This is the last one

In this last blog of the semester, I have to talk about English, and my experience in this university regarding to this subject.

I think that it is planned in a very didactic way; it was not at all like school teaches English because we barely had any traditional classes. We used a lot of multimedia contents which we combined with written activities of the book and oral interactions. I enjoyed the movie we watched; also I think it is a very useful way to improve listening and understanding skills.

There was always a part of the class that we used to make blog entries in which we had to talk about different topics and the numbers of words increased every week. It became very challenging and most of the time I had no idea what to blog about, but it was a fun alternative to the traditional kind of learning a subject.

I think there are a lot of things that I have to fix and improve according to English, like my oral interaction skills and my vocabulary, I constantly have troubles with the way I talk, because my lack of vocabulary restricts my oral interactions and sometimes I end up saying something that I was not planning to say. I think I missed the opportunity to talk in English with my mom –she is studying something related to this language- and I will try to improve my fluency doing that.

Finally, and connected with what I just said, I’m not using English so much in my routine, because even though I have the opportunity to talk with somebody in this language, I don’t take it; I think it’s because I’m too lazy to do this. Nevertheless, I always try to watch the TV series that I like with subtitles in order to learn new words J 

Bye!

Future JOB!

Today we have to talk about what job we would like/love to have, but as usual, is becoming very very difficult for me to choose something, so I will go with the easier option, the career that I already chose to study.

 I will choose sociology as my first option, because after all I am studying this. I don’t know what I will do when I finish this career, but I know there is a lot of possibilities. I hope that I will never have to work making surveys, because I think they restrict a rewarding process that can be accomplished with other kind of methods. I would really like to work with anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists making public policies in relation to the topic of Work, because I think that besides Education it is one of the most important areas in which sociology moves. (I expect that, someday, I will finally know what to do with my career choice L )

I choose this career among others because I didn’t have any interest to work with calculus or biology in the future and also because I think it can give me some tools that will help me understand society and work I something that I really care, not like building houses (that was my former career).

If I were in a job interview I would say that among my strengths I count with working well under pressure, being responsible and the interest in learning new things. In regard to my weaknesses I would have to say that the most important ones are my lack of punctuality and my eternal hate to work as a routine.

Thanks for reading this blog entry, goodbye J

Environmental Care.

Today, I’ll talk about environmentally friendly practices. I think everybody has different degrees of eco-friendly culture. Mostly, we learn about it in school, and our own homes, depending on how green our family is.

Since I remember, in my house we always turn off lights when are not being used, turn off faucets and classify our trash.  I would have to say I don’t have a real interest beyond turning off lights and faucets, but my mom takes good care of recycling and classifying trash in our house.

In general, I try to walk as much as I can, but like I’m always in a hurry, I usually take a bus or a cab. Also, I love to ride my bike, but a car ran over it, so I can’t use it right now.

When I was a little girl, I joined an organization that was eco-supportive and we recycled used batteries and stuff like that. Right now I don’t have any particular interest to belong to one of this organizations, because environmental care is not really my priority, but I’m aware of how important it is.

Besides this, I haven’t done anything else to take care of environment but in a future I would like to use my bike more often, because is very enjoyable and it makes me feel healthy and kind of free. Regarding to my carbon footprint, I don’t think I have done anything to reduce it, in fact, I had to look on the internet what does that mean.

In regards to Santiago’s environmental care, I think there should be more cycle paths so lots of people wouldn’t have an excuse to use the bike. 

How I Met Your Mother

Today’s task is to write a free blog entry, but as usual, I don’t know what to write about… so, I’ll talk about my favorite tv show, How I Met Your Mother.  It’s a sitcom that shows up the life of Ted Evelyn Mosby and his friends Marshall, Lily, Robin and Barney.  Ted, in the year 2030, tells his children how he met their mother.

Most of the show develops in MacLaren’s , an imaginary bar located in New York. The sitcom starts when Lily and Marshall decide to get married after nine years as a couple. That is the triggering point to Ted, who decides to find the One.

Ted is an architect from Ohio, he met Marshall and Lily at Wesleyan University. After college, he and Marshall move to New York and met Barney and Robin at MacLaren’s.  Marshall is an environmental lawyer and Lily a kindergarten teacher, Robin is a Canadian reporter and Barney… nobody knows which is his profession.

I love this show because it has a special kind of humor and also use resources as web pages or books that have been published. You can find Barney’s resume on this website http://barneysvideoresume.com/video/himym_barney_video_resume_smaller.mov or a web page against Ted http://tedmosbyisajerk.com/, in refer to Barney, who used Ted’s name in order to hook up with different girls at MacLaren’s.

Bye, bye!

Assassination at the movies.

Today we have to write a summary about news connected to our future career. I wanted to write about politics and economy, specifically the eurocrysis, but there weren’t long news, so I’ll talk about something related to a sociological and psychological analysis about assassination at the movies. It comes up from the book “Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981” by Michael Newton.

