Postgraduate studies

Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology

When I think about what I want to do in the future on the academic side, this is one of the stronger ideas that I have. Neuroscience is something that I really like and I love to read about it, its so intriguing and important to find new discoveries, study the basic functions of the brain, spinal cord, sensory systems and peripheral nerves with the aim to reveal mechanisms of neurological disorders and new approaches for treatments. Personally I´m obsessed with cronical pain and phantom limb so I hope to do something in my life with neurosciences, and one big goal to do something usefull on that subject  would be to do a Postgraduate study. One of the dreams of my life is to study out of Chile, so if I do some postgraduate studies I would like to do it on a country who could give me the last knowlegde on the field. I would love to study on Europe, on England, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, but if I have the chance to study on the United States, obviously I will take the opportunity, it´s a chance that you don´t have everyday, also in the United States are the best universities in the world, I don´t like the country and his culture, but, well…

I would like to study full time, to take all the knowledge that I can.

Finally, I can´t give any advice to another students that want to do postgraduates studies, because I´m not a postgraduate student, my advice could be a lie, but maybe I can give some advices about how to make a good PSU, or first steps on the university J. 

English language challenges

I think the metodology is much more dynamic  than the one that  taught me at the school, where a teacher stand in front of the class to give us some tasks and guides about the subjet, to finally do a test and get a result. No one ever taught me to have a conversation or talk to me about the importance that learn English had. Practically  all the English level that I have made through my life it´s because of my dad who speaks English, and all the music that I listen is in English, I was always looking for the Spanish traductions and trying to usderstand it, so trough the years I improve a lot just because of that, never for a teacher.

I think that the fact of have a class just for speaking practice, to interact with the classmates  is really important, makes me realise about the level that we really have to had a conversation, and if we considerer important to speak English in our future, be able to take the necessary actions to improve. Also the blogs activities had topics about themes of our interest and  closer of  daily  issues  helps a lot to do more enjoyable the learning.

Actually I´m forcing myself to watch series and movies without subtitles, and read texts about my interests in English to improve faster  because I consider important to have a good english domain, especially if I want to expand my professional horizons to another countries or also to read papers wich are necessary for my career and the advances never are published in spanish, just in english.
I hope to improve very soon taking some course who let me improve substantially my level to take a semester out of Chile. I think I understand very well texts and I also write, I need to learn a lot of speaking, and sometimes it´s hard to undestand what are telling me, but I promise to get a lot better!.

Problems and what you did to solve them

On 2014 I was studying accounting at the University of Santiago, and I drop it out to prepare again the PSU hoping to get into Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Chile. On 2015 I studied at Cpech, so I didn´t have school ticket because legaly I wasn´t a student. Besides this, I was working in a supermarket packing the things to the costumers. In this job, On every semester you have to give to the supervisor  a regular student certificate. So  as I wasn´t studying anything I was to lose my job and to pay regular ticket on the public transport. Thinking on how to keep my job and to pay student ticket, a great idea came to me: I enrolled in a career on a CFT, business administration,  in wich I didn´t have to pay a enroll. I ask for two regular student certificates, one for my job and the other to ask for student pass to Junaeb. I drop it out before they could start to charge me any payment. All that on 3 days, and  I just pay for a photocopy and the certificates. That CFT was CFT Simón Bolívar (come to win, come to succeed, a career waits for you!♫) . It´s funny to remember that I was student of Simón Bolívar. My school pass had printed CFT Simón Bolívar, I still laugh of that. Finally I keep my job until today, and I never had to pay regular ticket.

My future job

I´m not really sure of what I would like to do in my future, because I love a lot of different things and I´m constantly discovering new thing that I like of my career.
I imagine myself working in a hospital on clinical pharmacy, thats the job that I want, but I want to continue studying and get the certification on clinical pharmacy. After finish my career I want to do a master on public health, because I want to work on public system  and help to give better attention to the patients. I  also want to do a PhD, but I´m not sure what kind, because I´m on the beginning of my career,  I didn´t have pharmacy subjects yet, but if I have to decide it today I like neurosciences. I want to study out of Chile, maybe EEUU, but I prefer Europe, on countries like England, Denmark or Germany,  learn everything that I can and bring all that knowledge back to Chile to help even a little to make public health better,I would like to do investigation at the university, and to teach.
I would like a job in wich I could travel a lot for congresses or study, and about the money I think while I have enough to live and travel, it´s fine for me.

An important discovery, invention or advancement in knowledge

An important discovery on pharmacology was the one who did Frederick Grant Banting  in 1921 with Charles Blest, they discovered the insulin hormon. They won the Nobel Prize in 1923.

