Self Evaluation of My Academic Year.

Introduction

My academic year was really intense. I had twelve subjects in all the year in my official curricular program, but I had five more because I take two subjects with sociology, one CFG and english III and IV. This is my second year in anthropology, and I did a lot of activities furthermore than academic ones.

I’m part of the CEA (the anthropology’s students center), I belong to a politic group called “Collective Plataform”, I cleaned bones in the first semester, I practised basketball in the first semester too and football in the second one.

Body

In the academic area I could say that some subjects was good and anothers was not, but I actually think that I could learnt interesting things in all of them. In the first semester I had Anthropology III, Statistics II, Linguistic, Phisical anthropology’s elements, Latin America’s History, Psicology, Economy I and English III. My favourite subject was anthropology III, in what we saw historec materialism, cultural materialism and cultural ecology; and the subject that I hated was Latin America’s History because the profesor was indigenist.

The second semester has been awful, I even thought that I should leaved the career, but know I really believe that I must continue until I finish because I reconsidered the pasion for the anthropology. My subjects this semester are Anthropology IV, investigation class, Chilean etnology, etnography, etnohistory, science’s history, Chilean’s social history, economy II and english IV. My favourite subject is Chilean’s social history ans the subject that I really really hate is etnohistory, because I’m not agree with almost anything that the profesor says.

In the politic area the second semester was much better than the first. In the first one we had to do millions of meetings, semetimes unusefulls and without enought classmates, in the second semester this condition not change so much, but the discussions was more productives.

Conclusion

I don’t know how could I prevent that the end of the semester was so horrible, because now I come to a standstill. Since the academic until the politic work, passing by the sports and friends and family I don’t know what to do. But I evaluate this year positivity, because I learnt so much and in different sense, I grew up and now I know more about my career, my objetives, my desires and I know more about the other people too.

Election Day

I’m registered to vote since the last municipal elections, because I think everyone must take on the responsability in the political decisions. However, I feel disappointed about the politicians and the electoral campaings most of the time. In my opinion the electoral campaings aren’t the better way to demostrate the social interest or the goods intentions.

I think a person who is running for president must have good ideas, arguments and intentions to hold this important position. Sometimes I consider to become a politician because in my municipality we have many problems and I know this problems because I have lived in there since I was born. I would like to find a solution and put it into practice, but I’m not interested in be a president or something like that.

Like I already says, I don’t want to have an important public office, but If I must to be government minister I would like to work in economy or the Treasury, because I believe the economy problems in a country are very important.

The five problems that I consider urgent in Chile are:
- Public Education
- Public Health
- Inequality
- Unemployment

- Government’s Legitimacy

The capital punishment isn't a solution!

First, I think that the society must take the responsability of the criminal acts, because I believe that the people don’t do bad things because they are naturally bad. Capital punishment isn’t a good solution to reduce the criminality, because you can’t pretend that killing criminals the criminality end up. The capital punishment’s pros are that it cost fewest money that rehabilitation, but it can’t be a criterion to decide if we must or not to kill someone. The cons are that it don’t finish with the problem and the people who makes a crime can’t work again, come back with their families and neither recover their self in a personal way.

In Santiago, we can see radical differences of social class and economic differences too, then some people –which many times haven’t a work or studies or even see more posibilities in it – make a decisión to steal for example. Different is the case of rapists or murders, but we can be sure that most of the time they have psychological problems and we can’t kill them for that. The government should have better prisons, that in fact give oportunities to the people to rehabilítate. A prison in what they learn a trade and find a job when they leave the prison. It is a good way to prevent the recidivism.

I have been victim of a crime twice. One of them was a pick pocketing and the other was a mugging. In both my mobile was stolen.

Santiago's City tour

A foreign tourist should visit the historical neighborhood in Santiago’s center, like the palace La Moneda, the Historical Museum and the Cathedral. In all the center the tourist could find beautiful buildings in neoclassical style and baroque style. Also the Santa Lucía hill and his surrounding area –the Lastarria neighborhood- have interesting places, good bookstores, the bellas Artes Museum, the Visual Arts Museum and the Santiago’s archaeological Museum, and good cake and coffee shops.

I think that a tourist should visit this places, but also he or she should know the outlying neighborhoods because it shows the city like it really is, and they could learn more to the city and to the people who live in Santiago to this way. I recommend that all the tourists walk through the Forest Park, the Salvador Park and the riverside path towards the east, and they could see another version of Santiago.

If they want to eat, they should go to the Central Market. In this place they could find very good and cheap seafood. And if he or she doesn’t like the seafood, they could eat typical chilean food in “El hoyo”.

If you want to dance and have a good night you could go to Bellavista or Suecia. In this places you could find very different styles of discotheque and pubs, but if you want a place quieter in the Lastarria neighborhood are some.

And now...

Inglés IV (Segundo semestre)

My ideal job!

I would like to work writing the things that I see around. I would like to be a novelist and can describe the history that talks about the life… all the life. To do this job I need money, because if I don’t have money I would have to work to can live. As one of my favourites writers said in her essay “A room of one's own” all that a women needs to can writes is five hundred pounds in each year and a room of one's own.

Obviously I need talent too, but I really think that this is posible to developed with hard work and a real motivation.

I don’t know if I’ll do well in this if I do it, because I’ll feel myself a little useless. I’ll always wonder me: is useful for anyone that I write about them? I think that this is the reason because I don’t do that and I study anthropology…

In addition, be a novelist is really difficult because it is a job in that you can’t apply. If you don’t do it, you never find a newspaper’s notice requesting one. All you can do is begin to write everything that you see, hear, like and dislike and created with this something beautiful, something you enjoy.

