Post 10: English English

It’s hard to me talk about this, basically because I did not learn this language at university. I learned English when I was a kid playing an old videogame. It’s true that I’ve learned some things this year, but I haven’t improve very much what I already know about it. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that English is important and it’s very good that university provides these tools for students, but it really needs to become a little bit harder, because –at last in anthropology- we are demanded to read researches and articles that are way too hard for us.

Writing blogs is ok, it’s fun and useful. I think that I’ve improved my writing skills with it. Also it’s useful to improve reading skills. My English weakness is to listen and to talk in English, but I try to watch series and TV shows without Spanish subtitles or at last with English subtitles, to listen and reading. This has been useful for me, but I don’t know how I’m going to improve my talking skills, because I don’t use this language in my daily life.

Even if I don’t use English in my daily life very often, there are some occasions where I use it. For example, I help my mother learning English, because she is a sculptress and she usually travels to others countries. Even when it’s not an English-speaking country, it’s useful for her in the airports and planes. Also, I will try to take TOELF test next year, so I will need to learn so much more and improve all my skills.

Post 9: Good and bad things about this (academic) year

It’s hard to say if it was a good year or a bad year, not because it’s not finished, but because every year has its own good and bad things. In fact, many important things don’t happen in the course of a single year, but through many years of the life.

My life is almost exclusively about university and the academic life. It’s sad, but true. So, if I have to say something good about it, it’s that my grades are very good this year (finally!) and I’m learning a lot. On the other hand, I became the teacher assistant of ‘quantitative methodology’ and it has been a good experience for speaking in public without getting nervous. Also, I became an active member of a gender group. It’s a group of anthropology students and we did an introductory presentation about gender and machismo in everyday life. I gave that presentation and I was terrified in the beggining but it went so good that people congratulated me at the end.

(This is me in the presentation)

A bad thing is that I lost my job. It was a research about sexual behavior on prostitutes, but the research needed to take blood samples and the ethic committee decided only nurses could be involved. I’m sad about it, because it was a very good fieldwork as anthropologist: I met many sexual workers and they told me about their lives. Also it was a well-paid job.

Besides that, I haven’t been sick or something and I’m hoping to end this year with amazing fireworks and a good New Year celebration.