Self Evaluation of my academic year (2009)

Finishing the academic year there has come the time of realize a final balance, to evaluate my results, that of my class mates and that of the university in general. Makes this evaluation is very important, because it allows me to place myself in my university student context, and therefore to have a perspective of the state of my current situation to the interior of my career, and also of the evolution that I have had during its development.

To get this objective, I’m going to talk about the subject, the teachers and the experiences related with the academic life that I have had, and the experiences related with the university life in general.

To begin, I have had approximately ten subjects during this academic year, which not they all me have pleased, partly because some of them are dispersed about what the career treats itself, and also because not they all seem to me interesting. For example, “sociology of the culture”, which has an interesting name, but wasn’t approaching the topics adequately from my conception of culture, or “political sociology”, in which the teacher was very monotonous to do the classes. But also there have been subjects that have been called me the attention very much, because they are more concrete and because they come more closer to what I search in the sociology, as the theories II and IIIrd, which treat social topics as the inequality, or “techniques of qualitative investigation”, that allow to come closer the social reality of a most complete way, or " population and society ", that gives the tools to understand the demographic phenomena that they must be considered in public policies etc. For this reason, in spite of the fact that I have had subjects boring, there have been others that I have liked very much.

With regard to the scores, in spite of the fact that I don’t study very much, to my me enough good has gone in relation to the rest of my class mates, because I know to combine studies and leisure or parties. For this reason I could have shared very much with my friends, like for example sharing a beer or dancing in the "ashtray", what has allowed me to feel me full enough in my university life in general.

In conclusion, my academic life has been varied enough, but I feel that little by little I am come closer to the sociology as a profession, because every time I have subjects more concrete and interesting. But not for this reason I want that time pass quickly to be a sociologist as such, because the university not only implies an academic life, but also a university life, which it implies sharing with the friends and companions, and to enjoy the instances of entertainment, which also give experiences for the life.

The sociology

The sociology as a social science is in an advanced level, nevertheless, as any discipline that always looks get better, has some challenges related to the following specified areas:

With regard to the technology, some challenges that it faces it, are to crate computer programs to process information, information that represents the reality in all its complexity.

What I think about this, it is that its should consider the paradigm of the complexity in the models production that they should allow to interpret the reality in its completity.

In recounted to social matters, I must admit that the elaborated theories are advanced enough. Nevertheless, the critique that I might do, is that often to realize investigations in social matters, the investigators become very attached to these theories, forcing them to study the reality, which shouldn’t be done, because there are many aspects, big or little that are important, and that not necessarily are contemplated in the theories.

With regard to the education, the sociology has much to reach and is in conditions to do it, nevertheless the critiques that I would say are related to the society, who not always takes in consideration the studies realized by the discipline that indicate which are the principal failings in the area.

I consider that these problems, more that related to the discipline, are related to the society, and with its enormous inequalities that they determine to that the education is better for the well-off sectors and of worse quality for the poor sectors. Besides this, the government and the members of parliament, who are principally members of right, prevent from solving these problems, since they seek to support their social position.

To finish, I would like to say that the sociology has many potentials, and that it should make listen by the government to improve problems as the social matters or the education ones, because the discipline with the opportunity and the resources, it`s caps of taking forward a project that little by little solves these social conflicts.

My Free time

On my free time I like to do many different things, like to rest, to see some movie, to join with my boyfriend, to go to some park, and if it is possible, to travel to some nearby place if my free time is small, and if my free time is longer, I like to travel in more time and for more places, maybe inside of Chile or to another countries.

I like to do these things because I like to live the life to the maximum during my free time, and in other periods, like for example in the university, I only have time to study and read theory cal books, and only occasionally I can see my friends. On the other hand, I like to pass the time with my boyfriend because I like to re-trim and to share experience with, as for example the trips that we have realized for Latin America throw Peru, Equator and Colombia.

I would like to have more free time to be able to rest and do the things that I propose myself to my own proper, without having the pressure of which I have university obligations that not necessarily are of my interest, like for example subjects that I don´t care, and that in my professional future I do not go away of dedicating.

In the times that I don´t have anything that to do with regard to the university, as for example Fridays in the evening, I like to entertain in the field of the university, because there I meet other class mates and friends that I spend it well. Here I do things that it could e considered illegal, like smoke marijuana, but I don´t consider it anything badly or wrongly ... this negative valuation has to see more with cultural and moral aspects that with real negative consequences and it´s because of it that in other countries is not illegal.

