Overconsumption awareness

I have just finished studying Block 5 of U116 module at The Open University. The book is called ‘Changing China’ and my TMA for this was to write an essay explaining how migration enables economic growth and therefore leads to environmental issues. 

We all know that China is growing economically and the growth is still rapid. Whilst developed countries are looking into newer ways of protecting the environment, Chinese government seems to be still steering the country into even more development having little regard for the environmental damage this is causing. List of China’s environmental problems is long. It includes issues like threats from flooding, desertification, water shortages, disappearing forest reserves, air and water pollution and many more.

Studying this subject made me wonder what are we ‘the individuals’ are really doing to protect our environment. How many people actually lead their lives by putting the environment on top of their priority list? Well, that off course would be unrealistic but if anyone would take a small step towards decreasing consumption, it could have a massive impact. But we don’t. Why? Because it’s inconvenient and because often environmental problems don’t affect us directly. We are so used to the convenience of life that we can’t be bothered to even make a small effort. Everything is so easily replaceable and accessible that we just don’t bother to re-use things.

I don’t have children but many of my friends do and it is shocking how many toys and gadgets the littles ones have. I totally understand that parents want for their children to have everything they need and to have a happy childhood. But do they really need 100 toys when they’re five? Or do they need new mobile phone every 6 months when they’re sixteen? No, they don’t. But our society is powered by money, advertisement and sales. When you become a parent you’re being told you need to buy hundreds of gadgets for your baby and they’re all essential. Then you need to buy hundreds of toys which will stimulate baby’s development. And after that your kid wants hundreds of toys and gadgets because they are bombarded by the advertisements. If you do try to stop this and say ‘no’ then you’re facing a fear of your kid being an outsider because all other kids will have the toy, the phone etc. and you have to cave in because you don’t want them to be the odd one.  

So which way do you think this trend will go? Will we continue to overconsume and not think about what we’re doing to our planet? Or will we wake up, stop this madness and teach the future generations to re-use rather than bin and buy a new one.   

Click here to see ‘Overconsumption, overpopulation – in pictures’.

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Lately I had a thought. Does anyone ever know exactly who they want to be when they grow up?

I don’t really believe in ‘what’s meant to be, it will be’. I don’t belive in fate, destiny and the whole ‘our lives have already been written for us’. I think there is a lot more complexity to who we become and how our lives turn out. I believe our lives are a combination of random series of events, coincidences and chances; background we come from; family circumstances; choices we make; how hard we work; how intelligent we are and so on.

So how do people know who they want to be and how do they become that person?

What prompted me to think about this was my old friend. Both she and her husband have degrees and work within their degree’s fields. She works in an environmental sector and he is a geologist. They both enjoy their jobs but she recently said to me that if she had to make the choice again she would become a veterinarian and her husband said he would become a chef. She didn’t study veterinary because she was scared to move away from her family for 5 years as it takes 5 years to complete a degree in Poland.

So does anyone know who they want to be at age of 16 when they have to make that first important educational choice? Many young people go to uni and study subjects they don’t really like but feel that they need a degree of some sort. Also many people come from well-educated families and get pressurised to becoming doctors, lawyers etc.

I never knew who I wanted to be. I tried few different jobs and did few college courses. I was just as confused and undecided in my early twenties as I was as a teenager. Finally at age of 28 I have made my choice and I am so happy I decided to start my studies with The Open University. It took me so long to realise that I have always loved science, I have always cared for the environment. I am now finally motivated enough to pursue this path. I feel that any other time in my life I was too young and too confused to make this decision.

I am so grateful that The Open University allows people like me to get higher education without compromising their lifestyle. Hopefully in four years time when I’m all grown up, I will be who I want be.

 

 

 

Everyday life planning – introduction

I am a person that needs planning to stay sane. I also like to write things down on paper. My head is usually full of ideas, things I need to remember to do, random thoughts. It constantly works on full speed. This becomes a problem when I don’t write things down. I randomly remember that it’s someone’s birthday in two weeks’ time and then forget about it the next day. Then I remember about it one day before and panic that I haven’t got time to make/buy them something. It caused me a lot of stress and sleepless nights with added guilt and feeling of failure when I forgot things or wasn’t prepared for things.

Writing things down on paper helped me to free my mind and organise my life. We are all different but I know that there is a lot of people out there stressing about things, forgetting things and running around like headless chickens trying to do everything last minute. I was one of those people and yes, it’s impossible to fully get rid of that attitude if you’re naturally little bit ‘all over the place’. But I guarantee you that planning and organising your life with a simple planner will save you time, stop the stress and will help you sleep better. Also simple ticking the tasks give a sense of achievement and makes me feel that I have been productive and succeeded in managing my time.

There is a lot of different planners and organisers out there and a bit of research will help you pick one that will suit your life style. It took me few months to work out my ‘perfect’ planning routine. In fact I still adjust it as I find out how/when I am most productive. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out the first time, try different approach, different planner.

If I was to keep going with this post it would turn out extremely long. So I decided to split it into a few posts and make a little planning series out of it. I will share my planner with you, post links to planning videos and ideas and explain what works and doesn’t work for me. Don’t forget that this planning series will apply to anything from work, uni to personal and family life planning. These categories can be separated or combined all in one. As for me, I like to have everything in one place to see an overview of my week/month/year.

‘How to Be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran - a book that everybody needs to read

Since today is the International Women’s day I thought ‘How to be a woman’ is an appropriate book to mention.

