1) What did you think of your visit to the UN? Which speaker did you find the most inspiring and why?
United Nation’s headquarter in New York is very fascinating place, but my experience in there was quite disappointing. Because I found no reason for standing in front of the building on the street going through the security, while we could absolutely do the same activity in our beautiful school buildings which the New School will never stop purchasing. It almost felt like it was some sort of advertisement piece of activity not for students attended but for the potential students who will fund its future building purchases. The reasons why I felt that way were quite simple and I was not the only one who felt this way.
Event for sustainability was actually not sustainable.
Event was held in UN without good enough reason. There was no one, by that I mean no one, except the security people. It is fair to say most of students live near school, so it would have been much sustainable to actually use what is more available to us.
The dean was very newbie-like and others were too.
The dean who introduced all the guest speakers talked too much ended up delaying the program also we lost our chance to ask question, in other word, he made the event very inefficient and unidirectional and if I was him I would not spend 30 mins giving about very cliché, repetitive speech. Also I was asking for chance to ask questions since the beginning but he didn’t recognize, which is innocent mistake or lack of attention. He acknowledged before he had ending speech that he didn’t have enough time but choose to go over the time. I honestly cannot understand The New School making us to go all the way to there an hour prior to the event while students having an issue getting their access card. If The New School did not persist its vanity of “Look we are much related to the world, see our students asking question in UN HQ” those problems would not have occurred and I am very positive that there will be more participants if we were to do it in UC.
In short, The New School’s vanity does not justify moving hundreds of students and faculties to some where completely irrelevant.
My favorite speaker was the ambassador of Denmark, as I would love to ask her in what way we can afford those public space in New York and what was her thoughts on her country’s largest industry being a petroleum industry.
2) Read the following three articles. What do you think of these approaches to repair?
– Would you like to visit a repair cafe? Why do you think so many people are interested in repair?
I would love to visit this place as I brake all my stuff and I never really try to repair them rather I try to replace. I think this project and this place can be very helpful establishing the habit of repair and sustainable consumption.
– Would you like to see this kind of tax be possible in your home country? Do you think it is possible there or the United States? Why or why not?
These kinds of tax are totally implacable to many societies but United States as of today is not one of them. There are two kinds of governments, one being more intimate with corporations than organization and other being vice versa. Corporation does not want people to repair their products; for instance, mobile phones have 1 or 2 years guarantee which is the time the battery performance would rapidly decrease. So by the time your phone doesn’t work well your guarantee is voided. Corporations wants fast consumption so that they can have more revenue every year.
– Were you surprised by this article? Do you agree with the author? Do you think an object has to be expensive to be well made? What might make people take care of objects, even if they aren’t expensive?
Most people would say more expensive product is more quality it holds but that is not necessarily true. For instance, it is well known fact for those in fashion industry that Theory, well known mid-range luxury brand is owned by Uniqlo, rather cheaper fast fashion brand, and they share same factory. So pants in two different store would have very different cost yet they are produced by equally skilled people.
