Self Evaluation of my Academic Year

It’s not the right time to evaluate my academic year, because classes aren’t over yet,  there’re lot of tests to take, papers to do and investigations to finish. But if I had to evaluate the whole academic year and my development on it, I think I must incorporate some crucial aspects. In the next lines I’ll talk about the subjects I had, the good and the bad ones, the distractions and obstacles I had to face and how I performed at the end, obviously, considering  the marks I have already and the projection of how I’m going to finish the academic year, at the final-final day of classes. 

The worst subjects I had were Statistics II and Quantitative Methods, contradictorily, I really like these themes, but teachers were very bad: they were boring, bitter persons and they didn’t explain very well. The subjects that didn’t make any difference where Social Psychology, Sociological Theory II and Epistemology, I didn’t like them very much and my marks in those subjects are quiet acceptable.  Economy I and II where two subjects very similar, because II it’s a strict continuation of I. Both were very difficult, but interesting, and luckily, in the first term, I had regular marks. I need one more mark in the second term, but I’m doing good.

And in the good subjects, I think first of all is Social Theory I. In this subject I learnt a lot! The teacher was very structured, clear and nice, and the themes were very interesting and important to my career –what can be more important than the classical authors?-. In second place, Social History of Chile. The better thing of this subject is the Teacher. Gabriel Salazar is an eminency in social history, and having him as a teacher it’s a whole experience. And in third place, Statistics III. I’m having this subject nowadays and I only have one mark. It’s a very difficult subject, but it’s very helpful to the future and I find it very interesting as well. It’s one of the most difficult subjects of the whole career, in the first test, I had a red mark, as most of my classmates. We’re waiting for the next test to revert this situation, we can’t fail the subject!

I can't no-talk about English. Sincerely, I took this class as an obligation. I thought that my English level was good enough to survive, so I didn’t think it was necessary improving it. But if someday I want to study in another country, I’ll have to have a decent level of English and the legitimate permission to do it from the University, with these courses and the obligatory tests. But in the last time I realized that this it’s really a necessary step to do that. School doesn’t give all the tools we need. And how can I miss the opportunity to say that the classes weren’t boring as I thought, the teacher is very nice, funny and energetic. 

This year I’ve had a lot of distractions, but one is more significant. Love have consumed an important part of my time, so I don’t do very much besides studies and my relationship. Sometimes this situation made me lose time for studying or working with my classmates, but sometimes it’s very helpful too, my boyfriend graduates from Sociology a little time ago, so he have helped me to understand contents of some subjects and he have helped me with summaries, when I couldn’t read all the texts I had to read. So, at the end, I think in spite of this distraction and the hard subjects, I’ve done very well, my marks are very acceptable and I can say I learnt a lot this year. I think I’m prepared for the next level, for sure.

Challenges in my discipline

Sociology is currently facing lots of challenges and situations to improve, related to areas like technology, social matters and education. Some of them are getting ideas and attempts to solve them.

In technology, the challenges are related to methodology instruments. Sociologists in general have several instruments to produce and process information, and they're very sofisticated and developed, but only who has the money to afford them can access to manipulate them. Sociologists who has no budget or sociology students like us must resign and use old technologies, with less options to work with, slower and more deficiente progrmas, like old versions of SPSS. The specific problem in our faculty about this specific program is that there are only a few licences to use it, and the courses are generally more numerous than licences that are available. The only solution is to invest in this and pay for more licences. Or use pirate versions, but I thinkthis option is impossible.

In social area, I think is important to be considered the social origin of the students and the schools they come from. In the first years of the career, the differences are important and remarkable. The grades in general (althought, like everithing, there are exceptions) are higher for people who went to private and high society schools. It´s funny to see the differences between knowledges and even in the quantity of books they have read. The challenge could be, in this case, to nivelate the students in the first years. Obviously, this proposal is presented only in the actual educational system`s scenario. If the structural problems of education area solved, this subject would be not a challenge anymore.

In the education area, there are several challenges, most of them are being tackled nowadays, with the carrer profile discusions, the MECESUP program, and the different comissions of students, that are working to propose new teachers and subjects, changes of old teachers and subjects and, the most important, to establish a new carrer profile by general consent. Also, is very important to stimulate and promote the interdiscinplinary team work with the other career in the faculty.

A piece of news.

A very shocking piece of news I recently read on internet was a raid in Ercilla, 9th  region. This news didn't appear in the official media, I read about it in a mail and in open newspaper called "El Ciudadano" and in the Bío Bío radio's online page.