 

Feminism is often misunderstood for hatred towards men. Many people don’t actually realise that it really means advocacy of women's social, political, and economic rights. Many people also don’t realise that women are not treated the same as men even in developed countries like Great Britain or America. Women are often paid less than men, their opinions are often less regarded than those of men, and men are often hired rather than women because it’s more of a manly job. I am not talking about something like mining here, I am talking about office jobs where experience, knowledge and skills should be taken into consideration, not physical capabilities. I myself was discriminated for being a woman. Doing exactly the same job as my male colleague and I was paid less. I was also asked not to wear a skirt to work (I’m talking about professional knee length skirt) because the male colleagues couldn’t focus on doing their job. This was in England, year 2013, particularly sexist work place.

I veered off a bit here but what I wanted to show is that the inequality problem is still here and Caitlin’s book shows us just that in a hilarious way, based on her life. I think all men and women should read this book. Even if you don’t fully agree with her opinions, it will show you different perspective and maybe open up to something you haven’t considered or didn’t realise was issue.

So happy Women's Day! Let's hope that one day women all over the world will have equal rights to men. Let's hope that one day girls won't be refused education, won't be forced in marriage, won't be brutally circumcised. Let's hope that men and women will stand together and become feminists in its true meaning.

Handmade gift for my best friend – a watercolour sunflower painting and a mini album

One of my bestest friends lives far away, back where I come from – Poland. Me and Marta have been friends for about thirteen years now. For ten years we have lived in different countries, about 1600 km away from each other. Our friendship is still strong, even though we only talk to each other once a month and see each other once a year.

It was Marta’s 30^th birthday back in January. I wanted to give her something special, something that will show her how much I value our friendship. I thought there is no other way than handmade.

Sunflowers are her favourite flowers so I decided to paint a sunflower with my watercolours. I’m definitely not an artist but I think it came out quite good. I really enjoyed painting it, I will definitely try and find some watercolour painting courses so I could learn some techniques.

I felt like the painting was not enough. I found some pictures of us from good old high school days and made a ‘journey through our friendship’ mini album. Apparently none existent eyebrows were ‘it’ back in 2008. There is few more embarrassing pictures in there, looking through them brought back lots of great memories.

What do you think about handmade gifts? Would you like to receive a gift like this from a close friend?

 

Is wearing fur morally worse than wearing leather?

Click here to read the Guardian article.

Source http://atrl.net/forums/showthread.php?p=23415933#23415933

First of all let me say that I eat meat and buy leather but I don’t buy real fur. I would not be able to remove meat from my diet so if I eat meat I might as well buy leather since it is a by-product of animal farming, right? However according to the Guardian article leather industry is linked with pollution which is something I haven’t considered before.

When it comes to fur, the industry also creates high amounts of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. In fact the article states that the pollutant levels coming from production of fur are higher than any other textile. That’s the environmental side of things but what about morals? Fur is produced only for the sake of fashion so isn’t that selfish?

I don’t know if I am wrong or right here but I believe that we can farm sustainably for meat and if leather is the by-product of that industry then why not use it. Fur on the other side is a different story to me. I personally would feel wrong wearing a real fur coat. Sure, I’ve heard about sustainable fur farms but to my knowledge there isn’t many of those. More often than not, an endangered species gets killed and then skinned alive so that someone can wear a soft fluffy coat. I personally would not feel good with this.

I am curious what your thoughts are! Is it just as immoral to buy leather as it is to buy fur and I am being a hypocrite? Or maybe you think both are ok and we should wear whatever we want? Have you ever thought about the environmental impacts these two industries have on our planet?

Or maybe I should ditch thinking about morals and environment, and have fluffy gloves made out of my cat? …

 

Access to Success Route with Open University

The good thing about Open University is that you can ‘try it out’ without committing to the long term studies. If you want to get the feel of what it’s like to study with OU, you don’t even need to commit to a whole year. OU offers 3 month (at least that’s how long mine was) long introductory modules called ‘Access’.

I have gone through ‘Access to Success’ route two years ago which started with access module and followed by a level 1 module. I was eligible for funding so I paid £75 as opposed to something like £3000. I have been searching the web today but I can’t find any information about ‘Access to Success’ route. I am guessing they don’t do this anymore. This is a big shame because it allows people to get the proper feeling of what it’s like to study with OU without getting a loan or spending all of that money!

However I found that they do funding for the Access course and you might be eligible to study it for free. It’s not as good of a deal but it’s still an amazing opportunity to see if OU is for you. ‘Access’ is a great module especially for those who didn’t hold a text book in their hand for the past ten years, like me! ‘Access’ module I studied was called ‘Y181 Introducing Environment’ and it wasn’t very demanding. I don’t know if they still do this one but there is a variety of subjects to choose from. Studying ‘Access’ module gave me a chance to see if I am capable of motivating myself to study after a whole day at work; if I can actually handle studying on a university level; if my brain is still spongy enough to absorbs information and most of all if I find the topic interesting and enjoy the experience.

I sound like I’m sponsored by OU and trying to sell the product here… I’m not. I just had a great experience with OU so far. All of my tutors have been very supportive and helpful and they give great feedback.

Head over to this web http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/do-it/access to check out the details for the ‘Access’ course. Give them a ring if you have a question or you are unsure of something. I guarantee you that they will be helpful.