Post 6: English Language Challenges

 Hi !

English for me is not a subject that I like, I find it hard, because at school I did not receive a good education in English.

I understand that it is a language that is almost worldwide, it allows you to communicate wherever you are, but even so, I don't like the feeling of being forced to learn it just to pass rather than to really motivate learning.

The use of the blog seems to me to be an interesting tool, because it allows us to get to know each other, but I think that the students themselves could be consulted on what topics we would find interesting to work on in the blogs.

My English needs to improve a lot, I find it difficult to understand it, not so much when reading the language, but when listening to it. Likewise, pronunciation is something really difficult for me and that makes me very embarrassed. I intend to practice in the future, take English classes and lose the embarrassment of making mistakes, because it is something natural when learning a language. It is a plan for the future, since I don't use the language in my daily life.

I hope we can all get through this course and that in one way or another there has been some learning that will be useful to us. Thank you very much for reading me all this time :)

Post 5: Changes to my study program

Hello! Social Work at the University of Chile is a career that could be considered emerging, since during the Pinochet dictatorship the School of Social Work of the university was closed and 40 years later, in 2015, it was reopened. This reopening brought with it a reformulation of the way Social Work was taught in Chile, but from my opinion, as a 5th year student, there are some important shortcomings such as the absence of real field practices in contact with users. Although we have practices called Núcleos, these are more like research projects that are far from the interventions that are carried out once in the workplace. From my point of view, the Nuclei have the benefits of getting to know the reality in which the users develop, learning important things such as diversity, moving away from the assistentialism and moral superiority in which many interventions are developed. However, the absence of field practices is a fact. Even, only this year I was able to have my first field, but there are still colleagues who will probably never have the opportunity to have a field practice.

Finally, the career has a wonderful program in which I really learned and I am learning, every subject is useful, really betting on an innovation that moves away from the idea of a "nice career" assistive, but its planning of practices is really very investigative focusing again only on academia and not on the benefits of more real contact with people or systems.

Post 3: Your dream job

Hi! When I was in high school, I loved mathematics and by senior year I was convinced that engineering was my career. Finally, some time before taking the PSU, I discovered that I liked numbers, but they are not my passion as opposed to studies about societal phenomena. Currently, I don't have a dream job, because my career is very versatile and I know I have time to discover all areas of Social Work, but I have no doubt that my career is my dream profession. 

So, I am going to tell you my three short-term dream job options. 

First, the government program "Servicio País" (Service to the Country). This program works all over Chile and has different projects.

Secondly, childhood. In my opinion, childhood is very important, especially in adult-centric and unequal societies like the Chilean one. For this reason, I would like to work in school or in a children's center.

Finally, the territory line. Social injustice is so represented in the territories that as a future social worker I think we have a lot to do.

In conclusion, I do not know many things, but I dream of knowing Social Work and its many areas.

Post 2: The best holidays ever.

 I have had vacations with my family and I love these vacations, but this year I have had my favorite vacation so far. My best friends and I have a very long friendship, so, after saving money for a year and a VERY difficult organization, we traveled to San Pedro de Atacama in January 2022 for a week and it was a lot of fun.

The first day with the Astronomical tour I saw the moon and stars in the middle of the Atacama desert. In my city seeing the stars is easier than in Santiago, but in the Atacama desert I really saw a lot of stars.

We did many other activities, but one of the most important was Geyseres del Tatio. The excursions started at a quarter to five in the morning, the temperature was from -10° celsius to 0° celsius and we were at an altitude of 4200 meters above sea level, but I have not seen more beautiful landscapes than the ones I saw there.

Post 1: A country you´d like to visit.

Since I was a little girl, I preferred snow to the beach.  I love cold days and winter, because I love warm clothes, hot tea and coffee, cazuela at lunch, the color of the sky and clean air.

So I would like to travel to a very cold country. For this reason, Iceland is my first choice, but Iceland is my dream for three other important reasons.

First, the interest in the country didn't start because of the cold weather, but because of my favorite Netflix series Sense8. In this series, Riley (one of the main characters) visits her home country of Iceland and travels through beautiful landscapes full of misty and green mountains.

Secondly, my older sister also loves this country and we have talked about visiting it together in the future, even fantasizing about living there together. 

Finally, thanks to my career, I have discovered that Iceland is one of the most advanced countries in terms of women's rights. And I admire that very much.

Riley and Will in Iceland.

Beautiful landscapes.

Icelandic women's strikes 1975.