According to those versions, a group of 200 police men with no identification or badges, break into a school in Temucuicui, where were in reunion some mapuche leaders with CONAF employees and  obviously, there were children inside the school. They confront and at the end of the raid there was 32 injured mapuches. The shocking part is that 7 of them were children and 7 were women, some of them pregnant, all of them injured by pellet.

Althought, there were children asphyxiated with tear gas and injured by unknown chemicals. They're from 10 days to 17 years old.

As I said, this news didn't appear in the popular and official newspaper, and the government said that they have a lot of doubts about this situation, I people shouldn't believe that this was completely true. I think this situation, like a lot others, affect all country, first of all, for the violence that police have implemented in the last time. They say is necessary to keep the calm... but what calm they're talking about?! All they do is converting all movements or activities in a little battlefield. And the second important thing, the media and the government are hiding information to people. This is a very large country and it's hard to know what's happening in other places, specially if there are people who are hiding the truth. That's the importance of citizen comunication media and the vast area of internet.

This kind of news I'd like to see on tv, read ion newspapers or hear on the radio. True and important issues, not burglaries in high society houses or how to steal a cash point with a car.

Improving your faculty facilities

I've been in the faculty for less than 2 years, so I don't know very much how was the facilities before. But I can notice a lot of improves in some areas, like the new computers and the bigger room for them, the data shows in every classrooms, the new equipment for the first floor bathroom, etcetera.

But there's a lot of things to improve too. Some weeks ago, a mail comunicated that the outside part of the refectory will be the new "study room". I thought that was more a joke than a information. The administration put some sockets in the walls and that was it. It's funny when you're studying or working with your classmates and a person arrives with plates full of bottles of oil, vinegar, mustard and salt. And of course, you can't use the "study room" from twelve to three o'clock at least. And before lunch break, it's always dirty and food-smelling. I think this it's one of the most important things to improve.

A new study room would provide a quiet place to study alone or to work with the classmates teams, without having to look for an appropiate place in other faculties or even outdoors. I think the first thing to do is to let the authorities of the faculty know that this it's a real need of the students, and the solution they gave don't work very well. The second step would be to propose a place where to put it, at this moment, I can't think of anything in this moment, but I'm sure someone will figure ir out.

Another thing that it's a problem for every student in the faculty, I think, it's the lack of books and journals in the library. There's a lot to invest in this area yet.

Also, a place to relax and share with the people's faculty it's very necessary too. Some other faculties in the University have places like that, with sofas, ping-pong tables, chess tables, radio, tv's... I heard the other day that the bike's parking and plants under the stairs were removed because that space will be used for that propose. Let's hope so!

Election Day

I think world of politics is very damaged in these days. For that reason, I'm not registered to vote. I think I will when I find a candidate who represents all the values that a public person should have.

One of the ways to notice the damage of politics is the electoral campaings. In the last time, the propaganda is filling walls and streets. This is a very bad aspect of electoral campaings, but the worst things are the bribery with poor people and the dirty tricks like using the image, colors and sentences to subliminal messages, like this flayer, found in San Miguel.

I think the most important thing a person who wants to be president should do is making his speech based on true and own thoughts, and don't try to make people happy with promises, without a real will.

I've never considered to become a politician, unless it counts when a wanted to be president, when I was 5. But if I had to choose a ministry to work in, I think I'd choose the Work Department, because I think there a lot of things to improve in that area, like working class salaries and legal regulations. This is one of the things that need intervention and solutions inmediatly, as well as the problems with public education, inmigration issues, public healt system and politician's salaries. I think if they get only the salaries they deserve, a lot of money could be saved for another issues, more important and more urgent.

Summary from a career-related article from The Guardian

No such thing as a classless society

Class still has a pervasive influence over British people's sense of identity

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/07/class-influence-british-sense-identity)

Anthony Heat, a 66 year-old sociologist and profesor of Nuffield College Oxford, is currently leading the first systematic research project about british people's subjectives attitudes to class and its changes on the last fifty years. Heat comments that he had made a lot of research about inequality, but there's no empirical evidence about class identity, so this project its designed to compensate this need.

Heat and another professor, John Curtice, of the Strathclyde University, analyzed the British Social Attitudes survey of 2005, about attitudes in general, that started in 1964 and have been taken after every general election since then. In this survey, there was two questions about class identity: "Would you say that you belong to any social class? In which case, which class is that?". Based on this research, Heat concludes that class seemed to be more important in 1964 than today, and that the people who described themselves as a working class have decreased, and the people who felt middle class have increase. But oddly, the classless people have increased only 1%.

