School Projects

As I mentioned before, the grading system is quite different here, with only a 50% needed in order to pass, and anything above an 80% being a A (just over a 70% gets you a B+). Now while this may seem like it would be much easier to get good grades the amount of effort needed to for an A is much higher than back home, so it works out to where I'm getting the same letter grades as I would back home, while I put in about the same amount of effort (albeit slightly less cause I only need to pass these classes to get credit back home). A lot of my classes have required me to do some fun (and/or complicated) projects, so I'll briefly explain a few of the better ones now.

My intro to GIS (Geographic Information Systems) class has been great thus far. I've learned the basics of how to make maps and use various layers to create a very specific map with exactly what I want to be shown. I have also created two maps thus far, one showing the income distribution of households in the various districts in the Greater Wellington region, and one depicting where in Wellington someone with a long list of requirements (such as being within a certain distance of bus and train routes, CBD businesses, Victoria Uni, and a northern facing slope) could potentially live. I still have to make two more maps, which are due in a few weeks and are quite involved. For these I will show where the best location for a landfill in the region would be using Raster processing for one and Vector processing for the other.

My Environmental Perspectives of New Zealand class held an environmental conference on campus and we were required to produce group posters to present. My group focused on the issue of 1080 in New Zealand. New Zealand has a huge problem with invasive species killing endemic birds (as New Zealand does not have any native land mammals) and 1080 is used to help control there numbers. It is a neurotoxin that is made in the USA and shipped to New Zealand where it is formed into pellets, sprays, and baits and distributed by the Department of Conservation into the wilderness. Sometimes it dropped in by planes (similar to how fire retardent is airily dropped). This is great for keeping native bird populations strong, but it is very harmful to mammals including pets of people tramping (hiking) in the forest. There have been many debates over the use of 1080, with one side claiming it does not remain in the environment for long and is very water soluble, and thus is not dangerous to humans and the water system. After looking at all the research available our group decided that while 1080 is not a great choice it is the best thing available to the government to control possum populations and should still be used, until a better alternative is produced.

This class also required me to write an essay about another environmental issue in New Zealand, so I wrote on the transportation system and its future. I found that the country is following in the footsteps (or tyre treads) of North America and needs to invest in alternative forms of transit like buses, trains, and light rail service. I also compared what Auckland might look like in the future to St. Louis, Missouri and Vancouver, British Columbia. I found the research I did on it quite interesting.

Anyway, that's enough on this topic for now, as school is not all that I've been doing here.