Apartment Hunting like a Honeybee

I just recently accepted my next co-op at a company in Stamford, Connecticut and have unfortunately re-entered the game of apartment hunting. When I was looking for an apartment for the first time last year, it was a rather smooth process. My four roommates and I were all living in Boston and looking for a place near campus. We were able to go look at the apartments together and to make a decision based on our collective needs and wants pretty easily. This time is pretty different though. Because I am about 3 hours away from where I need to look for apartments, I have drafted a scout bee to help me find a suitable hive, if you will. A family friend lives much closer to Stamford so she has been going to places and checking them out for me. After each place she looks at, she’ll call me and give me a rundown of the attributes and an overall feel of the place; how big it is, how far it is from my work, if it’s a safe neighborhood, etc. After having taken this class, all I can think of when we talk is her on the other line of the phone doing a “waggle dance” trying to accurately judge the apartment based on what I need. Even though I will make the ultimate decision because I am the only one affected by the decision, unlike a colony of bees making a collective decision, the process is very similar. Information is being transferred from a person, or bee, that has the ability to observe and gain knowledge about a decision to another that for one reason or another has to be removed from the situation. It is vital in these types of situations for the scout or observer to be objective so that the decision making process is based on the most accurate and appropriate information possible.