End of Lent Term!

It is incredible how fast this year is going by! Lent term (aka spring term) ends in a few days. British academic calendar is quite different from the US in that all of the exams are at the end of year, even the classes you had in December. So come June I will be taking exams on EVERYTHING (will think about that later!)

In the meantime, I am sad that classes are coming to an end as I really loved my courses this term. I took a course on emerging health threats and although I am not a science/medical person at all, found the content so interesting. One of my biggest takeaways is the sheer disparity between those diseases that have the highest burden on developing countries and those diseases that get the most funding. Not surprisingly HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis get a disproportionate share of the funding partly because they are more complicated diseases but mostly because they pose the largest threat to developed countries. Kind of difficult to overlook the selfishness associated with funders' intentions.

The other elective course I took, titled Public Management of Development, covered a whole lot of issues related to the development industry (which it is). One of the lectures I found most interesting was about innovative business models whose products or services are targeted to the poor. For more information - look at some of the development blogs on the right.

Highlight of this past week was definitely having three of my best friends from Teach For America visit me. Here are just a few pictures :)