A Self Evaluation: My academic Year

Academic year 2009 wasn’t really what I was expecting. Some things that were not normal at all happened and changed the rhythm and directions for the year. It was a year with many experiences: some very good, some, actually, very bad. Anyway, everything counts in this life and everything makes sense when calculating the balance in relationship to this first year of college. Even though this was my first year, I can say I was very lucid about it, because I found myself in between two abysses: the high school reality and the college reality. This year is no more than the transition time in between two periods of my life, the time where the person hopes to get adapted to this ambient that sometimes is taken out of its normality and makes the people on it adapt to it again. Is the chameleonic college student’s life.



All the experiences acquired this year were really notable. I might even talk about my extra-academic life, however, everything that is done in this university tends to a final goal, and that is the formation of the person. My comment might not be really graphic, but if we think about all the moments we’ve lived in this study house, starting the day in which we first stepped on it, we will find some predestination to live concrete experiences, that were oriented to the human formation of which we are made. That can be clearly seen in all the classes I took this year. I remember very well all of them and a lot of them were very awesome for me, because the teachers not only tried to teach us, but they included their own experiences, that made classes a real treasure of incalculable value.


Academically, my first semester wasn’t as good. I managed to overcome all my subjects and pass them, even though it was really hard to retake the work after a strike. I consider that semester as a reflexive one, that would make me pick my teachers for next semester more carefully.



About this semester, I can say it has been a Little harder and dense about academical contents, because we have our first great approximation to laws, with Constitutional and Civil rights. However, I’m very glad with my outcomes: I’ve improved in some areas, though I have worsen my skills in some, but that’s not hard to solve with a little more work.



Finally, I consider this academic year very fructiferous. Besides what I mentioned in my last paragraphs, the experiences I was able to acquire were many, and roughly, that interest for the career is starting to appear more and more every day. However, I must have some self criticism: next year I’ll look forward to more responsibility when working and being more efficient with the times I possess, so I can finish everything with good timing and have better results overall.

Nice Christmas

This is one of the happier times of year. Here a lot of values for mankind get together, such as loving everybody, brotherhood, family unity, etc. It’s not a party the whole world celebrates, because there’re sectors who just don’t want to do it. There’re two explanations for Christmas: the first one is the born of Jesus, celebrated as the best for all Christianity. The other one comes from the historical legend of St. Nicholas or Santa Claus, that brings gifts those nights to the kids. Personally I like Christmas, because as I’ve mentioned, it’s a time of unity, where you can feel happiness. However there’s people that don’t like Christmas due to some things that happened during their life.

My Faculty

Our dear law faculty of University of Chile is located on a 20th century building, that was built under order of the President or the republic of Chile, mr Arturo Alessandri Palma, the legendary Lion of Tarapacá, that seeing the bad situation University of Chile had (with all its faculties on the same place) decided to allow them to “breath a little bit better” and build the law faculty.
Right now the building is much damaged with the time, and it needs serious fixings. This was clearly noted whith the “boom” of private universities that seem to get fame via osmosis from our building. Maybe the last dean started fixing the top floors, but I would give the responsibility to specialists and architects that could preserve the historical structure. The best would be basically paint the school, because it is clearly rusty. Another aspect would be to restore the seats on the old rooms of the “historic building”. Another important aspect is to keep some faculty areas clean, such as bathrooms, or the water fountain that’s always dirty. Finally, to reconstruct “Matto Grosso” or the green yart the faculty had until the last dean decided to build a tower in its place.

Pets, Pets & pets

I’ve had pets since I have memory. They have generally been dogs, never a cat. I’ve had many of them during my life, all of them very remembered by me and my family, however, life cycle is clear and some have to leave and others have to keep on their path

In general, the reasons that take all of us (mankind in general) to have a pet, is so we can have a companion. Let’s remember that the human being is sociable by nature, one of the few creatures that possess the tendency of rabbits, bees or ants. By being sociable and have been put on top of creation, he takes charge converting some creatures in partners. Another case is the one of children. Dogs were first domesticated with defensive uses, but kids used to play with them a lot, and this derived in the first great use of animals nowadays: pets.

There’re many types of pets. The most popular is the dog, that has various abilities and has gained the name of “man’s best friend”. Other one is the cat, that besides having a lot of popularity has a reputation of leaving the house and being egocentric, yet clean.

Baby P. And Sharon Shoesmith's Case

This news talks about Ofsted failing in disclose some relevant information about baby P’s death and apologizing about that. This documents consist on drafts produced by the joint area review (jar) last November, after the trial of those who caused baby P’s death. The main failure is that Shoesmith’s team asked for these documents several times, and all of them they were told that said documents were not relevant for the case. The issue is that first the judge was told the documents were “batted off”, then that they never existed and now that they do, so he’s demanding to have them for the case.

This are really shocking news. Nowadays the abuse of children is a great cause of mortality, and having cases like this, where people just do not want to consider evidence (any of it) as important, makes me really sad. That is why we should try to humanize their parents and make good families; however they are, they have to become good parents for the future, and so cases like Baby P will not be repeated. There’s also a necessary change in the people “in charge”. They should not leave their investigations aside for other stuff and consider something as not necessary for the good ending of a trial.

The Pope's Monument

There has been a harsh debate about the intention of positioning a statue of the pope Juan Pablo II on Bellavista, in front of the law faculty of University of Chile. Sol Letelier, Recoleta’s mayor, denies to move the location of the statue and will fight until she can for it to be positioned in front of the faculty. The students only fight for maintaining the architectural purity of the sector, national patrimony.

There’re different criteria used for the students posture, among them are:
1. The catholic church has always sought humility. They’re now fighting for building a 400 million pesos statue.

2. In the Exodus (in the Bible) is clearly said that there will be no adoring of idols. What people wants to do with this is to start a cult to Juan Pablo II’s figure.

Personally I’m against the statue, because it would be giving private people rights farther away than they are able to perform. It would be a clear abuse of rights using a public place for lucrative means. Wherever the statue is, I’d be opposite to the project though. I would prefer to have that money used in repairing some of the already existing monuments in the area. Maybe some of it could be destined to repairing the damaged faculty of law, because the university has also left it behind on its budget.

Transantiago: before and after?

This has allowed certain pollution levels in Santiago to be reduced. However, there’re certain structural problems in this system that don’t allow a full service in the capital. There is an obvious lack of buses delivering service, and sometimes the situation turns chaotic. It has various advantages though, because the new ways in this system allow the buses to move easily, plus, innovations in the metro have permitted the system carrying more people, extending its reach and because of this, having a biggest service area. In the beginning, my experience was a little bit complicated because I come from the X region. However, with a little bit of time I got used to it and now it’s part of my daily life.