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.

A Country that i like to visit

If i ever wanted to travel somewhere some day, that place would be Europe. It was really hard to think on a specific place, but I think I would prefer to travel to Germany and France. Both countries have a rich history, with many cultural places. For example, there’re places like the Eiffel tower in Paris, the Louvre museum, and all the cathedrals. In Germany we can find all their beautiful cities, which, even though their tardy architectural styles are excellent artworks. There’s also the awesome German cuisine, such as their sausages and chocolates that nobody that visits the place can miss. If I had the chance, I would like to go study to one of these places; they have very good universities, and all of them have departments related to something I’d like to study.

My Blogger Experience ...

Well, there have been some months since this blog writing experience begun. Honestly, I had done it before, but not as frequently as I do now. I liked this experience a lot, because I feel that It helped me connecting with some subjects that have to do with my reality as a law student, and they helped me improving my English and keep working on it. Sincerely I think this has been an excellent experience, one of the best ones done in class, along with the presentations that have been, as I mentioned, help for going on deep detail in some subjects that refer to my study area.

Speaking of English itself, this blog helped me improving my lexicological domain, and learn about certain grammatical errors in which I had tendency to fall down in, and somehow, improve the way I express my ideas in English. I think this has been very effective, and I hope to be able to practice everything I managed to learn with this blogs, plus the knowledge that I earned with this English class.

There’s always something bad mixed in between good stuff though. There’re always some things that didn’t go the way we wanted to, and even though they are minimal, I think it’s important to make them present. Even though this blogging experience was really important for the English classes, I’ve had some problems to do the blogs. It’s not been for lack of dedication, but mostly because of the dates, which a lot of times collided with other subjects and problems with the internet. I hope that with this said, there will be some comprehension about how long this blogs had to wait before they were uploaded, because that was not my idea. Outside of the academic character of this issue, I would not try to talk about something else that could attempt against this blogs. I’m fully grateful about the experience, which I think will help my future in this career.

The Best in my area ...

It’s really hard to find a name like the “Best Lawyer”. There’re so many diverse areas in the laws, that this is complicated. I’ll talk about an area specifically though: “Penalty laws”: Recently, a lawyer from Universidad de Chile was recognized as the best in this area, nationwide. I share this opinion. His name is Luis Ortiz Quiroga. Even though he has kind of a dark past in the legal area (was the defender of Paul Shaffer, Cecilia Bolocco, and others), he is a truly expert in this area, and he is certainly able to perform a wonderful labor. He is, nowadays, substitute dean of the Laws School in Universidad de Chile, and he is a really reasonable and nice person. He has a lot of predisposition to repair all the lost institutionalism of this faculty and make it better for Chile. He is a really busy person, due to this work, but he has a lot of will to listen to the people and work along with them.

A very Special Photo ...

I like this photo a lot in particular. It was taken on thursday 4 of this month. It was taken by a friend of mine, Fabian Ramos, from Pio Nono Bridge. I must tell that that day there were encounters with special police forces, that, in front of our negative of letting traffic go, proceeded to repress the protest. The image shows clearly how they didn't doubt in using mustard gas bombs against our study house, so they could accomplish their goal: bring back all the Bellavista area to normality.

As i state in my other blog:

(Link) the following facts happened:

7.30 - 8.30: Finished the storm of the 15th tower of San Borja, we decided to come back to our loved faculty, not before doing some noise before. Once we arrived to Pio Nono bridge, we found Gabriel Boric, who came with some more people, carrying the banners to cut the traffic. This action started immediately, and it affected the drivers' mood. Some of them almost run over us on their rage. We kept going while we cut the traffic, until finally, past Pio Nono bridge, some cops in charge of monitoring people of the ANDHA group, started to rip off the banners and push the people. That is where the GOPE, the Guanaco and the Zorrillo came, willing to stop with the movement. People begun to access the school courageously, when at the right of it, in a construction place, a mustard gas bomb was launched and the smoke ran over the ambient. Once we got inside the school, we realized that there were some martyrs, three in total, that were caught by the special forces and treated rather badly. This was a milestone, because it appeared in every single TV channel and it was a hard hit for Victor Perez, who was having a really bad meeting right then.

This will give anyone who reads this an idea of how the facts of that day were, and what that image means for a lot of us.

If there's people that feels some pressure in the chest when they see a photo of the bombing of Palacio de la Moneda, a lot of us feel just about the same by looking at this "bombing" to our school in Pio Nono.

