Studying?

Since I’m studying abroad, I suppose that I should post some information on my academic experiences now that my classes are finalized.

Class número uno: Historia Social de América Latina, a sociology class for first year sociology students. I think it’s known as a “gringo class,” or an easy class that Americans take, but, unlike other gringo courses, there are a lot of Chileans in the class as well. I wouldn’t say that it has been that easy so far. Taking notes in a sociology lecture in Spanish has its challenges. I’m sure that studying for the tests and writing the paper won’t be such a breeze either.

Class number two: Sociología Económica. This is NOT a gringo class. It is a class for third year sociology students. Perhaps I should explain the university education system here in South America. We Americans, have the option of prancing into college and taking a variety of classes in a variety of fields, and (sometimes) picking major to focus our education. Here, however, students are forced to pick their carrera (career) immediately after high school. They enter their university in a specific carrera (like sociology, for example) and take classes in that field for the next five years. Both systems certainly have their pros and cons, eh? So anyway, for me to take an Economic Sociology class with people who have been studying pure sociology for the last two or three years (compared with my five sociology classes) is a little daunting. But the topic is quite interesting, and the professors convinced me that I would be fine, especially since half of the reading is in English. We’ll see about this one….Actually, when the class met this past Wednesday, I went in feeling quite confident. I sat next to my Australian friend, Miriam, and her Chilean friend, Betsy. There were only a few setbacks, but they were all mainly due to surmountable distractions as opposed to a lack of sociological knowledge.
Distraction number one: Sociología Económica is taught by two young and, uh, not unattractive men. I thought they were students at first. Not, not, NOT students. Distraction number two: five minutes into the lecture, a dog walked into the classroom. There are stray dogs ALL OVER Santiago (I’ll talk more about this in the future), so it wasn’t too surprising, but it was a little funny. One student tried to shoo the dog out, but the professor told the student to let the dog stay. So the skinny Dalmatian curled up into a ball, and slept through the three-hour class. Distraction number three: Smell of stray dog sleeping two feet away from my desk. Distraction number four: My thoughts wandering after not understanding Parsons’ quadrants of social economics. Luckily, everyone else in class was lost as well, and the professor said he would clarify next time.

Class number three: Cerámica y Vidrio. This class is a lot of fun. It meets twice a week for four hours. The Chilean art students work on their amazing pieces while us gringos learn how to make clay and elementary projects out of glass. There are five students from the United States in the class. One is my friend Emily from Tufts, and the other four are from the University of California program. It’s really nice to have a designated time to work artistically and socialize with Americans and Chileans.

My final “class” will be my internship, in which I will teach English to high school students.