As I already said, I like what I study, but I don´t like to spend time in subjects that are not called me the attention and that eats a lot of work me, as for example psychology, which actually doesn´t have great that to see with my properly such career.

The Faculty of Social sciences

My faculty…

The situation in my faculty is very varied, because it has some aspects gods and another no so much… It is necessary to distinguish between their material aspects, its administrative aspects and its academic aspects.

We must recognize that materially speaking, the power has been improving progressively with regard to previous years, particularly with regard to the excavators technology as the three computer rooms that have been installed, the microwaves that the administrative have install in the canteen etc… but there another aspects, like the bad implements of the library or the small availability of rooms.

By the other Hand, there are very god teachers, like Omar Aguilar in theory sociological 4

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I’ve decided to choose the last movie that I saw, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, directed by David Fincher.
The storyline of the movie it’s about a baby boy who is born with the appearance and physical diseases of a eighty five years old man, whose mother dies on having given birth to it, and whose father leaves him on the door of a nursing home, were he is found by the worker of the home, who decides to adopt him, be his mother and call him Benjamin.

In the course of the story, Benjamin begins to grow younger, and when he is a kid (with the appearance of a 60 years old man), meets Daisy, a young girl who visits her grandmother every weekend at the nursing house. Benjamin and Daisy become friends for ever, and when they grow up, they fall in love, but when they have a daughter, Benjamin decides to leave them, because he knows that with time he will grow younger and younger, until he turns into a baby.

This is a really god movie, because it’s completely unusual and different from the rest. The development of the story is not predictable and you are involved during the whole story. These are the characteristics of all the movies of David Fincher, like for example the fight club, the panic room etc.

The film is very long, so the soundtrack is very varied. The film's first trailer featured the "Aquarium" movement of Camille Saint-Saens "The Carnival of the Animals", and the international trailer contains the song "A Moment of Greatness" by Immediate Music. But I don’t know very much about this music.

Chapter and verse on the death penalty

The new that I chose it`s about the “death penalty” (http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=Chapter+and+verse+on+the+death+penalty&sitesearch-radio=guardian), and how the jurors turned to the Old Testament to determine if a man on death row should die, which involves crossed and important line.

This new called my attention because it is about the capital punishment, the “death penalty”, and this is a really relevant them, not only for its significance in the field of social responsibility, or in sociological terms, the relationship between agency and structure, but also involves interesting aspects that are related with religion, which involves it with the sociological concept of “religious alienation”.

In this case, the juror of Texas introduced biblical notions into de jury discussion, because in his view, biblical pronouncements should be taken literally, and he fervently believed that "the Bible is the truth from page one to the last page", and the chapter and verse who they consulted where:

“If he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death”

From this crop up several questions as what they would have seen as "relevant" verses from an ancient text? Was it improper? Was it perhaps a well-intentioned, but deeply worrying deviation from the expected conduct of a jury?

In my oppinion, I think that that action were an improper and a deeply worrying deviation from the expected conduct of a jury

28 de sept

The congress in Buenos Aires

The congress….

I actually went to two conferences in the congress, one of “Teodonio du Santos”, that it was about the crisis of the capitalism, and the other was about the students Latin-American movements. This conference was dictated for teachers and students leaders from different universities of Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay, and it was really interesting.

The bad points of the congress were that it was very disorganized and there wasn`t much information about the hours and classrooms of the conferences, the inscriptions, the certificates, and sometimes the explained wasn´t arrive to give the conference. But in general it wasn`t so bad.

On the other hand of the trip, I could know lots of different typical places, like “Puerto Madero”, the riverside of the Plata`s river, “San Telmo”, the bohemian hood, the “obelisco” on the center of Buenos Aires, “Tigre”, a large artisan market, etc… and those rides were the highlights of the trip.

The weather of the city was very wire and changeable, because one day it was extremely hot and the next day it was extremely raining and cold.

In definitely, I had a really great time in Buenos Aires

A COUNTRY I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT

One of the things that I love more in the world it´s travel, because those open your mind and enriches your life.

