Social Issues

Which is the real problem, the quality of education or the lack of accessibility to it?

Nowadays, it is very common to hear about the poor or the nonexistent quality in Chilean education, but are the young people really fighting only for a better quality? The real trouble I think, is because there doesn´t exist an equality to equal access to good education. Chile is one of the countries with the most expensive education in the world, but Chile isn’t the country with the best salaries in the world, so… Why is this happening? That should be the real question!

The collective insatisfaction is in my eyes totally understandable. People prefer to buy a house (that will last forever) rather than pay the same amount of money to study five years, it is a simple mathematics consideration. How can we make young people understand that studying is important? That they should study even if they haven’t got the money or they prefer to begin to work in order to make money instead of to owing?

It is a question of accessibility and inequality, if you want good access to anything (health, education, priorities in life) you must get into debt, (there always exist particular examples, but don’t go to the case) the real situation in today’s society is this: if you don’t have money you don’t have good access to the best service, you don’t have the opportunity to study in a very good school, or to enter to best Universities and like that, It is a vicious circle from which we can’t get away. It is very difficult to break the scheme but we need to do something, we can’t leave it as an unfair situation.

The opportunities to do something are the most important and the capacity or liberty of taking your own decisions, choosing, must be the same for everyone, and shouldn’t have privileges. 

The Internet: Good or Evil?

Firstly, I don’t think that the Internet is as “Evil” as a human, but I recognize that it could be used badly, because it doesn’t exist any filter that regulates as people upload different material (good, bad or neutral) and how it is shown to us. You can find anything that do you want, interesting and disturbing things, depends on what you are looking for, and it is in this moment when you can make a good or bad action, it's up to you. Of course we can’t ask Youngers to produce a determinate action, they are in a plenary stage of discovering his life, sexually, mystically, finding his own limits. It is a process of growing up.

The evil that I found is not the internet, but the technology. I think that Technology is a systematizer of our people. Nowadays the attention is important, what people think of me, the friend approbation, that's what you want, and for this Internet is consuming the time of youngers. In today’s society, all people have a smartphone with internet, and you can see that relationship is less physical and more impersonal. This is reflected in any bar, school or concert, when people are more worried about their phone than about their friend they have next go them. The abuse of technology is worrying to me. The instantaneity of internet to connect one person with the rest of the world, could be used in a bad way if you need the approbation of people (known or unknown) of everything you make and in this moment you ask yourself: I’m doing this for me or for anybody else?  We must use the Internet like a potential tool that works like easy and quick information that we have at hand. We consume the Internet, not the other way around!

My Best Vacations

Really, i didn’t have ONE favorite vacation, because i’ve had many vacations in my life, and very different to, but i remember this because it was very unexpected.  

Four years ago, I went with my best friend to Argentina. We were planning this for a long time, after one year (more and less), we had enought money for the trip.

Our planes were to go to  Buenos Aires for one month, in bus, hitchhiking, with tent, a trip very normal for two young guys. But during the travel we had complications and dissagrements. First, we lost our tent. How?  In a small city when we were hitchhiking with a very nice person, we forgotthe tent in the car. Second, when we came to Córdova my firend was so tired that he wanted to take a hostel. One day passed, two days, and the next days.

I started to think and realize that he only wants to stay in Córdova and live two weeks like a King, totally different to the plan that we had before, and I wanted to keep traveling whitout much money to Buenos Aires. However, we stayed in Córdova because all things were so cheap that we felt like rich people. We drunk the most expensive whiskey and ate the most expensive food, we went to very big electronic partys, very exclusive clubs, and it was very fun, and different from all my past vacations. I really enjoyed it, but differently. We were in all touristics places, we knew  beautiful women but always accommodated. And come back to Santiago after two and half a weeks really like a King, and what can i say? It was interesting, but isn’t something for me. I prefer travelling in a mistical way, but the experience was fun and “what I ate and drank, don’t remove me nobody”.

Highs and lows of my neighbourhood

Pollution, accoustic contamination, people, rats, lights, smoke... It's that I feel right now... I'm living in this moment in the center of Santiago. When I came here to Santiago I used to live in Ñuñoa, but I have been living in this place for 3 years.

I never thought that I would really live here, my parents are living in the south, in Angol, a very small city, very quiet and whitout many people, I think that was a very high expectation to come to Santiago, the big city, very fast, with a lot of diverse culture, totally different to the I usually was living, but I'm here... and what I can say... I don't like it. I lost me relaxed life of neighbourhood, the people that live here usually don't greet, I don't know who lives next door, the streets are dirty most of the time, companies are building hight buildings everywhere, the contamination doesn't let me see the beauty of the mountains on the sunny day and the stars at night, I'm stuck! 

But I survive, I take my helmet and I go to the University the fastest that I can in my bike, fortunatelly i don't have to ride a lot, and that is very important point and the best of living here, the proximity to anywhere. I need to eat something and I walk, I need to buy something and I walk again, but i don't know if I really like it or just don't dislike it.

I sound a very negative person, but i'm not, only my neighbourhood isn't like as I dreamed. I'm very happy here in Santiago, because I have the opportunity to made many activities that don't exist in small towns.