Changes to my study programme

First of all, I need to say that I´m on my first year studying my actual career, and it's obviously online so is difficult to talk about infrastructure or live methods, but I´ll try to talk about what have I seen and heard of other students that are in other years.

Three years ago the university changed the curriculum, making the classes a mixture between theorical and practical classes, thing that was separated before. A very good idea, following the thinking that the real learning process is a theory-experience thing. And that would work if we weren´t on quaratine, because most of us can´t train properly, about space or family issues. So we like it or not in this year we have had almost all theory, and very little training. The practical classes are mostly explanations of what we have to do on our free time, then that homework record it and send it to receive the teacher´s correction.

I sound like an ungrateful bastard, but to be fair, is no one fault. The teachers were not prepared to face this kind of work and is difficult to them too. Most of them are making their best to try new things and make our learning process the best way possible. Theorical classes like theatrical theory, dramaturgical analysis or aesthetics are great. Is in the actor and the colective or character construction, practical classes, that it make impossible to work, all we do is make some videos and send them. 

Drama school belongs to the arts faculty, but is in a separated department in Morandé 750, a very old building, with a beautiful glass ceiling. In summer is a real oven, and in winter is a freezer. As all arts related things in Chile, the department don´t have any money so things are falling apart. There are electric problems, pulled nails that more than one student have been injured, there is only cold water in the showers and for goodness, they buy heaters the last year. The space is not enough and teachers have to make classes in the hallway sometimes, and the students fight over classrooms to test their plays.

Structural issues don´t botter me to much, maybe next year I´ll change my mind but today I only want to have a normal second year, with live classes, face to face. I want to finally meet my classmates and my teachers. They have voiced that the only thing they want is to go back to face to face classes too.

Stray dogs: A serious problem for the environment

To get started I need to say that this will be a very unpopular opinion but I invite you to read this completely before you condemn it. I know by first hand this problem, because I have studied it and seen it. So having said that, let's begin.

A pack of feral dogs.

Stray dogs are a very dangerous problem. In the cities, many dogs make the streets their territory, having a very vicious behavior making them not only attack people that walk by but attacking other's people dogs injuring them or even killing them. That's in the cities, but in the field, the stray dogs problem escalate in dangeorus ways. In first hand, stray dogs usually are not vaccinated, so they carry deseases that can be passed to the native fauna. There are a lot of cases of foxes with distemper and rabies or huemules with parvovirus. Because of that in national reserves and national parks, they don't allow to enter with pets. In the second hand and the worst thing is that the dogs that survive to the field, make their own packs and become feral. And a feral dog is impossible to become a pet again. They attack everything that cross their path. Feral dogs are one of the principal causes of fauna deseases if is not the first cause. A capable pack can easely kill a fully grown guanaco or puma. And this events are more usual than someone can think. This packs are a very serious danger to the people too. In 2010 a mother and her daughter died in Talagante attacked by a pack of 7 dogs. Those dogs had an owner that barely take care of them, so they became feral, searching their own food.

                                            Feral dogs chasing a puma, cornering it in a cliff.

I firmly think that Chile needs stronger measurements to control this problem. Stronger punishment to people that doesn't take care or abandon their pets. Check and make official dog breeding places. Not allow to anyone without a license to cross dogs. Or even better, if you adopt a pet, it came sterilized. And sacrifice feral dogs.

Dogs and cats are not the only animals that need to be taken care of. Pumas, foxes, pudus and snakes are animals too. Is something we need to remember. Please don't go with your pets to natural environments that can interrumpt some bird nesting or chase a coipo or whatever. Let's be responsibles owners, your dog is not the only animal in the planet.

My future job

I'm currently studying drama. I´m in my first year, because I studied natural resources conservation engineering but I lasted one year, not because I didn't like it, just because I like drama more. It's exciting and also scary talk about my future job as an actor, because is a very wide labor field, but also uncertain. I would like to work making theatre and movies. Both are very different expressions and each one needs a very speciffic technique. Someone that acts like in the theatre in front of a camera would look overacted, and someone that acts on a stage like in front of a camera, the audience won't see him or her.

I never even thought about an indoor job or better speaking, a job with shirt and tie. I hate the idea being locked in an office. Even the engineering I studied before, was about being on the field. The actor's job is to always move, and try things so I´m preety comfortable with that.

I would like to travel with my job, a lot. I think because of that I'm so interested to practice my English with native people, to speak fluently and to do a good performance abroad. One of my dreams is to work in a BBC series or a Netflix movie or something like that. But that is something that time would tell.

I´m positive about my future salary, I know it will be difficult but is the path I chose and with enough work I´ll collect the fruits of my work. And about a major degree. I'm not sure. By now I'm not interested at all, I think that, in drama at least, there are things that you need to learn with the experience more than reading a book. But I'm in first year only so there's still a lot of time to change my mind.