Final Blog

This class was a lot. A lot of info, a lot of opinions, a lot of readings, a lot of ideas and concepts and, of course, a lot of science and a lot of culture.

                I happen to be one of the few in the class who is not a BSE major, who isn’t a scientist or a cultural studies person at all. I’m a designer. I’m a creative person, I’m in the college of design for product design. I plan to design furniture and home décor in my future. So what does that have to do with science and culture? What could I have gained from this course? Honestly, I didn’t know going into this. I just took it to fill up a LibEd requirement, and because it sounded like one of the more interesting choices from my limited options to fill these reqs.

                But honestly, I’ve taken a lot from this course. I think most memorable/important thing I took away from this course is that culture is woven into everything we do and interact with. Economics and politics have such an impact on literally everything – even if we rarely realize it. Most people don’t think to look deeper into everything like we have in this course to find all those ties and connections that really impact everything. Specifically for me, researching my group’s background report on food and obesity really opened my eyes to how economics and politics specifically impact food. Things like the fact that food stamps (now the SNAP program) don’t cover basically anything and makes it really hard for families to create healthy meals if they don’t have the economic resources to do so on their own. How the politics around poverty immensely contribute to the obesity epidemic as well as healthcare access and costs. Also how social media and the ‘more is more’ and ‘bigger is better’ and ‘instagram-able’ culture impacts how we view and consume food.

And to tie this into my design background, culture is a huge part of how we interact with the spaces around us and the things in our lives. With social media and digital/technological advancements, people continue to expect and demand more from their spaces, their possessions, etc. such as digitizing everything from kitchen gadgets to furniture to floors and even moving towards real life ‘smart homes’.

Basically, my main takeaway is just that economics and politics impact literally everything, and nothing is truly unbiased (not even science). And science and culture will continue to impact everything we do, see, hear, feel, taste, and interact with on a daily basis.

Thanks for a great course!