English blog

  During the first three years of my career (sociology), I didn’t saw any problem with its study programme, basically because I was expecting that “missing subject” to be passed in the fourth year. I am now ending my last semester with mandatory subjects… and it’s still missing. I am talking about the lack of contemporary sociologic theory on the programme. The career is known for having a lot of theory, six courses actually, and one of these courses it is call “contemporary sociological theory”; nevertheless, it’s not that much of contemporary, at lease not as much as I think it’s necessary. That subject treats social theory clearly more contemporary than the classical theory (that in sociology case, it’s form around late XIX century and early XX century), but its still form the 1960s-70s, and the world, even in its social dimension, that changes slower than the political and economic one, has changed a lot, and we simply can’t correctly understand it with the same categories, syste

  I do not usually go on vacations that often, so it’s not that easy to me to imagine what am I going to do the next summer. I usually visit someone in my family and stay with them for some days. I have two aunts living in the countryside -each one on different places-, and my cousins that live in Valparaiso. If I have to choose between these places, I think I would prefer to visit my aunt in Nilahue, Pumanque for the next summer. I haven’t been there in years, and I really enjoy it. There’s never that much to do, but I am okey with that, if I’m there it’s to rest. I like to go to the countryside to do nothing. Some nice things of that place are the animals. There are some farm animals, some dogs, lots of cats, and I enjoy taking care of them, it is not a heavy activity at all. Another nice thing it’s that it's not that hot, at lease not as hot as Rancagua gets in the summer, so that makes it a really great place to escape from the concrete, in all the senses of the sentence.

  Sometimes life has moments or experiences that simply changes the way that you see it. I'm sure you've had more than one of these experiences in your life, me too, but there is one that I want to talk about. It’s the older of its kind that I can remember and was clearly the start of a changing process that I’m not quite sure if it’s already over. In this case I’m talking about a book: Hermann Hesse’s Demian. I’m not sure if it’s my all-times favorite book, but it’s undoubtedly the most important of which I have read so far. I don’t want to make a review of it, instead, I want to make you want to read it, in case that you haven’t already. I myself have read it four times, the first one when I was twelve and I think it’s the perfect time to do it, because around that age your life and how you see it it’s going to change any way so… make that change for the better. Even if you are not a teen anymore, or even if you’re an adult, Demian can still be a life changing experience

  Being near to the end of my career makes you think often on what to do after you get your title. Just get to work the quickest as possible it’s always a tempting option, but the love for learning and the fear that the labor world causes, plus the better future possibilities that offers a postgraduate degree makes it a really attractive choose. As I said on my previous blog, I have a special interest -even love, I would say- on Latin America. As such, I have the idea of studying a master or a PhD on Latin-American issues. In addition to my interest on the subject, it could give some advantage in the postulation to the Diplomatic Academy, in which I would like to enter, as I explained too on my last post. I’m thinking about taking a course at the University of Chile, at the Faculty of Philosophy, or maybe at the Alberto Hurtado University (the Society of Jesus it’s probably the institution with the strongest Latin-American tradition). Other great Latin-American universities like th

  Being so close to the end of my career -I’m in fourth year of sociology- one starts to think more and more often on how you are going to make a living out of what you have been learning all these years. Sociology has a very large specialization spectrum, but the labor field it’s no so wide, so the general offer is like this: a reduced group of activities in a wide field of topics. This flexibility allows you to change your area of work frequently, but most sociologist choose to specialize in a couple of topics. Considering the previous, I would like to take a major in Latin-American issues and work on that area beyond the specific activity that I dedicated myself at. For the love I have for my cultural continent and considering other personal projects I would like to work on diplomacy, and having a sociology title and a related mayor it’s a good start. The nature itself of this job attracts me. Lots of traveling (and not just “touring”), the improvement of relations between our cou

  By the time I had to postulate to a career I already had it decided and I was absolutely confident of my decision, but it wasn’t always like That. Obviously I wasn’t born with the idea of studying sociology -some people might disagree on my view of vocation-, but I mean about the process of choosing a career on the last years of high school. My biggest interests at that time were -and still are, actually- around history, philosophy and economics. Consequently my options for an university career were between History, Philosophy, or other social science. I discarded the first two, mainly because I didn’t like the labor field that they had to offer, focused primarily on school education. The big problem I had with studying Economics, or commercial engineering, how it is called in Chile, was the monopoly of the Monetarist School of thought over the economics schools of the country, despite of the traditional political position of the universities. At one time I had the opportunity to t