Today was pretty much the same course as yesterday. I had woken up at my routine 7:30 and headed for my Public Policy class at 9. However, I will admit that today's class was a lot more interesting and made me more excited for the course. We looked into trends with health in the world and what people are dying of the most. 1000 years ago most people were dying from famine. 100 years ago, most people were dying of infectious diseases. Today we die from our own man made decisions. Obesity, Diabetes, Car Crashes and Cancer are some of the leading causes of death in the world yet they are all diseases people die from mostly because of choice (cancer is a little more complex though). It was really interesting learning about that today and studying how those trends could be applied into creating new policies and rules to fix such situations.
In the second half of class the professor made us break off into groups and in our groups we had to answer questions related to taxing energy dense foods and liquids. At first, in these groups I was quiet, but I ended up being one of the most expressive ones in the conversation in the end. One of the questions was "Should energy dense liquids be taxed?" At first I thought "yeah sure" like most other people but then I began to branch off and my final decision became more complex than that. In fact, I had decided that we should overall ban children being able to purchase energy dense foods in the first place. It's a drastic approach and some had counter argued my point which would make sense. However I related my answer back to the data we learned in class: 30 years ago the average child thought smoking was normal. They were able to purchase cigarettes and it was even advertised subtly towards children. Now, the average child thinks smoking isn't a good thing. And this is prevalent with smoking rates dropping consistently as policy has changed with smoking such as banning advertising and eventually banning kids from ever purchasing a cigarette in general. This is how society was able to program into the minds of youth that smoking is bad and drop smoking rates in huge amounts. So why would high energy liquids be any different? Growing up in a house where we weren't allowed to drink soda I now don't really see the need for me to drink soda. I might occasionally order a Sprite once in a while when I'm eating out but overall I choose water because I'm used to it and understand the health benefits over soda. I added on more points to my argument and more people started to understand what I was talking about. Even the professor told me how he liked my approach because he's never heard anyone use my idea before. And that's gold coming from a guy that's written multiple award winning books. But what can I say, I love to argue out a policy,
After class ended, I had headed to the RPCC to pick up some lunch with my friend and then began working on my courseload for my class. Though the class is very interesting, the courseload is A LOT. I'm kinda sad that I haven't really been doing much ever since classes started but its inevitable.
After working I decided to head back to my dorm. I caught up Diana and we decided to play Frisbee with multiple other people that were walking along and decided to tag in. Then we played many different card games. It was a great destresser in a time with a lot of stress. After going to eat dinner I went back to the computer lab until 10:45pm to finish ONE of my papers for my class. And now it's on to the next one.
Pretty chill yet work loaded day. The highlight of my day was definitely my class. I can't wait to go tomorrow.
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