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.