Just a brief update to prove I am actually going to school here. It's the third last week of term already and then the teaching part of my degree will be over! It's all gone so fast.
I'll be honest, I'm really disappointed with my electives at the moment. We only get to choose two, and I took a geography/development type course and a social/health policy course. I thought that would broaden my experience for better career opportunities, but I'm a bit frustrated with the teaching because my professors assume the entire audience has extensive prior knowledge of geography, demographics or policy when we don't. I also find that when topics come up that I do know very well, social inequalities, behaviour change, mental health, etc... the approaches used to look at them are a little backwards! My core program as changed my thinking on these issues so much, and to see that other disciplines are still decades behind in thinking about social issues is frustrating. For example, the thinking that to solve poor health you have to educate someone until they make the healthy choice. Health education is great but I would like to use this as a PSA: we are not rational beings. Stop thinking that we are. We could really use more multidisciplinary thinking in health policy...
I'm still learning loads though and it's been really interesting to get a taster of related but different fields of study. To get to know the background of the types of people I'll be working with in the future. I also went to a careers panel last night and was given some very good ideas and made a contact that might be useful later on. It's hard to think about next year yet! Five months of exams and dissertation still to go!
I'll be honest, I'm really disappointed with my electives at the moment. We only get to choose two, and I took a geography/development type course and a social/health policy course. I thought that would broaden my experience for better career opportunities, but I'm a bit frustrated with the teaching because my professors assume the entire audience has extensive prior knowledge of geography, demographics or policy when we don't. I also find that when topics come up that I do know very well, social inequalities, behaviour change, mental health, etc... the approaches used to look at them are a little backwards! My core program as changed my thinking on these issues so much, and to see that other disciplines are still decades behind in thinking about social issues is frustrating. For example, the thinking that to solve poor health you have to educate someone until they make the healthy choice. Health education is great but I would like to use this as a PSA: we are not rational beings. Stop thinking that we are. We could really use more multidisciplinary thinking in health policy...
I'm still learning loads though and it's been really interesting to get a taster of related but different fields of study. To get to know the background of the types of people I'll be working with in the future. I also went to a careers panel last night and was given some very good ideas and made a contact that might be useful later on. It's hard to think about next year yet! Five months of exams and dissertation still to go!