I already know Argentina, Peru, Equator and Colombia, thanks to a really amazing travel. But I must recognize that one of these countries should not manage to know well: Peru, since only cross over it and knew Lima, it`s capital. I would like to go there again to visit it`s jungle, and the inca`s capital, “Cuzco”, and to know how they were the constructions of its empire.
I would like to cross the mountains of the sector to observe in person the grand sight that one sees in the photos, and to breathe the pure air that it should be there.

I hope to do this travel on this summer, like a cultural trip more than a study, or work travel, because if it were like kind of travel, I`ll shouldn`t enjoy enough.

I`ll don`t like to live there either, because I must recognize that I like the commodities of my life in Santiago, or in my country, but I`ll really enjoy a very long stay there.

For that reason I would like visit to Peru...

The last term

Thinking about the last term I can say that it was quite diverse if I consider all his aspects, like my university, friends and family life.

On my studies, I learned how to use different qualitative and statistics techniques of analysis of information, and how to give it sense to that information applying the theory of different authors related with the subject. Some of the challenges I had were related with this, because the subject named “sociological theory III” it was very difficult to me.

With regard to the sport, I have never been very good with them, but I hope practice one on this term, maybe it`ll be pilates or yoga. on my free time I used to meet my boyfriend and go out with friends, almost always at the university, because there we have a lot of space to do what we want to do, like play soccer (or watch like the others plays it), sleep on the grass, to talk, drink a beer, etc.

With my family all was ok, I`m still living with my parents, my sisters and my brother. My house it`s near from the university, so I could sleep until later.

That is it!

My ideal Job

I have thought on my ideal job many times, and in my thoughts are different aspects that I consider to be relevant, for example, that lets me have an independent way of live, and with this I’m referring that my life must not be tied to the work, to do the activities that I’ll want to do.

I hope I find a job that let me work in the social area, and no on marketing or superficial or trivial things, because I know that I can’t change the world, but I would like to do some changes or At least to denounce aspects that will be unjust to me, and to promote any type of solution.

I think that I will be good in a job like that because always I`ve interested in those themes, but I know that exist a very important aspect to consider in the moment to execute my work and that the results are the awaited ones: To be recognized in the area of investigation for the specific projects that I should realize. For this reason I must be constant, because I know that to be recognized I must to work hard, and to be acquiring experience and skills in the way. For example, to develop my sociological intuition to identify conflicts and the ways necessary to solve them, and to do that I must be able to handle all kinds of technologies of analysis of information, both quantitative and qualitative.

The difficult of find this kind of job are develop those skills to recognized and knows how to adapt my times to make my way of life and my work compatible.

"Do Schools Kill Creativity"

In the conference of Ken Robinson he talks about how the educational system of the hall world truncates the imagination and creativity of children.
He defined creative like the capacity of having original ideas that have value more often, to make interact different disciplinary ways of seeing things. He says that because in the modernity, people is not prepared to be wrong, and for that reason they not give them de space necessary to creativity, and those it is what inculcates the educational system. That´s way kids have become frightened of being wrong, and have lost the capacity of let their been for their imagination. In other words, adults are educating kids out of their creative capacities.
Every education system has the same hierarchy of subjects. “At the top are mathematic and languages, then humanities and at the bottom are the arts.
On this logic, public education it´s focused on produce university professors, who lives in their heads, and they´re disembodied, which is too bad to the creativity.
The hierarchy of the educational system has become rooted on two ideas: The first one is produce the most useful subjects for work, and the second is academic ability, which comes to dominate our view of intelligence.
If we promote this traditional way of education that makes strip mine the earth for our particular commodity, in a few years it won´t serve us anymore. For this reason we must redefine the fundamental principles of education to change this situation.

Qualitative techniques

During the career I have had a lots of different subjects, and at the beginning those was very general and no so related with the career. For that reason, in the first year I didn´t like sociology very much, but I decided gave it a second opportunity and wait to know how were the subjects that would come later.

Now, in the third year, I have subjects more specifics about sociology, and I think that my favourite one it is “Qualitative techniques”, and it´s given by Klaudio Duarte.

I like it because consist of learn how to work with people to get valuable information of a particular theme, and it gives you the tools to work with different techniques of analysis to apprehend underlying phenomena to the obvious things.

On this semester on particular (in the second level of this subject: qualitative techniques II), I´ve learned these techniques: analysis of content, structural analysis of speech and based theory.

