I took LFS 350 online this term and I really enjoyed it.  The format is similar to 250 where we have a big group project with a community partner.  My group was assigned to work with graduate students from the faculty of education that work in the orchard garden behind the MacMillan building.  The orchard garden team of students was interested in building a teaching kitchen at the garden to create a closed circle of learning – from growing food in the garden to harvesting it to preparing and eating it.  They wanted to apply for  a sustainability fund grand from the AMS and asked us to do the research necessary to help them successfully get the grant.  It was actually a really interesting project and very enjoyable.  It was really neat to participate in a research project that will have a good, positive impact on food sustainability and education at UBC.  Hopefully with the help of our hard work, the orchard garden students will be able to build a teaching kitchen and help improve the already fantastic workshops they conduct.

As a transfer student a lot of my schedule this school year was occupied with classes that I have to take to meet the faculty graduation requirements.  This was an unfortunate circumstance in the fact that I had to take first year chemistry and suffer (as I mentioned below) through intro to economics.  One great class that I had to take out of meeting my graduation requirements and out of personal interest was my Intro to African Studies 250 class.  It was a relatively new course that the students of UBC had to fight for, as originally there were not any African studies courses offered at UBC.  Our professor, Dr. Suzanne James, is actually a Canadian literature professor who spent quite a few years living and teaching in Tanzania.  Our class focused on African history through the readings of a short history book as well as historical fictions.  Discussion was encouraged and I felt as though I left the class with a greater understanding of what “Africa” means to the world and to  African’s themselves.

As a student interested in international development and trade, it seemed to make a lot of sense to me to try and take some economics classes during my time here at UBC.  Last term I took intro to microeconomics and this term I took intro to macroeconomics.  I found both classes to be extremely frustrating as everything we learned was presented as absolute fact and in an almost scientific fashion.  Although I understand the rational behind supply and demand and I get how certain actions in the market can fairly safely predict common outcomes, I don’t believe that these results are an absolute given.  Both classes completely ignored the fact that human beings are caring and social creatures and instead chose to focus on the perverted idealization of economic growth above everything else in the world.  The idea that my professor could stand up in front of our class everyday and talk about economic theories as though they were the laws of physics was laughable to me.  These classes really made me realize how disconnected people have become from one another in the name of wealth and growth.

A few weeks ago I had an amazing book recommended to me.  It’s called “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond.  In the book Diamond discusses the various interconnected reasons for the variation of advancement in terms of agriculture, political structure and tools in societies around the globe.  Reading this book has answered so many questions that I have had for a long time.  Such as, why did some societies choose to develop agriculture while others remained hunter-gatherers until the Europeans came?  The answer seems to lie in the fact that it was not so much of a choice, but rather it was more of a prescription of location and environment.  Diamond does an excellent job of relaying to the reader that there is no sort of genetic superiority that helps to explain societal advancement discrepancies, but rather, humans are all the same and the only advantage in societal development is location.  A major factor that contributed to the Eurasian advancement and often dominance over all other societies in the world was the Eurasian ability to develop agriculture due to a very fertile and large landmass that allowed for easy sharing of agricultural developments such as seeds, animals and tools.  It is with the development of agriculture and the movement away from the hunter gatherer lifestyle that allowed for food surplus to feed intellectuals and inventors that eventually contributed to the overall advancement of society.