An important thing to mention is related to the professional and managerial who call themselves as a working class, mainteining the impressions they had in their chilhood.

Criminal Laws

I think capital punishment it's a fair instrument to reduce criminality , because there are some crimes that can't be paid with money or imprisonment. But, there's a very good argument that can't be ignored: the human right to live. No race, no country, no age, no culture, nothing you do in your life, can take your life away. Some people's opinion in a trial can't decide to take away somebody's life, no matter how bad its behavoir was.

I think the only pro that capital punishment have is to reduce criminality and literally to eliminate the "bad people" from the society, considering this argument, of course, in the suposition of they can't change and regret. And the contras can be related to the human rights, the capacity to change, the option to regret and there's always the posibility to punish the wrong person, and in this particular case, the punishment can't be undone.

The principal thing the government should do is to improve the education, principally in the most vulnerable sectors of the society. That's the way the young people can qualify themselves and can be better prepared to get a job and keep it.

Conected with this is the jobs deficiency, that it's growing everyday. The government should invest in creating new job spots, principally to young people, and make the big companies commit with this cause, creating laws that support this propose. I think the lack of jobs is the principal cause of criminal existence, and the criminality rates are increasing because of the financial crisis, that caused the bankrupts and multiple fires in the job market.

Luckily, I've never been a victim of a crime that I could notice at the time. I mean, I was a victim of pick-pocketing, but I didn't notice until I got home.

What to do and where to go in Santiago.

The classical place that tourists should visit is the city center, where they can find all the old buildings, museums, tipical restaurantes and bars. But I think there's a lot more than that en Santiago, like cultural centers, "picadas", and of course, the places that are far from the center, with a natural enviroment and country activities. Clearly, if someone picks Santiago as a place to visit, maybe he or she is nor interested in this things.

If a person visit a new city, he or she should know all about living in that place. So I think a tourist must travel in the subway, in the buses of transantiago, drink a "terremoto", eat a "sopaipilla" in the street, buy some stuff at Santa Lucía's fair and look up Santiago from the top of San Cristóbal's hill.

In the first place, I would recomend to visit a place called "Pancho Causeo", in Estación Central. It's a tipical restaurant, with deliciuos and tradicional food and drinks, and it's served by a family, all of them very kind, humble and warm.

To take another sight of chilean society, I would recomend to visit Cousiño's Palace, it's a beautifull and well preserved place, that shows the style of life of one of the ancient richer families in the country.

Another place they should visit is the Bellavista's Neighborhood, with all of the cultural places -including Neruda's House-, bars and place to dance and do some karaoke.

In the other hand, for some knowledge of the place they're visiting, I should recomend to go to the very very center... the "Plaza de Armas", and goto to the Historical Museum, the Catholic Cathedral, the Post Office and the town hall.

In the last place, if they want to know some nice places to take a coffe or rest a little, a suggest to go to Lastarria's neighborhood. It isn't very large or spectacular, but it's worth visiting it.

Education.

My high school experience wasn't bad, but there's lot of things that I've would change, starting on the segregation system. My school was very small, so in third year of high school, everyone had to choose two subjects of widespread curriculum and one of art subjects. The three subjects that had most of the votes were chosen for the whole course. This system works this way because the school didn't have the money to afford two teachers at the same time.

In my case, my classmates chose specialty maths, specialty biology and plastic arts. I've always preffered the humanistic subjects so I was very lost out for this decision. The only subject I liked was plastic arts, and it was one of my favourites, with history, english and language, because we could choose lot of specialtys, like dance, theater, photography, slide-work, painting, etcetera. I chose photography and I learnt a lot in this subject, starting in laboratory issues -like working with red lights, chemical substances and all that stuff- and ending in digital retouches. I think this was one of the subjects that included the most the technological issue to the everyday classroom work. Also, the teacher was exceptional. She is a highly gifted person -no kidding-, she knew art history and theory, she manage deeply every kind of art that she offer to specialize with and she knew a little bit of every subject... we could ask her for anything and she had a thuthful and accurate answer.

It's a shame I can't write like this about other teachers I had. People like her are exceptional and founding teachers dedicated and happy with what they do it's very hard.

I think that the influence of her and my history teacher was very important to make my decision when I finish high school. My school don't have a good level educationally speaking, but it's very recognized by the importance of moral and value field, so I think this is the principal issue that determinates the choices of every girl that graduates from my school. Isn't casual that the majority of the graduates study pedagogy, social work or law, all of this professions involve high level of values and social conscience.

