Post-lecture reflections

Today I finally gave my lecture on ethical food.

I felt I digress quite a bit and at points repetitive. It would have been a tad too confusing for the students that are uninitiated to the world of "food".

Well there were many people yawning and even falling asleep but that can't be helped. I made them laugh with a few jokes and go ewwww with my MAS earthworm-coleslaw story haha oh well. I hope they got the point. The turn out was better than expected. The class had about 150 students and at least 100 turned up! I really hope I got them thinking more about where their food come from.

Harvey felt that the lecture was good. He didn't give me any criticism at all except saying that it was good. He will use some of my slides in the environmental sustainability module next semester.

Heather (student and food activist) felt that:

- it was comprehensive and good breadth
- not enough depth
- could have included case study on one particular label perhaps
- include more food activist groups (like food not bomb, freeganism)
- could have included biofuel
- learnt something new about the ethicureans
- like the graph I did on eco-anthropocentrism vs consumer-producer centered movements/concepts
- felt that some of the uninitiated students might not be able to know enough for me to talk about elitism of slow food movement
- could have included more examples from my fieldwork

Well I guess people are more generous than I am with myself! Nonetheless I had fun :) It was particularly good that Harvey was giving out chocolates for the students and we could use the chocolates as examples about where food comes from. That's really helpful! I think I still have more to improve on in terms of organizing my thoughts, the flow of learning for the students to better understand concept. I have to stop saying "we'll come back to that later". Better flow would have prevented that. I should have at least rehearsed once. Oh well bummer. It didn't help that at points I actually forgot what I was talking about or forgot names of examples. Oh dear dear. I should remember to skip over when I forget. Still I kept good time and didn't overshot. They even got a 10minute break! :)