Tag Archives: rose cafe

Unexpected Discoveries

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Last Wednesday, I was waiting for the Rose Café to start, and was wondering who was sitting on the couch, as he did not look anything the posters that had been up all week. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were surprised with Professor Andrew Mertha who gave a talk on his work in studying Cambodia. As I wasn’t familiar with Cambodian history, it was very interesting to hear him give a brief summary of the major power shifts after World War II. There were definitely surprising facts and more I want to look up when I find the time to delve into a Wikipedia spiral.

Professor Mertha spent a lot of time looking into the role China had in Cambodian development and pointed out something that I hadn’t heard put together. It is illogical for people to think that China is capable of having extreme influence and taking over the world, yet at the same time point out the deeply convoluted and possibly inefficient inner workings of their government. I don’t know if it was just in my head or if I made a slightly audibly ‘oh’ as I took time to think about this.

He talked about going to Cambodia and looking for documents citing Chinese involvement, and after being turned away from a certain location, found a wealth of top secret documents in Chinese, detailing engineering plans for Cambodian development. While I’m sure it was stressful at the time for him, it was reassuring to hear that professors go through the same struggle of trying to figure out exactly what a source has to offer. He mentioned talking to those who were proficient in Chinese and engineering, but the gap between technology now and then is so different that they could not make any sense of it. Then with one momentous encounter with an advisee, he was connected with the key to unlocking the meaning behind the documents he found.

It was definitely an entertaining and informative talk, and while I wasn’t expecting a crash course in recent Cambodian history and a lesson in patience when dealing with work, I was glad I got to hear him speak.

Stressed

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Last Rose Café, I listened to Sarah Rubenstein-Gillis and Andrea Gerding from Gannett. Their talked focused mainly on stress, how it can affect the body, and how to alleviate some of it. Having three prelims that week meant that at the time, I was definitely feeling the effects of stress. In the beginning, people listed off a few physical things they experience while stressed, and as they rattled each on off, I felt myself feeling then as well. The feeling of chest tightness, fatigue, deep breathing, shoulder ache, racing mind. I thought of everything else I could have been doing and what I could have changed about what had happened earlier in the week.

They then moved on to talk about things we can do to relieve stress. One such thing is having 9 hours of regularly scheduled sleep, something that sounds unachievable with an unpredictable workload day to day. Assignments take longer than expected, meeting pop up, someone has to reschedule. And as I thought there thinking about how far from sleep utopia I had experienced that week, we moved on. Keeping a regularly healthy eating schedule and making time for stress relievers is something that I can definitely work on. Making a routine to signal dedicated time to study and forming habits that aren’t distracting all sound ideal, but there are things that do get in the way of them. When they asked us to visualize overcoming something that causes stress, I could not shake my mental exhaustion and how nice nine hours of sleep sounded.

We were then treated with a brief guided meditation. Rubenstein-Gillis and Gerding talked about how meditation has noticeable, positive, physical effects even when participants don’t believe in its effects. While I tried to focus on various body parts and their movements during the meditation, thoughts of things I had to do were still racing through my mind, but I did feel better afterwards. I will definitely look at trying out the full guided meditations closer to finals when there are more sessions and will attempt to overcome certain stressors on my own.

Not Just About Tennis

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Last Wednesday, I listened to Coach Silviu Tanasoiu talk about tennis and life in general. Going into the talk, I wasn’t sure how the talk would resonate with someone unfamiliar with how to actually play tennis, but his talk was so much more. He was so grateful for being able to give a talk, but by the end, I was grateful for getting a chance to hear his story and perspective on college athletes.

What was most inspiring for me to hear was his own story, growing up in Romania, falling in love with tennis, being selected to represent his country but having to rely on his family’s sacrifices for him to get to America to help grow his career. Throughout the entire talk, it was resoundingly clear that he was humbled and grateful for every experience and relationship that helped him get to where he is today. As he emphasized some of his important relationships with mentors, I found myself reflecting on everyone who has helped me out.

I also learned a lot about the demands of a student athlete. Not only is the tennis team really good at playing, but the team has an impressive average GPA and has members in diverse majors. At the beginning of the semester, they practically schedule their lives with practice and estimating how much time they need for each class in addition to getting enough sleep to play and travelling and competing.

What I found really interesting was to hear about recruiting from someone who devotes so much time to it. It’s nice to hear that he really cares about the team and the type of player that would fit in. He told a couple anecdotes about looking for talented players from across the world and spending hours talking with them, their families, and their coaches to learn about what types of people they are. And it’s not limited to a one time thing, but multiple visits and observing the player in practice and in competition to help really get a full understanding of how they are. When he mentioned that many players who want to become professionals and are reluctant to even go to school, fearing that it will hinder their skill development, I thought back to how proud he must be of each of them for excelling on the tennis court and in the classroom.

I really enjoyed listening to Coach Tanasoiu talk and it was a really interesting to learn more about what goes into student athletes, being humble and grateful for the opportunities and relationships you have, and being the best person you can be.

Barriers to Cleaner Technology

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Last Wednesday, I went to the Rose Café discussion led by House Professor Garrick Blalock. With the description of the topic being about technology and poverty, I thought it was interesting that he started off talking about cars. First, it was established that we all knew about the negative environmental effects of cars running on gasoline, yet only a small amount of people have cleaner options like Priuses or Teslas. It’s not because we don’t know that they are better for the environment, it’s because of a bunch of different factors from practicality to cost or style which are all unique to different individuals as well.

These same concerns were then applied to stoves in Uganda. Traditionally, a three-stone stove that burns coal is used, but since they are so inefficient and do not burn cleanly, they have not only negative environmental effects, but also negative health effects. If they are used in households, soot coats the walls, affecting both the women cooking and the children staying at home. You would think that if given the option for an affordable, cleaner alternative, people would be happy to change stoves.

This is where things got complicated. While stoves were created to be more affordable and much cleaner, people would stop using them because they weren’t as practical. The three-stone stove is adjustable in terms of heat, size, and duration of burn, while cleaner options were built around with a focus on cleanliness. While it was definitely the better option for the environment and their immediate health, people were not adopting the new technology.

As I thought about the car analogy and the stoves, I thought about how tricky it can be to predict human behavior in terms of consumer economics. It seems to me like there are so many different factors that go into the products we buy and use that every concern for every consumer can’t always be satisfied. If a stove was developed to solve the problems first brought up, there would be something else that just wouldn’t feel right. This is a challenge for any type of technology, and doesn’t seem like something that can ever be fully solved.

While technology can certainly have health and environmental benefits, it seems pretty much impossible to get everyone to change their behavior. Would it be nice if everyone who needed a car had a Tesla and the whole world used more renewable energy sources? Of course. Do I see this happening in the foreseeable future? Not really. But do I think that there can be meaningful progress in terms of adopting cleaner technology and helping developing communities in ways that fit their needs? Hopefully, yes.