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My Courses
This post is just to tell you a little bit about the classes I'm taking
while here at the University of Aberdeen.
I've already said quite a bit about my computer science class in a
previous post, "CS in Scotland":
http://www.summersault.com/chris/scotland/msg00002.html
It turns out that there's quite a bit of mathematics involved in graphics
(I actually knew that already, but I was blocking it out when I signed up
for the course) and I'm being asked to remember calculus and algebra that
I haven't thought about for several years and that I was sure I'm done
with. I actually really enjoy that feeling of suddenly remembering how to
find the dot product of two matrices or how to calculate an arctangent,
but it's a little bit more than, as I said, I signed up for.
My history course, "Scotland and the Modern Age since the 1820's" has
proved to be an interesting and somewhat painful course. I took it
because I thought it would be fun to know more about recent events in
Scottish history. The course is tag-team taught by several different
professors, but the one who does most of the lecturing is...well, he's the
painful part. Have you ever seen "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? Remember
that one teacher who took several minutes to say every word ("in....
what.....waaaaaaaaaay.....does....the....author's.....use....of......
the.....prison.....signify....")? Well, it's kind of like that. And he
likes numbers and dates a lot. In any case, we've been learning a lot
about agriculture (read: cow dung) and rural life (read: seaweed farming)
and the various revolutions that brought Scotland in to the modern age,
and above all, it's mostly interesting. Mostly.
My Land Economy course, "Environmental Resource Management" is an
interesting course in theory but has been mostly dissapointing in
practice. I think this is mostly due to the fact that it's a
freshman/first-year course, and so the format of the class meetings is
"here's an overhead slide, copy it down, and hurry up so we can get to the
next one". So we all copy down the overheads, mostly completely ignoring
the professor's attempt at saying things that are actually just
re-phrasings of what's on the overhead. The class is composed of about 80
people, most of whom are first-years, and no matter what classroom we meet
in, they all congregate in the very back of the room and make a lot of
noise. I guess we're learning a few interesting things here and there,
and I'm certainly building up a base of knowledge for further discussions
on environmental resource management, but I would really enjoy it a lot
more if there was more discussion and interaction. It's quite frustrating
to watch the professor say things like equivalent to "we're using up all
of our resources and killing thousands of living things and the earth is
suffering big-time" and then just move on to the next overhead.
The saviour course, then, is my course on "The Ethics of International
Development, Environment, and Aid". This is one hum-dinger of a course,
one of the best I've ever had at any educational institution. For those
of you who that know Earlham at all, it's on par with a Peter Suber
course. For those of you who don't, it's an incredible and engaging look
at the theory and practice of global ethics and international relations.
Issues raised include the nature of sustainable development, the ethics of
aid within a nation and to other nations, the dangers of Eurocentrism in
global trade, the idea of internationsl development, environmental
concerns and the issues in addressing them, and generally, global ethics.
It's one of those classes where every lecture and every reading makes your
head spin. At one moment you're sure you've found the morally and
ethically correct way to look at something, and then another view is
brought in that you have to consider. It's all about asking questions and
finding good, logical, RIGHT ways to find the answers.
In addition, I'm a member of a project group that is writing a paper about
various issues discussed in the course. The paper is taking on a formal
format and it will possibly be submitted to a contact that our lecturer
has in the British equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency, and
so we're having quite a good time writing it. Of course, I've volunteered
to webify the project, details on this forthcoming.
With all of these courses, there is no homework and very little work to do
outside of class. The traditional format for all courses here and
elsewhere in the UK is to have almost only lectures and tutorials, or
discussion groups, for the entire term and then one big comprehensive exam
at the end. I have a few papers to write and always lots of reading to
do, but the dynamic of no daily work to do is an interesting one that I'll
reflect on more later in the term.
If anyone is interested in more information about any of these courses, or
perhaps some recommended selections from the reading lists, just let me
know.
Chris
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