Post 10: English Language Challenges

Having this English subject at forth year of university has been great. My last English class before this year was at school, and they were not as entertaining as this classes (actually they were pretty bad 😑). 

The thing that I enjoyed the most was the use of this blog, because I really like writing, even if it has to be in English, in fact, it doesn't bother me at all, I like to write in English. Also, I consider a most charming activity to write a blog now. I never blogged before, and what I liked the most about it was the possibility to write and share simple but personal things about you, that people doesn't commonly ask you, especially in university. Things that are not necessary related to your career, things that can get other people to now you better, that kind of things. On the other hand, I also enjoyed classes, even when they were made on friday afternoon ('Just let me rest' time), I kept myself awake and learned a lot, of course with a lot of help of Miss Zagal, who made classes entertaining, interesting and dinamic. 

What I have to improve a lot is my pronunciation and of course, my fear to speak English to others. I'm just shy when it comes to speak in another language. Anyways, my writing and listening is relatively good. I learned a lot of english listening to North American music, reading stories and playing video games as a child, but I never had the opportunity to have a good formal English education.

My main use of English in these days is to read articles or books for university, but also (and above all) I use it to see videos in english, with or without subtitles, watch series and to read different things on internet. It's really helpful.

I would like to say again that this blogging experience was great, but I don't now if I will keep posting, so maybe this is a goodbye. I'm really grateful for this subject and Miss Zagal, it was a good experience.

Post 9: Changes to my study programme

Well, I'm currently close to finish my studies of sociology, and I have to say: it has not been easy. I faced with a lot of problems through this years, being one of them the programme of my career. I consider that the main problem is the lenght of the career and the workload of studies. We have a lot of different subjects in the fisrt two years that demand a lot of time and study, and they are too hard. Maybe the most important thing to understand and employ in universtity is that excessive workload is not better to learn and neither is for motivation and health. The main plan should be to apply participative methods, promoting an active interest of students on subjects and avoiding test-method that make everything stressful. On the other hand, I consider that our university has pretty good infrastructure, even when sometimes the campus appears to be overcrowed, it's buildings and spaces are far more than I could access outside university.

The most relevant point on this, is that the entire education system in Chile is currently problematic, as it takes five years, at least, to finish a career just because education inequality generates educational gaps to students who access to worse education because of their economic situation through school. This means that some students enter university knowing a lot, while some others have learned luckily the basics, so there is a need to add extra years of leveling and review of the basics.

As a sociologist student, I'm convinced that we need to help on solving this issues on education, in every aspect we can, so in the future, there will be no longer such things as knowledge and education inequality.

Post 8: Personal Opinion

It is important to have your own opinion about different issues in order to discuss to create a better world. So, now I'm going to give you my opinion about three different subjects that are important in this present. Hope you enjoy!

What is your opinion about owning an exotic pet? In these days, it appears to be attractive to more people to have an exotic pet. It could be a snake, a monkey, a chinchilla or even a capybara. Some rich people show interest on having tigers as pets too. My opinion about this subject is actually negative, because I think that nature has to be respected and exotic animals usually are animals taken from their natural habitats. Even if they look happy some times, I think that this craving of having exotic pets is just one more example of our culture of disrespect for nature and almighty humans that invade every space of this world. It is a need to start respecting nature's balance in every aspect of life. Animals that are not used to humans life need to be on their own habitats.

What is your opinion about women in the military? I'm actually critical about military. Nowadays, there is a need to reduce the military power of countries to secure peace and the diplomatic way of solving conflicts. This doesn't mean that some people should not have the possibility to enter military service, the ideal scenario would be that people themselves understand the problems of armies, so no one has to be stopped from joining to it, they wouldn't join in order to their own beliefs. So, in this way, women have the right to participate in every aspect of social life and social activities they want, including army, so, overlooking my opinion of military itself, I think it is a good sign to have women integrated on diverse aspects of society. Maybe they would be an asset on securing peace and dissolving armies, considering that most men are socialized to internalize violence and lack of compassion.

What is your opinion about recycling? Currently there is an environmental crisis that has to be stopped. So, recycling is an activity that could help us to keep earth cleaner and waste less natural resources. Considering this, recycling is really important and needed, governments should intercede and create possibilities to people who want to recycle and draw the ones who are not interested to the idea.

Post 7: Someone I'd like to meet

Even though I really love listening to music, I'm not so interested on any particular artist besides his musical production. Don't get me misunderstood, I think that knowing about the artist life is important to understand their art, but I'm just not enthusiastic about meeting them. The only one that I would really like to meet and have the chance to chat with is Elliott Smith, because his music is extremely personal and touching and I think that it relates a lot with everyone who listens to it, but he died many years ago, so meeting him would be impossible. So, if I have to choose someone to meet  I wouldn't choose an artist.

