Day 108

Day 108

Fri. Jan. 10, 2014

Stratford Friday and it was slightly snowing in the morning. I was a bit curious if my bus to Stratford was going to be delayed due to the snow. First class of the day was GBDA102 on International Business. The professor reminded me of my professor from ARBUS200 mainly because of the presentation of the class and experiences he had. We were assigned groups to go to and I realized that some of my classmates in this GBDA program had dropped out for various reasons. Some reasons included the impracticality and relevance to future career while others had other reasons. For GBDA102, we needed to begin a research of a specific country other than Canada or USA and I managed to get our group a good country to research on...Australia. I've always had a thing for Australia if one knows about my past. It's always been in the back of my mind as the unattainable dream and the land of the free.

In the afternoon, ECON101 was quite an interesting class. When I say interesting...I meant to talk about what the professor's jokes were which can be read as totally controversial. The first one was about income and lifespan of people from different countries from 1800s to present. Going over a chart, he pointed out that the the folks from Africa had a low income was due to the debate that they were blacks and that blacks had higher crime rates resulting in these data. I found it to be stereotypical of the comments he had made and intriguing.

The next joke was about a trend that make China drop in numbers of lifespan during the period of "The Great Leap Forward" concept. He stated that the previous class in the morning knew the answer to the question when asked about the dip in the data was solely due to the fact that our GBDA student list was split halfway. He stated that the top of the list was all Chinese because their names are all the same and that the afternoon class didn't have it. Hence the morning class knew the answer because they are Chines. Now, being a guy from an Asian country with a Chinese last name "C", I was in this afternoon class not because of what he said, but because it was randomized. I spoke out to my classmates that I beg to differ on what the professor had made having taken offence to it.

One thing I will be certain of this whether I have experience or not in Economics, is that you can't assume everyone is the same. Stereotyping the blacks and Chinese for being a specific type of person or what they do is not acceptable even coming from a person with experience and respect. If we still continue to act this way so blatantly, where is the freedom and multiculturalism that we, Canada, have worked so hard to achieve as the country that accepts different cultures?

Anyways, as time flies closer to next week and being stressed with GER101 and various decisions. New options are being considered with consultation with my parents on Skype. Is the University of Waterloo the place I want to be? Is GBDA program the right program for me? Should I even be in university? That...is the question.