The Aedo's subject

Hello classmates! I will talk to you about a subject that you don’t have yet, but you will have it the next year and you will enjoy, suffer and will don’t sleep because of it =)

My favourite subject this semester is anthropology three. The title doesn’t means too much, but the subject’s topic is historic materialism and cultural materialism. The teacher is the Sr. Andrés Aedo, he is a very young and good teacher and because of that he is very strict with us and we have to read many differents and complicated texts.

I like this subject because it isn’t particularist neither relativist. Much of other subjects in the career are more ethnologist than anthropologist, and because of it other teachers don’t teach to us a real theory. The subject is not as “Materialism theory”, but “Anthropology III” is the fisrt theory’s subject that we have.

This semester I learnt about marxism, cultural materialism, cultural ecology and the principal exponents to this theories.

My future (real more than ideal)

I expect that in my future I will work in something relative to the anthropology, specialy if I could do this work in a neighborhood that needs help to be self-managed and to be organized. I want to help that the people don’t need the government neither the prívate companies to have all they want to them goodness and I think that with my work I will can do that.

In five years I hope I will be living alone –without my parents- or with my partner in a department. I don’t care the place where I will could live, but I hope that it will be in Chile, not necessarily in Santiago. In my personal life I prefer don’t make plans, but I don’t really care if I am alone or accompanied. I don’t know if I want to be mother, but if I decided it surely I will don’t do it in five years.

And professionally, I hope that I will finish my career –with title and practice and everything- and maybe I will continue studing a postgrade, mean while I work.

It isn’t really an ideal future, it is rather the future that I really hope to have.

Leslie White

Leslie White is an American anthropologist known for his theories about cultural evolution and for his role in creating the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. White born in 1900 in Colorado and studied at Louisiana State University in 1919. In 1921 he transferred to Columbia University, the same university as Franz Boas.

White's views were formulated against the Boasians (Historic Particularism), because he postulated that the world must be divided into cultural, biological, and physical levels (super structural, structural and infrastructural) of phenomenon; the cultural are super structural and it was composed of three levels: the technological, the social organizational, and the ideological. The White’s evolutionist approach is diachronic, but inductive. Is for that reason that I like him so much; he raises a scientific approach in Social Science, he raises a theory generalizing and explanations for the social phenomenon, not just descriptions.

He was president of the American Anthropological Association (1964). And he died in 1975 in California.

Anthropology =)

I study anthropology because I think that it would be a good tool to learn and use this knowledge in a useful way.

The anthropology is separate in three big areas: Fisical Anthropology, Social Anthropology and Arqueology. But I talk to you only about Social Anthropology because it is the one that more interest me.

The Social Anthropology study the cultural variability in the human societies –in a specific and general way- but it have a million subareas like rural, urban, gender (human race), development, apply, economic, etc. And it develop different theories to explain social and cultural phenomenon.

When I begin to study anthropology I wasn’t sure that it was the career I want. I had to think it a lot until I finaly decide to continue study this career. It is complicated to talk about the posible jobs I would have, because the variety in the study areas and aplications od the anthropology.

I hope I would work helping people to understand the social problems that affect to them and give to them the tools to resolve it.

Ah! and my favourite class this semester is "Anthropology III" =D

Bye, see you next week.

My favourite photography is a really big cloud.

Hello!!

I take this photography 3 years ago, in October I think, and I like it because you can see all the colours in a cloud. Some people say the clouds are white, but it prove this isn’t true. Also, it semes like a big cotton, soft and smooth.

In the moment I took this photography I used it to send a message.this cloud have a significance... a importance. I took it when the day begin to get dark in a place near to my house. The tree next to the cloud is a walnut tree and I like his figure. I like the sunset reflected in it.

All the photography have a essence a little dark, like it would be painted whit oil. The light in the cloud’s top vanish near to the house’s roof.

Well, I will be glad if you look my photography and agree whit me, but specialy if you enjoy it.

My favourite web site... >.<

The web site SciELO is the scientific electronic library online

In this site you could find a lot of books of many subjects and scientific disciplines, but the best is you could see it for free. the web sites are www.scielo.cl or www.scielo.org, it depends to the country, because the SciELO proyect is developed in many Latin America's countries. In Chile the SciELO proyect is a CONICYT initiative.

This site is in Spanish and Portuguese, and have very interesting articles, even some articles are write for our university's teachers. I found this site for this reason, a teacher gaves me the site for find an article write for her. This article is about Zoology in the south of the valleys Chalchaquíes.

I don't visit this site very often, but I like it because is a good way to accede to scientific magazines, articles, etc. and it's really good for make the works in the diferent subjects.

And then there is, now you could visit the site too.
Bye!

How I already say... I HATE tecnology!

OK... my favourite piece of tecnology is my mobile phone, because I need it to remember the things I have to do and because I also need it to get in touch with my family and friends.

I got it seven years ago, when I was in seventh grade because the new school was in Santago centro and my family needed a way to get in touch with me. My uncle gave it to me in my thirteen birthday, althought the mobile phone that I have now isn"t the same my aunt still pays it.

I use it every day and every time because I always need to find people or to meet with friends and I also use the alarm and the calendar to remember all the things I have to do.

I don"t really like it, neither enjoy using it, but it"s necesary to me... don"t you think that I don"t like anything, but I dislike this topic in particular.

Well, good bye again.
I hope the next week"s topic will be most friendly to me.

I hate blogs...

Hello
My name is Melinka and you are my classmates in the English III class. I study antropology in the second year.
I hope this blog permites me write things to you and read about yours likes and dislikes. Also this is a good form to learn vocabulary and a good way to express yourself.

Like the title of it says... I hate blogs and tecnology in general, then you could imagine that I don"t feel very happy doing that.

I say good bye and see you the next week.

Melinka Olivares.