One of the important things in my life is Judo. It is a martial-art from Japan and a Olympic sport. I have been practicing it for a while and currently I'm competing on my university's team. I think that as a sportsman, professional athletes are a very big inspiration and meeting them would be always a rewarding experience, because they have been competing at the highest levels of the sport, so the experience and everything they know would be a rich learning to other people.

So, someone famous I would like to meet, is Teddy Riner. He is a legendary French Judoka, two times Olympic champion, three times Olympic medalist and ten times world champion. By now, Riner is considered the best competitive Judoka of modern history of Judo, and his career isn't even over yet! He haven't lost a fight since 2010. Also, Riner is always respectful and caring about people, he donates a lot of the money he gets from competition to child-caring institutions, representing the real spirit of Judo and the sportsmanship that comes with it. So you get to understand why I would like to meet him, he is just the best, and I think that as a Judoka I could learn a lot from him, not only in terms of technique and competition, but also as a person.

He has his own Dojo where he teaches Judo to children in Paris, so I hope someday I will have the possibility to travel there and maybe take a class with Teddy, that would be very rewarding to me.

Post 6: Postgraduate Studies

I constantly think about keep studying at university after I finish my first academic degree. I'm not sure if I would do it immediately after graduating from sociology, maybe I would prefer to work some time, save some money and then, after a couple of years, enter to some postgraduate program.

I would like to study a postgraduate on social science, because I really want to learn more about all social science and specifically, I would like to learn things about psychology that could help me in social research.

I think that I would study in Chile, actually, in this same university. Maybe I would study outsides the country after my first postgraduate. I'm not sure whereabouts exactly, because I'm not sure of the subject of it or even if I would want it, but I guess I will know in the future.

I would study part-time, so I can also work and keep doing other activities that are important to me, or if I decide not to work and studying at the same time, I would take a full-time program, to finish it most quickly. I'm not so sure if there are any program of distance learning in the subjects I'm interested.

I think it's a wise choice to study a postgraduate, but there are some reasons that could make it more difficult too, like not having enough money or time. If you have the opportunity to study a postgraduate, I think that you have to take it, unless you don't want to.

Post 5: My Future Job

When it comes to think about job and occupation, I immediately imagine myself doing something calm and practical. There are things that I enjoy a lot, like doing pottery, painting or gardening. Growing plants and selling them would be an amazing job for me. 

Something that I have always wished for is to learn about Bonsai, the Japanese art of growing trees on pots. There is people that have their own Bonsai Shops, planting and selling them to make some profit and survive. One of the most important things about this art is to be outdoors, collecting branches and materials, caring the trees and preparing the garden where trees grow. I don't like the idea of working indoor, like in an office, I found it very stressing and dangerous for your mind and body, so I would always prefer to work outdoors, where you can have more sensitivity about space and nature.

Even thought this is an activity I would really like to do, I'm conscious that it is not so viable, and most of the time is seen as a hobby. In that case, I would have to refer about my down-to-earth option: working on social science investigation. I'm currently studying Sociology, and I like it, even thought I sometimes get overwhelmed by the routine of being a student. I would like to become a professional researcher on the sociology field, involving treating with people, traveling around the city, the country or even the world making research and learning about sociological theory. I have not decided a specialization yet, but sociology haves many fields where you can work so it is not so difficult to found one in which you can adjust. The idea that really gets me enthusiastic about researching is working with participatory methods, analyzing data and of course, getting into the background of social problems to help understand them and eventually solve them.

I think that I could actually put into practice both of my plans, gardening and researching, maybe setting aside the Bonsai to a hobby and working as a professional researcher. In every case, I only hope to have the possibility of having a job that gives me enough profits to survive and live a relatively humble life, but most important, that gives me happiness and a healthy lifestyle.

Post 4: My Best Friend

Talking about my friends is somewhat difficult to me, since I have a lot of persons that I consider as my friends in many different sides of my life, being especially difficult to categorize them in a hierarchy, but it's not impossible I guess, actually, there's someone in my mind that would fit perfectly on the description of a best friend. His name is Carlos, I met him on first year of university and since then we have been friends. He approached to me the very first day of class, when I was alone and confused walking around the campus, with a friendly conversation.

It has been four years now since we first met, and he has being an unconditional company despite my complicated way of be. We have grown emotionally together this years, we talk about feelings, pains and cheers, having a great confidence and always trying to understand each other. Both of us are a complete disaster sometimes, but when that happens, we just try to keep the company and slowly cheer up.

Also we do a lot of simple things together, like listen to music and talk about it, go for walks, eat a lot and even exercise!

I will never forget when we climbed Cerro Chena to the very top of the hill, and then, when we were leaving, a strange man approached us and started talking us about weird and nonsense stories of his life. We were somewhat scared and confused, but nowadays we remember that day with lots of laughs, and that is not the only bizarre story we have together, in fact, we have a lot of bizarre and funny stories.