Day 168 - Two more eventful weeks!

The past two weeks have been very eventful. Midterm results were pleasantly surprising, despite the difficulties faced in my Hydrology midterm I managed to rank 9th in the class and get a respectable grade on the curve. Political Geography was a good grade as expected, however there is plenty of room for improvement for my final exam as it became apparent that I underestimated the value of the short answer questions. Despite only asking for brief definitions, these questions were worth 6 points each, something I find rather unnecessary considering the lack of space provided for the answer.

Beyond my midterm results, last week I was interviewed for a promotion at the UCLA store to become a supervisor, I felt eager to take on more responsibilities and to become promoted after only one quarter of working there. I found out later that same week that my manager was impressed by my interview and wanted to offer me the promotion. I now feel much more confident and motivated with this promotion, I’m excited to build on my experience with delegation and managing responsibility. 

The weekend following my promotion I embarked on a hike up to the Hollywood sign with two other UCL friends. We arrived mid afternoon, catching an Uber which is a popular mode of transport in a city that has a defunct public transport system (Wachs, 1993). Figures 1 and 2 show some of the sights we saw whilst up there, the view was breath-taking and the hike itself was enjoyable, a chance to catch the sun in the late afternoon and watch the sunset on our descent. The hike gave the best vantage point to see over the whole of LA, its true extent is truly staggering, and the very different areas of the city are clearly visible. Once again, moments like this and those in Santa Barbara and Malibu as reflected in my previous post make me feel very fortunate for the opportunity to have embarked on this year abroad.

Figure 1. Me, Sarah and Tristan at the Hollywood sign

Figure 2. Breathtaking view from above the Hollywood sign

At this point in the quarter, mid way through 8th week, final exam preparation has commenced and selection of classes for my final quarter here is well underway. This time around I have chosen four classes to take with the option to drop one of them if it does not live up to my expectations. As I have in the previous two quarters, once again I will be taking a Spanish class that this time emphasises contemporary Spanish literature, a class I believe will be challenging since it is an ‘upper division’ class. I’m at the point in my journey to become bilingual in Spanish where I am no longer learning grammar, structures and how the language is formed, from now onwards my classes will involve learning in Spanish and acquiring new vocabulary to be applied in the real world.

A class I'm particularly excited about is ‘Humid Tropics’ which is taught by Professor Thomas Gillespie, a professor well known for his teaching abilities and accolades. I’m fascinated by the tropics and the forests that lay along the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), regions of the world that contain the highest levels of biodiversity, forests which provide many of the worlds ecosystem services. It will be interesting to see how he approaches teaching about the microclimates of tropical forests and their future in the midst of climate change issues. In addition to this class my fascination in Latin America has led me to take a Spanish Latin America class, which will be led by an unknown professor. I’m hoping that this class builds on my current understanding Latin American economy and the problems they faced developing in the period where neoliberalism prevailed. My final class choice is a step outside of the geography department, but is a class that I believe has strong links to contemporary geopolitical issues that I have learnt about in my political geography class so far. The communications class ‘Terrorism in Journalism’ taught by Nushin Arbabzadah, an important writer for the guardian on contemporary Afghanistan I believe shall be a very interesting class. The idea of this class is to analyse journalism in the Middle East to understand their views on ‘terrorism’, which is so commonly discussed so frivolously in Western media. In taking classes like this I feel one can gain a more rounded view on contentious situations and balance biases that are influenced by ones paradigm. I’m very eager to attend these classes and share what I’m about to learn.

Wachs, M. (1993) ‘Learning from Los Angeles: transport, urban form and air quality’, Transportation, 20, 4, 329-354.

Day 154 - Malibu, Santa Barbara and Midterms

As promised, in the three weeks since my last post I have enjoyed a good balance between studies and my keen desire for more exploration. Firstly I will discuss my midterms that took place last week, which only consisted of two this quarter since my Spanish class is assessed through essays that I complete every three weeks through the quarter. On Tuesday, my midterm for Hydrology proved to be extremely challenging, to the extent that it was possibly one of the hardest most complex structured exams I have ever taken. Since Professor Lettenmaier is a new professor at UCLA, it has been evident he is understandably out of touch with the ways exams are taken here. The exam was structured into five problems, these didn't relate a lot to knowledge acquired in class but resembled the weekly assignments he has been consistently setting. Despite the structure of the exam being unusual per se, it proved a challenging but interesting deviation from the normal structure of exams and vigorously tested the practical skills that the class aims to teach. My issues with this midterm however were not in the structure of the midterm or the skills it tested, most of which I am comfortable in using. These issues were in the units used throughout the exam. Despite in earlier assignments using the metric system I’m accustomed to, the exam professed to use ‘feet’ instead of 'metres' and 'gallons' instead of 'litres', for example river discharge in cubic feet per second, with the answer requiring units in mm/year. Completely baffled by the units I was unable to do the conversions as none were provided alongside the questions. Interestingly, the homework assignments based on data from USGS required metric units, measuring river discharge in 'cumecs' (USGS, 2015), one can only assume that Professor Lettenmaier is more comfortable using these units in his field of expertise. This did provide me with the most unfortunate and clear difference between hydrology in the US and UK. My issues with this exam continued with the second question as it relied on good knowledge of the geography of the US. Three rivers were given, and in order to answer the question I had to know the climates in each of the regions where these rivers were located. Despite being a geographer I unfortunately do not know the geography of the US in that much detail, thus I suffered on this question. Thankfully the consensus from the other students was that they also found the exam challenging overall and it is likely the results are to be curved.

My second midterm, for political geography contained significantly less surprises with the structure and content of the exam fitting the study guide provided the week before. A similar set up to exams I have taken at UCLA thus far with short answers and mini essays to fill up the 75 minute exam time.

The Friday before my midterms the opportunity to hike the coast of Malibu was presented to me by my friends, an offer I couldn't refuse. On this late afternoon hike I watched the sun set over the west coast in the warm heat before going for a swim in the wonderfully clean waters swashing upon the pristine sands. The sight was magnificent and truly made me realise how fortunate I am to have embarked on such an amazing year abroad. It further made me appreciate the great friends I have made thus far in the US, friendships of which I will take with me back to the UK.

Figure 1. Sunset in Malibu

The following day I then travelled to Santa Barbara with three of the same friends. Despite the weather being overcast and rather rainy, it was nice to see a different area of the west coast of California. Santa Barbara is an idyllic small American coastal town. The clouds were very low lying with the peaks of the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara piercing through them (Figure 2). It was also nice to see how this small location had a pocket of English culture, with a few English food stores, pubs and fish and chip shops evoking nostalgic emotions on my visit. Overall, despite being a short stay it was evidently a lovely place that hopefully I can visit again in the near future on a day where the weather is more welcoming!

Figure 2. Day in Santa Barbara

Until next time…