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