My Career ...

A lot of times you are questioned: Why did u decide to study law?... in my case, the answer is simple. I think that with this career, i can project to the future, but not individually, because with it, i plan to work in the construction of a fair society. By studying this, i'll try to change all the injustice and reform the system, so it's not one for a few selected, but as the democracy wants, a system for a lot. For Chile.

If i plan to work as i should in my profession, i think i need a really wide library, with a lot of authors on it, and able to help me whenever i need to work. But i also don't think i only need tools, but i need friends who share my ideals so we can work together, and together struggle for a better country.

I'm still unsure about the area in which i plan to specialize. The one that's tempting me, is Labor Laws, because our country needs with this new reform, professionals with a wide criteria and willing to take workers out of that hole in which they are because of the actual legislation. However, i feel a big interest in the area of international laws, looking forward to solve borderline struggles, and as a way to enter in the diplomatic academy. Anyway, i think Labor laws is the area that goes closer to my ideal.

Sincerely i hope this time doesn't look short. I hope not to get to the end of my career saying that this years went through really fast. I hope to enjoy each one of them, and learn as much as i can. The time here is not the fundamental thing; the fundamental thing is everything i will gather in the years to come, which will be by the most, the base of my work.

A Career-related Website

I think it's difficult to talk about a website related to my next work: laws. That's because i'm a first year student, just finished my first semester, and i don't know much about related sites, but i remember getting a message on my facebook telling me about something related with laws. The link was:

http://www.todoelderecho.com

It is a fantastic website, because it has all i need for being a good law student, and a good lawyer in the future.

This website has a lot of sections, like "codigos juridicos del mundo", "apuntes de derecho", etc. I think it is the most complete site about the career.
I visit this website once i week, because i don't have that many things to do now, considering it is my first semester, and i don't need that much information. The only important thing i need is information about rome and his law, or some theories about the laws, like "nature" and "positive ius"

My favorite Piece of technology ...

I think the piece of technology I like the most is my notebook. The reason is that it is really useful. When I go to class I bring my dear computer with me, so I can work and study with it.

This is a very fast notebook, and I can do my best with it.Well, this laptop was a gift of my dear brother, who actually lives in Puerto Montt. He gave it to me because I entered to the best school of Law in Chile. The uses I give to it vary from doing my homework to pure fun-related things such as using the internet and read books.

The reason why I like this so much is because it is really easy to carry, and it also has a lot of utilities that help my process in this school, and make it faster.I really can’t imagine a life without it, because everything I said helps me being in equilibrium with the world.

Maybe it sounds exaggerated, but it is the only tool by which I can stay on task, stay connected and continue in contact with my friends… All of that from my house.

Who im I?

1. The one behind the mask

My name is Roberto Eduardo Augant Vera, and I’m an eighteen year old guy. I live in Chile’s big capital city, Santiago, or Santiago del Nuevo Extremo, as Pedro de Valdivia named it five hundre years ago. I live in an apartment, and it’s pretty sweet and big, but too hot. By the way, it’s located near Metro Los Heroes, at Manuel Rodríguez #90 with Moneda. That’s a pretty good thing of it, because I have to take the metro everyday to go to my university.

2. the place ill return someday ...

I am from Osorno, a beautiful city located near the limit within X and XIV regions. The city is really old: last year was its 450th anniversary. It’s one of the oldest cities to be found in Chile. It was founded by Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, but in 1604 the natives destroyed it. That was really awful. In 1974 Ambrosio O’higgins rebuilt it. Nowadays, Osorno is a really interesting “port city” for tourists. It is located near Osorno Volcano and Puyehue national park and thermal waters. You must also go to the new casino.

About my family, I can tell that when I was a high school student I lived with my two parents and my brother. I live in Manuel Rodríguez street, named the same as the street where I live now. My parents work in an independent way and do a lot of sacrifices to give me and my brother the best education. That is why when I was a 15 year old boy, I entered to San Mateo school, managed by Jesuits. In that place I did a lot of activities: I worked in the school newspaper, entered to CVX (Christian life communities) and the best one of all: I worked as a minister of the Student Government or CEAL.

Likes & dislikes

likes: some fruits like apples, pears; my favourite colour its the green, like the colour of the turquise, my lucky stone .... but i the best thing that i like it the history ...

dislike: tomatoes, the war ... i hope the philosofy .... a little ... i dont have more dislikes, i think ....