the largest in the world with over 2,000 stores. That is what I
picture the Aztec market to be like, to have such a thriving business that employs so many people
is an incredible thing to have in the worlds history.

In the Development of Material Knowledge by H.G Wells, he says, A fresh phase in

the history of invention opened when in the eighties a new type of engine came into use, an
engine in which the expansive force of an explosive mixture replaced the expansive force of
steam. This passage of the reading is explaining that innovation and business go hand in hand.
To have a successful business you need to continue to improve and innovate product and
processes. Just like the steam engine was a revolution for traveling across the sea, we soon
invented planes and started flying in a fraction of the time. To understand this is to understand
how to keep a business in business. Keep up with technology and change, prepare for the future
and continue improving otherwise the business you are trying to run will eventually fail.
In the Industrial Revolution by H.G Wells, he says, This was as true of such ancient
industries as agriculture and mining as it was of the newest metallurgical processes. For plowing,
sowing and harvesting, swift machines came forward to do the work of scores of men. This was
a turning point in the manufacturing industry, it was a turning point across the board for business
in general. Cutting the labor to 1 machine rather than 10 or 20 people and cutting production
time to a fraction of what it was before, made production profits that it had never been seen
before. It changed fast and with it, changed how companies were ran. Bigger corporations
created an unfit workplace to meet with the drastic demands and it twisted work into almost
slave labor. For example, the sowing companies started hiring children to work and made women
run 4 or 5 sewing machines at a time, when 2 or 3 were hard enough to keep running with only 1
person. This process helped create rules and regulations to protect the worker from harm or
unfair working conditions. This puts things in another perspective, creating a business and
innovation faster than you can maintain a healthy workforce can also cause a loss in business.
 The vastness of what we call business is extraordinary and challenging. From the Vikings
who created monopolies, to the Aztecs with their magnificent market place, to the industrial
revolution that changed manufacturing forever. You can see how eye opening this class has been
for me, helping me see that there is not a 10 step program to business, but an immense amount of
knowledge that leads to all the different aspects of business. Getting the information from this
class has assisted in putting me on the right track for expanding my brain to understand fully
what it will take to be accomplished in business, my renaissance is just beginning.