The article talks about how the culture of assassination not only responds to political motivations or meanings. The first case is about a man called John Hinckley, who tried to kill Ronald Reagan in 1981. He was very close to the president, who felt an “extremely unbelievable pain”, but didn’t notice he was being attacked. The peculiarity of this attempt of assassination is that Hinckley didn’t try to kill Reagan because of its political beliefs or because he hated the president, but because he adored a movie character: Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. In order to play the character completely, he had to approach to Jodie Foster, whom played a prostitute on the film: by attacking Reagan, he could impress Foster. The hypothesis of the auto is that Hickley tried to fill his lack of confidence, style and social skills by adopting the personality of Bickle.

This is only one of the cases-related-to-movies that the book is about. As I already said the book tries to be a sociological and psychological analysis of how the assassination culture in films is assimilated by people with mental disorders.

This is the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/04/assassination-movies-michael-newton?INTCMP=SRCH

My favorite band

I always start my blog entries saying that I don’t know what to talk about and this is not the exception …after a long time thinking I chose my favorite band as a topic.

My favorite band is Death, an American death metal band founded in 1983 by its lead guitarist, Chuck Schuldiner. It was considered one of the most important bands in the death metal scene. They have been active until the year 2001, when its leader died from brain cancer. 

Death released seven studio albums between 1987 and 1998. Before the release of their first album, Scream Bloody Gore, Chuck changed the line-up several times, and this continued along the history of the band. Although Possessed is considered one of the first death metal bands, Scream Bloody Gore is considered as the album that played the classic death metal style. However, the band evolved later to became a progressive-technical band, both in the lyrics and its musical growing.

I can’t pick one of the albums or the songs as my favorite, because I like them all. This is the only band that I like all of its eras and I never think that they are not the way they used to or that some album doesn’t fit with band style, so I would say Death it’s my favorite band. I love them.

My best (and exhausting) holidays

Ok, this blog entry it’s going to be very difficult for me, because I don’t know how to decide which one of my holidays has been the best I ever had.  But if I have to choose, I would say Río Cipreses 2006 were my best holidays.

I went there on December ’06 with my mom, dad and brother.  We traveled by car in a long, long  trip from our house in Santiago to camp in a place near Rancagua. It doesn’t seem like a very large distance, but the road was full of stones and potholes, so it lasted, like, forever.

Anyways, we  finally arrived to our destination,  in order to find a place that was full of bugs and bushes. As we love to camp, it didn’t seem so much trouble, until we realized that the bathrooms (oh God, the bathrooms) were very rustical and didn’t have any comforts. As the day passed by, we get used to it and started to explore the surroundings places, until we discovered that we could climb a hill near to the camping.

One day, we decided to climb up the hill, and after a very risky cliff (we had our backs right up against the hill), we found a very beautiful waterfall, surrounded by a tiny lake. We were completely amazed; no one ever was expecting to find a waterfall right in the middle of a hill! After a very exhausting and uncomfortable experience, that was our reward. So that’s why there were the best holidays ever <3. 

New York, New York.

At first, it was very very difficult for me to decide which country I wanted to visit, because there are so many places that I want to go but after a while I discovered that there is one place I always wanted to see, New York. I don’t really like the idea of going to the States, but this particular city is not like the country itself. It mixes a lot of different cultures and language; in fact, it is considered the capital of the world. Besides, a lot of artists and writers go to NY to show their work.

Actually, I don’t know so much about the city but it has been always on my mind because one of my friends moved there like ten years ago. Also, it appears in one of my favorite series (How I Met Your Mother) and I’m kinda in love with its architecture and stuff.

If I ever go to New York, I would like to visit the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, the Museum of Modern Art and the Zoo, use the subway, go to Broadway or just go for a walk in the Fifth Avenue or Central Park.

I would like to live there, because in my opinion it’s one of the most beautiful and interesting cities in the world. 

First Term

Last semester I had five subjects: Sociology, Psychology, History, Anthropology and Methodology. At first I thought that it was going to be a difficult semester, because of the large amount of texts we had to read, but then I realized it wasn’t that hard. Also, I was scared because of my laziness and disorganization, but it didn’t cause me any trouble. I didn’t read not even half of what I was supposed to, but I learnt a lot of other things in class and the conversations I had with my classmates. I can summarize my semester in one word: Postmodern.

I didn’t do any sports or exercise last semester, but I want to practice a sport because I feel like I’m turning into a couch potato. Although, I had lots of fun because sports are not my thing and I wasn’t obliged to practice any of them.

One of the most challenging moments I had to face last term was the exam period. It was a very stressful time, because I piled up (and didn’t read, of course) almost every text of the semester.

My name is Camila Valenzuela. This is my second year at the university, but my first studying Sociology. Last year I choose engineering as a career, but i didn't like it, so i decided to find out what I really wanted to study and I chose this, Sociology. Until now I really enjoy it and I also love the university as well.

I was born in Santiago and I lived here all my life. I live with my little brother named Gaspar (he is very annoying), my mom and my pets :)
One of my hobbies is to watch How i met your mother, is my favorite tv show ever.