I write these next two blog entries, 19 and 20 in the thick of my last midterm season at UCLA. Hours prior compiling these posts, I visited the Aquarium of the Pacific as made mandatory by my Humid Tropics class. Interestingly it was my first visit to an aquarium of that scale, I saw many of the fish that I had learnt about in class, and it proved good revision for my upcoming midterm on Thursday. The previous Wednesday I had my first form of formal assessment for my Spanish South America class, entailing response to one of two essay questions. Based on the reading provided by the professor I was able to answer a question surrounding Latin American history of adopting western economic ideologies. In answering this question I felt free to discuss periods between the 40s and 70s where Latin America had for once shrugged off European and US ideologies to adopt Import Substitution Industrialization and more socialist policies led by then Chilean president Salvador Allende (Winn, 1989). This period of 30 years or so was the only period in which Latin America had some economic and political autonomy. Despite this, they still relied on loans from IMF and the World Bank and were eventually forced out of it by the Chicago Boys school of economics led by Milton Friedman in collaboration with then US president Nixon (Klein, 2007). I feel confident I answered the question aptly, and believe this was aided by my genuine interest in the topic area.
I had concerns about this class initially as the lecturer, a PhD student, was only notified a week before class started that she would be teaching the course. Impressively, after overcoming the first two nervous sessions, she has proved to be a really helpful and knowledgeable teacher whom herself originates from the context of the content she teaches. I think one of the main take home messages I take from university education is that the most highly acknowledged and renown professors are not always the best teachers and you can sometimes get better taught by those less renown with more to prove, I imagine this to be the case in most geography departments around the world.
During the period since my last posts I have also been continuously training for my half marathon next month and making good progress despite having a setback two weeks ago with a knee problem. In addition to this I have been working just under 20 hours a week contributing my efforts as a supervisor to help the UCLA Store run smoothly. Most importantly however, was a realisation I made around 10 days ago after attending a seminar with a UN representative whom talked about careers with geography degrees. It had already been in my thoughts for a few months that one of the main reasons I study geography, for its broad interdisciplinary nature, might not apply anymore and may hinder my job opportunities post graduation. I’ve felt like my experiences with geography so far have made me well rounded, good at a lot of things but expert at not as much, giving me many options but not providing a lot of direction. Thus, I have decided I want to specialise, and do a masters degree in order to narrow my focus into an area within geography that interests me most and enables me to dedicate myself to a certain field or vocation. Initial research into masters programs at UCL and other top London universities have cemented this desire, and I hope to apply for programs either in Climate Change Governance or Environmental Economics the upcoming academic year.
This realisation I feel is crucial, and it is probably one of the biggest of my time here at UCLA so far, one I believe will shape my future.
Klein, N. (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, New York: Picador.
Winn, P. (1989) Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism, Oxford University Press.
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