And this is my favourite subject.

The future...

Well… to start I think five years it is not too much time to say that in that period I’ll have my resolved life.. I think the life it´s a continuous process that it never ends.

In five years from now, I hope I be able to live in my own house, or rent a house in a nice neighborhood. I would like to live with friends or with my boyfriend and do anything I want to do. I think this it´s my real goal: to do what I would like to do at any time. With this I refer to my professional and social life… for example get the best job to me; earn my own money to be able to travel where ever I want, meet my friends and family etc.

Principally, I would like to be happy, to be consent to my life, but not only in five years, but rather at all time of my life.

Maybe in more time, I´ll have my own family, or maybe not… that kind of things will be seen in the way of life…

Hello everyone, on this post I`m going to talk about one of the most important authors among sociologists, his name is Jürguen Habermas.
He is a theoretical German who developed a very interesting theory about communication in relation to the sociocultural evolution, named “Theory of the communicative action”. I chose this author because I like his theory and I think that the sociocultural evolution it is rules for its principals. Those are that the organizational universal principles of societies are relationed with the communication, because throw it people can get to the consensus and on that way get solutions to systemicly’s problems.
The reasons for which this theory seems important to me, it’s because it belongs applicable to all the societies, and simultaneously it’s capable of explaining why some problems are not able to be solved inside the same logic of the theory.
In brief, Habermas is without a doubt one of the best authors in the field, because of his many contributions to sociology.

My Career: Sociology

How you know, I’m studying sociology. The reason why I chose this career is that always I have worried for social matters, and I though that this career would help me to understand the phenomena that are called me the attention, and the sociologists understanding the phenomena can act and take measurements with regard to them. On this way, sociologist can contribute to society creating programs overcoming of the poverty, public policies to improve the living conditions that the current social order provide etc.
There are many necessary conditions to a sociologist could really act, for example, you should have power, a good job, recognition in the means or win a fondecyt, otherwise is very difficult to obtain financing or space of action that is taken in bill. Any way, there are many tools that a professional of society must know to use it. For example, a sociologist must know how to use the imagination to investigate problems record in the society that must be solved. Then, it`s necessary to know how understand the sociological theory about this problem to crate a investigative project. Then, you must create a good instrument of work like surveys that should answer the questions of your investigation. Another very important tool that a professional sociologist must know how to use is SPSS or other stadistic program to work with the databases that are compiled of the surveys.

My favorite subject is qualitative techniques, because it`s not about just numbers and numbers, but rather about working with people, and that it`s very important to me…

And that`s about my career in general terms…

Baru Island

Hi everyone!

I chose this photo because I like it very much, in it you can see a beautiful beach, with white sand, big palm trees and a exquisite turquoise sea where you can swim and swim for hours on end without getting tired.
This place is called “Playa blanca”, and it`s on “Isla Barú”, near Cartagena de Indias, and I went there with my boyfriend, (you know him, the “lucky ducky”).

The photo was taken in the last days of my vacation. I decided to take it because I wanted to remember that place for ever. The beach it very solitary, there are few tourists and most of the people you see are locals. This is the best place in the world to take a rest to me. We slept outdoor on hammocks on the sand near the sea, and it was really nice experience, because you can hear the waves while you sleep and see the dark sky with bright stars on it at midnight.

All these things makes this place a truly magical place to rest and enjoy, and if you can, you must visit it and you`ll never regret it.

I don't usually navigate throught internet, so I could say that I haven't a favourite link about sociology. For this reason, mi mission on this session is look for an interesting link that draws my attention and talk to you about it.
While I was doing this task, I found a vary attractive link that is not about one topic on particulare, on the contrary, it's about lots of differents areas of sociology. For example it shows some interesting links to sites about sociology, to many magazines on different topics related to social sciences, and to support material for students etc.
The name of this link is not very original, but it's precise and concise, it's www.sociologia.or/olddir
I advise you take a look because it can be very interesting and also it will be very usefull for you, too.

Good luck!

Here we are!

Hi... I`m Consuelo and I never thought that I`ll have a blog, but here I am, writing a post on my own blog... le chatte blog.


I hope this will be a nice instance to know my english's clasemates better, because I think that nobody knows how to use this, and I hope this will be fun too.

Bye!