This discover brings a lot of benefits for the people with diabetes, because before they discovered the insulin hormon the treatment for people with diabetes was basically make them dieting, especifically the " starving diet", really strict diets, wasn´t uncommon for those patients with diabetes die literally of hunger.
https://elefectorayleigh.cl/2014/05/09/la-nada-dulce-historia-del-descubrimiento-de-la-insulina/
 consequenses

A country I´d like to visit

A country I really would like to visit is Iceland, because I love nature and camping and there´s a lot of natural wonders like northern lights, that´s something that I want to see someday. There´s geisers too, volcanic smokes, volcanoes, falls, ice fields and natural phenomenon like midnight sun.  I think that country is magic and don´t just for his beautiful places, also is a country with a small population (like 320.000 people) they don´t have an army, is one of the countries with lowest corruption in the world (into the top 5).

I want to go there just for meet all the natural wonders, specially the northern lights, but maybe if I have the opportunity to go there for study, I´ll take it. I want to go to live out of Chile but I think I don´t like to do it in that country, because is so small population, that maybe it´s boring. 

A subject you`ve enjoyed studying this semester 

         

         I have to say this semester wasn`t the most fun, I thought that chemistry was going to be great, but sincerely was a torture till the end, suprisingly the subject that I enjoy a lot (and the only one) was mechanics. During the school I really hate phisics, all the teachers that I had was terrible. But when I started studying for PSU, I take a pre-universitary and I met one of the best teachers that I ever had in my life until now. He taught me so well that a day everything just click on my mind and I started to love phisics. 

          At the begining of the program was really easy, we studied about movement, after the first evaluation it started to be more complicated, we saw circumferencial movement and my second evaluacion was bad. after that I began to enjoy it again. We did some laboratories too, and I love it  because doing those things I could undestand so much better the things that we saw on class.I like it because I think it´s interesting to know how and why natural phenomena happens, and to be able to explain it. Finally I passed and I´m happy for that. I hope someday have time to learn about astrophysics and quantum mechanics. 

                                

A person who I admire on my field: Griselda Hinojosa 

Griselda Hinojosa (1875-1959) was the first Pharmaceutical woman in Chile, she studied at the private school of girls Rafael Valdés and then in the school of girls of Copiapó. Then she entered to study Pharmaceutical at the University of Chile where she recieved her tittle the december 4th, 1899. She was part of the first group of women who get a Universitary tittle in Chile after the Amunátegui Decree on 1877, between those was doctors  Eloísa Díaz (1886) and Ernestina Pérez (1887), and the lawyers Matilde Throup (1892) and Matilde Brandau (1898).

She started a society with Percival Rojas on 1900, the Copiapó Drugstore until 1909. after that she worked on the Manuel Antonio Matta Pharmacy wich she was the owner with her husband.
  

I like her because was the first Pharmaceutical in Chile, even when on those years the education was almost exclusive for man, I think she was a really brave women and she shows with other women like Eloísa Díaz or Matilde Brandau that women can study.

                                         Griselda with her classmates 

 My Favourite series or movies

          This is a hard choice, because I love a lot of series and movies, I like series about crime like CSI, Breaking Bad, Bones, Law and Order (especially UVE) and series like Dr.House or Greys Anatomy. But if I have to choose one, it would be “How I met your mother”. It´s about Ted, a guy who lives with his two best friends Lily and Marshall, and they are going to marry, so in that moment, Ted decides he wants to find his true love. Essentially that´s the argument of the serie, but  isn´t just about the history of how Ted find´s his true love, it´s about his friends too. I like it because it´s really funny, I laughed in every episode.  While the serie was moving forward, Ted met a lot of women. Some of those were good, others were really insane, (spoiler alert) but finally he finds the right person. I have to say that I hated the end, was really sad and unexpected.  That gave me depression for 3 days  jajaja. 

                                  A photograph I like 

Well, maybe this isn´t the best picture of all times but is my favourite place in the world (until now). I took it in march, 2014 in Coñaripe, Region of the Araucanía. The picture is crooked, and isn´t a great quality but it shows the Calafquén Lake in the evening, almost night. I like this photo because its reminds me that trip that I did with a good friend to the south of Chile, I meet a lot of beautiful places, and that place in particular was special because is a small village with kind people, without big supermarkets, stores, even traffic lights.

 Around  it, there are many woods, volcanoes and natural hot springs. It is a paradise, but in summer is full of tourist. When I took the picture, I was alone in the lake, all tourist were gone a few weeks ago so I enjoyed it a lot. I was able to talk with local people, go to the woods with them and help to collect blueberries. When I finish my career I want to go to live there a couple of years.    

