Academic Twenty O Nine .-

We are now so close to the end of the year and many people are interested on buy their christmas presents or organizated their holidays.. am I too? NO! I'm now a little worried about the end of this academic year that seems a little more complicated than last year's ending. I thought that's because last year we had less subjects and that means less books to read, less works to do and less tests too. But now.. I'm really exhausted and I just want to end classes as soon as possible but without left any subject behind, of course!

I could describe my academic 2009 year as a rollercoaster in many ways. At first, I slept a lot sometimes and other times I went to University without sleeping even a minute the night before. Also, I red lot of texts to some tests and prepare myself to give my best, but in other cases I really don't care of the marks I get in a test and I luckily red the class notes. That point brought us to another confession I had to make. When I spoke of 'class notes' I don't mean that it was MY OWN class notes, because many times it was someone's class notes. The reason is very simple: I get used to don't go to classes because I couldn't wake up right on time to arrive well. My fault, I'm sorry.

This year, I also feel that we started having subjects that are more related to sociology than subjects we had last year. That made the career more interesting and I could check that I really like sociology! When this year began I was thinking of change my career and study something related with journalism or cinema, but after having some interesting classes that made me get into real sociology I definitively decided to continue study this and if conditions allow it, working on anything related with sociology once I graduate.

I couldn't end this blog entry without talking about friends I made this year. I believe that they are an important part of my academic year because, it's true that I've met them last year, but I realize just this year how much I love them and how important they are for me. Also, I get close t some new people and I lost another friends for different reasons (the most significant was a friend that decided to change her career and left sociology's studies before the first term end).

Finally, comparing the good and the bad points of this academic year, I must say - for sure - that it was a really good year. I have now more faith on me in topics related to sociology and, most important, I UNDERSTAND AND LIKE IT! Anyways I had to admit that my lack of organization is an obstacle I must get over as soon as possible because it probably will play negative on me. I should also regularized my sleep hours to arrive on time to classes next year. I said 'next year' because this year is almost ending and there are no many classes left, so I preffer now to sleep.. BUT NEXT YEAR IT WILL CHANGE! So, I really like this academic year, it brings me a lot of surprises (most of them were good ones) and I'm now very excited on continue learning more and more.

Thanks for reading this blog!
Be careful and happy!

The Socio Challenge.-

Sociology as a carreer in this University has to face a lot of challenges everyday. They could be organised in three principal points: technology, social matters and education. Let's talk about each one of them:

When I said that Sociology has a technology challenge, I mean that there are a little problems in the school frame. For example, there aren't enough computers for all the students, so many times you have to wait till someone left one behind and then you could use it while another student wait for one computer as you did before. In fact, this year a lot of new computers arrived to the Social Sciences Faculty, but they never considerated that there are some subjects of the career that needs computers classroom (for example: English Class), so many times there are no computers available to use just because there are some students in class making their blogs, papers or works to get high scores.

Other problem associated to technology is that Sociology, as career and as discipline, needs an statistical programa named SPSS. Computers of the Social Sciences Faculty has this program, but there are just 15 licenses to use it, so if you had the very bad luck of open the program number 16, you can't use all the functions and you can either save your advances. It's a little complicated considerating that each year has 40 sociology students, and that every class needs that program.

In order to talk about social matters, I have to say that before I enter to this career, I thought that, at least at this University, taking care of social matters was one of the most important things. I have to admit that there are a lot of instances to help social issues, but they aren't enough. I also see that there are some students that really don't care about social matters, and that's a little strange because it's contradictory with the sociology bases.

Finally, I have to talk about the education I received. There are a lot of goos teachers, but there are also some professors that sometimes I ask myself WHY ARE THEY TEACHING IF THEY REALLY DON'T KNOW HOW OR WHAT TO TEACH? Anyway, the good subjects and professors exceeded the bad so I don't have to claim anymore about that.


I believe that's all I have to say today.
Have a good day !

A Lucky Baby .-

A few days ago I saw on TV news that a baby carriage, with a baby inside, fell down to the subway rail just seconds before the subway arrived. As I heard, that horrible thing happened in Australia and it was really shocking because the mother was on the side of the baby carriage but she left it alone a few seconds and the carriage moves to the rail. But, definitively, the most surprising about that new is that the baby gets away of that unharmed. How many people have died in the world because of the subway? So.. how is possible for a little baby in his carriage to get away from that incident ALIVE and UNHARMED?! I was really shocked with the images, but after I knew that the baby was still alive and that he has no injures I was even more surprised.

As you could see on the video below, there were a few people watching that situation. I thought, there was the mother, who run behind the carriage when it started to move, and there were another people that were probably waiting for the subway to take it.



I don't think that this piece of news affectes my community, city or country, because it's just a situation that happened to somebody in specifical. Maybe that after that news, mothers and father will take more care of their children's carriages to avoid the horror of see their baby knocked down by a subway or any other transport.

I don't really know what piece of news I would like to hear, read or watch on TV, because I think that life just happens and you can't live expecting something to happened. Anyway, sometimes I like to dream and I think that it would be funny if one day a friend of mine appears on TV saying that he or she will be the next Chile president.