I think my ideas in the way to improve education doesn't contribute anything new to the varied range of ideas and posibilities that the educational world have proposed already, and students specially. The usual stuff: centralize administration, taking away the manage of town councils; stop and eradicate private education; make public all kind of education, specially superior one; improve the quality of pedagogies colleges; incentivate good students for being teachers, etcetera. In this line, I think the responsability of everyone's own education is shared. A big part of the responsability belongs to the educational authorities -ministry, goverment, town councils, schools- and also a big part belongs to families and students themselves. There are people that graduates from very bad qualified schools , but they can sort selection tests very well and they can obtain scholarships, but this cases are very rare. The educational system is working wrong and all social world have to make something to make it right.

I don't know the meaning of the saying "when the student is ready the teacher appears", but I think it's related to the responsability that every student has in order to care about what he or she learn and how he or she does it. When the student accept the responsabilities and take part of its own education, the teacher can do its work.

First Term: Good and bad points.

I have to talk about the good and bad things I lived in the last term. Fortunately, there were more good than bad things.

In academic level, I learnt a lot. We had six subjects. I was interested in two of them: Statistics and Quantitative Methods, but the teachers were very bad and I got very disappointed. On the contrary, in Economics and Chile's Social History we have master classes with two eminences: Hugo Fazio and Gabriel Salazar. But the subject that contributed the most to my sociological knowledge was, definitely, Sociological Theory I. In this subject I finally could know the big theories of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, that some of my classmates already knew, but I didn't.

In the last term I went for the first time to the gym. I've never went before, because I used to think that it was for silly and vain people, but I had to take this subject, because it was one of the only choices that my schedule allow. At the end, it wasn't that bad, I increased my physical capacity, I got thinner and it makes me quit smoking.

I think the hardest challenges I had to face was in the academic field. Economics was a very hard and demanding subject for me, I had to study a lot more than others subjects and, at the end, it was the worst final mark I have had in my whole life.

Love was another field in wich I had to face some challenges, but in the good way. I had to adjust activites and schedules for having time to share with him; I had to learn how to leave the pride aside and talk in a calm and mature way to resolve issues. On the contrary of the first challenge I talked about, I think in this one I have had much better results.

Let's eat some paella!

All of my life I wanted to visit the usual places that people say they want to visit when they are asked about that: France, Egypt, Jamaica, Italy, Greece, Brazil. But a year ago from now, I have changed my mind and I've decided that I want to go to Spain.

Why? I have lot of reasons. The first of all, spanish people talks in spanish. That's a fundamental thing because -second reason- I want to study there, maybe in Barcelona. I know a little bit of english and a little bit of french, but not that much and taking classes in another language is not very simple. The third important reason is that I've recently discovered a part of my family I didn't knew before and some of them are actually living there! And, the last important reason is that I also discovered that my grand-grand mother was spanish, and she came to Chile, scaping from Franco's dictatorship. Going there is like founding my roots.

I don't know very much about Spain, only a few things that people say about it. I don't research yet. I know that the weather is very extreme; that Barcelona is a very crazy city, whit a lot of night life; that inmigration has grown a lot in the last time; that there is a conflict in the Basque Country and in some places the terrorism takes place very often.

I'd like to study in Spain because there are very good Social Sciences schools, some of my good teachers have made their post-grades there, and they are very good in what they're doing now, specially in social science's methodologies, wich are one of my interest areas.

Transantiago: Before and after.

Most people say that Transantiago is making everyone's daily life more difficult and messy. I think that's true, but in my case, I think I've been benefited in several ways.

When Transantiago started, my first impression was that the new system was slower than the old one, but cleaner and more organized. And the better thing was that finally I had a bus that actually reached my neighborhood. I've always live in a place so far from the "city" that none of the transport systems reachs it.

With the time and people's demands, the system has been changing. The payment ways have changed and now we have a Bip! card that makes very easy the pay and the trip itself. There's new routes that make the trip faster, but I (and everyone else) have to get used to make combinations of buses and subway. The good thing of this is that you pay once, not two or three times, even if you use a bus, the subway and a bus again!

And, even better, with the new routes now I have three differents ways to go to my house, and all of them are very fast!

One thing that should change is the frequencie of some services. There's people that have to wait even half an hour for a bus. Also, the schedule of the subway should be longer, the "Bip's points" should be more and should be installed in places that are far from downtown and the old buses should be replaced by new ones. They pollute a lot.