My Favourite music genre

My favourite music genre

I`m not sure about what is my favourite music genre, because I love the metal since I have memory, and this genre has a lot of subgenres, I like thrash metal, heavy metal, early metal, death metal, black metal, nu metal... (uf, a long list of styles jajaja) and rock, classic music, even opera.  But I think my favourite subgenre is the simphonic and gotic metal, because is a kind of mix of metal with opera and classic music. 

My favourite band is Theatre of Tragedy, a gotic metal band, I love what their letters talk about,  the contrast of the female and male voice in the songs , and the idioms mix they do with latin, german, and early modern english, although predominantly are in english. 

But I also love bands like Led zeppelin (was my inspiration to starting to play guitar), Faith no more, Oasis, Deep Purple, The Ramones and Queen. My favourite compositor is Claude Debussy.

Sometimes I think how would it be my life if I didn´t have music, and definitely it would be horrible. I can`t imagine a trip on the subway or the bus without headphones.

My favourite song of this band calls "And when he falleth", essencialy is about faith and the belief in God, includes a dialogue from The Masque of the Red Death (1964), a film based on a Edgar Alan Poe`s short story. 

     

My favourite piece of technology 

I´m not really sure about what is my favourite piece of technology, because I have a relationship of love and hate with the two things who I use more. First, the smarthphone, when I got my first one like 3 years ago I didn´t really want one, but I feel that I need one because of my job to be on contact with my coworkers. I have to admit that is very useful, but I hate the fact that now the people need to be online all the time, with the cellphone in the hand like it was an extension of them, whatching it even when they are with someone else. 

And the second object is my computer, I remember like 10 years ago when my older sister was starting the university, she always had to search on books at the library or to go to the cibercafe, she spent a lot of time on research. Sometimes I think about that, and I realize  that I´m lucky because I don´t have  to do that, I have my computer who I bought with my own money from my work, and I can do my homeworks, read books, listen to music, and to watch series. I think this object makes my life a lot eassier, I try to use it like 1 or 2 hours at day, less possible. If I don´t really need it, I don´t use it, but I know I love it, if I don´t have it, probably I would have to do it like my sister, and stay all day at the university, go to the cibercafe and lose much time.

            When I was a kid, I rememember my dream was to be a vet, my parents never let me have a pet, but when I turned 12, my mom gave me a dog, and then I saw  really I  didn´t want to be veterinary. After that, I participated in a science fair, I made a volcano and I loved it, so I reallized I want to be a scientist, then I was always participating on science fairs, actually I won some.  But when I turn 15, my mom changed me of school, and my biology teacher hates me, and I hate her (I still do), in that moment I began to hate science class, and I lost my interest. All my science teachers were really bad, even I did´t have physics theacher in high school for 1 year. Except for my chemistry teacher in the first high school year, she was good, so I started to get interest again. In that year I thought that I wanted to study chemistry and pharmacy. But when I pass to third year on high school, because was an technical school,  I stopped  to have science class (music and arts too). I started to study accounting and when I finish the school, I did´t do the science PSU because I thought  that I didn´t know enough, my basis was too bad so I decided to study accounting at the university, but I never liked it. I reallized that I still wanted to study Chemistry and Pharmacy, study sciences and to feel that I can be more helpful studing Chemistry and Pharmacy than being an accountant. So I drop out the university, and started this year to study what I really want. I love it because I like science, and I wanted a carreer who was linked to health, so this carreer was perfect. My experience until now is great. I lost a few years but wort it.

My auto biography Task 1

My name is Esperanza Torres Díaz, I was born in Santiago, Chile, the july 20th,1994. My mother is Argentinean and my father Chilean. I have 3 sisters and 1 brother, currently i live with 2 of my sisters, my brother and my mom.

All the primary school I studied at the Liceo Miguel Rafael Prado, and the high school at the Centro Politécnico Particular de Conchalí were I studied accounting. After that, I studied 2 years public accounting and auditing at University of Santiago, but i didn´t like it, so I drop out in october, 2014.

Since 2015 I have worked while I was preparing for the PSU, and it was really difficult to learn science after all those years, but I got a good result on the PSU and was admit at the University of Chile on Chemistry and Pharmacy.

I like to play the guitar, piano and violin, read books about realism like Ana Karenina, magic realism like Love in the Time of Cholera , or dystopian fiction like 1984, A Happy World and the Animal Farm. Recently I´m learning Taekwondo and  I really enjoy it, but sometimes it hurts. Also I love to listen to  music such as heavy metal, thrash, classic rock, symphonic metal and classical music.