Yes, we can!

In Chilean legislation a citizen can vote when he (or she) gets to age 18. I am now 20 years old so I could vote if I wish to, but I'm not registered to do it because I actually don't believe in that way of make political acts. I think that there are other ways to became a country into a better place to live in, for example: just go out and help people who needs you even if the helps just means listen to them for a while.

One thing that it's related to elections and that makes me a little angry are electoral campaings. Candidates that had money never starts electoral campaings when they are allow to do it: they began to do it many weeks before, and I really hate that. I also hate that the streets are plenty of papers with those candidates and the city seems more dirty than it really are.

A person running for president must be, after all, an honest person. He or she may also had another qualities, like charism and, I hope so, the necessary knowledge to take care of the whole country problems.

I've never consider to became a politician, actually it's not an idea of my perfect life. In fact, it makes me feel vary lazy. Anyway, if I should work on a ministry I would like to do it on Cultural Department, because I really like to implement the culture on Chile.

Nowadays, Chile has a lot of problemas that requires attention, for example: poverty, delinquency, violence, education and health. I hope that the next government can solve them in a good way.

Goodbye!

Importance of pets and fridges.-

Today I'm gonna talk about a news I red at Guardian.co.uk.


It's headline says: "Social workers to check pets and fridges during suspected child abuse cases".

That piece of news talk about the new precautions that some councils are taken after the death of a baby that was just 17 months old. That children is known as 'Baby P'. In that dramatical case, some agencies that should have noticed the signals of child abuse, didn't do that. So, after that, social workers are being instructed to check carefully some basic elements of houses that might show child abuse cases. For example, social workers have to check the contents of the fridge or recent make-ups of the house.

All this elements are now considerated because the environment when the children grows says a lot of the way the family take care of that children and of all the general family. The way the parents take care of their kids is represented in the way they take care of the house at all.

Besides, social workers are now allowed to take some pictures if it's necessary. They had to check how is the care given to the pets because it is considerated as an indicator to see how much abilities to care the family had.

So, as a summary, it's very important to have social workers well-formed to avoid another dramatical case of child abuse like Baby P's case.

Criminal Laws .-

Capital punishment should not be allow because it's not really a good solution to reduce criminality. Why isn't it? The answer is very simple: because it goes against the Human Rights, specifically the one that talks about life right. If the government don't respect the Human Rights and, for that, they don't gave the example to follow... who will do it then?

Nevertheless, there are some criminals that definitively don't deserve to live, like pedophiles that screw up the life of innocent kids. They are probably the ones that must be condemned to die. That doesn't mean that capital punishment is a good way to fight criminality, but people that don't respect other's rights shouldn't be allow to claim their own rights.

The principal problem with capital punishment is that sometimes is not the right criminal who is condemned. There are some examples of people who died by capital punishment and they were found innocent a few years after, but nothing in the world could bring them back to life.

The government should apply some basical measures to reduce criminality rates in Santiago. For example, they should fight the poverty and unemployment so people will have things to do instead of doing criminal acts.

As it's said in the previous point, the origin of increasing criminality rates in Chile is probably the unemployment and the poverty, but there are probably some other elements that have influence on this point.

Fortunately I have never been a victim of a crime or felony. I have been so close to that situations but I've always been lucky in those cases and I get out without troubles or consequences.

That's all my friends !

Let's travel

Transantiago is the newest transport system that exists in Santiago of Chile. The original idea was to take off from the street some of the buses that previously exist and the idea was also to solve, in some way, the air polution trouble.

I think that the original idea was great, but the trouble was that the government didn't realize the impact that this change will produce on the people. People don't like changes and, of course, they began to grumble and to demand that the previously public transport system came back. Obviously, that never happened. But, in spite of, authorities decided to add more buses to the system, so finally, transantiago didn't reach one of its original goals. In that way, we could say that it's not very different from the pre-transantiago system.

Actually, I don't have bad experiencies with transantiago since it started to work. It's true that the buses and the subway are crowed and horrible on the peak hours, but weren't they horrible on the previously transport system? It's true that sometimes you have to wait so long for the bus that you need, but didn't it happen with the previously system? I think that people forgot how the previous system was and, because they don't like changes (me neither), they prefer to fight for the return of the 'yellow buses'.

I think that one of the advantages of transantiago that make one of the biggest difference between it and the previous system, is that you can travel for two hours paying just one ticket. In that way it's true that now you need to transfer from one bus to another or from subway to a bus, etc., but some people also had to do that before transantiago, and they were force to pay anytime a new ticket. Transantiago allows that now they pay just one ticket and, in that way, the travel should be cheaper than before.

Another one of the advantages I found is that now the bus drivers don't make bus races to catch more passengers that the other one. That was a horrible thing that happened with the 'yellow buses' and I'm very grateful that this don't happen anymore.

I really don't know what changes would be applied to the transantiago system in order to make it better. I just think that next time, people should find out the necessary information before start complaining about changes.

That's what I thought.
Thanks and good bye !