My experience learning English at univrsity / a reflection

Hello, this is finally my last blog! I can deny I’m happy…write this blog has been a very exhausting activity to me. Especially when you have to do this for two semesters!
Today I’m going to talk about my experience learning English at the university.
Last year, in my first day of class, when teachers explained the courses they told us about English course too. They said it consisted in four levels: Starter, Beginner, Pre-intermediate and Intermediate. But we had to give a previous exam to take the corresponding level to each one.
I stared in level two, Beginner. That was a great course because I learnt a lot. The teacher has an excellent methodology. I think the best part was note the huge differences between the kind of English classes that I had in my school and comparing them with English classes at the university.
For years I trained my listening and writing English skills, but during this course I had to talk in English. Just what I needed. Because even you know how to write in English or even you understand everything that someone told in this language is useless if you don’t know how to keep a conversation in English.
Pre-intermediate level forces me to talk. Big parts of the activities were related with develop our oral skills. I have to say sometime these were so frustrating to me because I’m pretty sure about my knowledge in this language but I never had the opportunity to talk with someone and practice before. So, face up those new situations was quite dramatic.
Intermediate level was awful, at first. First month was horrible because I was with classmates who entered to this level immediately. The differences that we have were so obvious. And they were enormous! I was very depressed. I didn’t want to go to classes because I was feeling out of place. Then I decided to change my attitude and tried to do my best.

Let's do excercise!

Hello everyone, today I’m going to talk about doing exercise.
The idea of physical activity is referred to all intentional natural body movements made by humans in a period of time, resulting a considerable increase in energy expenditure, and also to interact with others and the environment.

Health and physical activity concepts are closely related, because if you want to have a healthy life you need a balanced diet and physical activity. These two ideas are essential to maintain necessary body balance.

Physical activity is very important for a healthy life because this provides great benefits for our organism if you do it regularly and systematically. Some benefits are: increased coordination, muscle mass gain which produce an increase in the basal metabolism, body fat decrease, less body fatigue, an improvement in blood circulation, regulation of heart rate, blood pressure decrease, improvement in lung capacity and the subsequent oxygenation, muscle strength development which produce an increase in bone strength, better body position by strengthening lumbar muscles; diseases prevention such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and osteoporosis.

Regular physical activity produce an improvement in organs functions, creates a sense of emotional wellbeing, which has positive consequences directly related to confidence in development of daily tasks and also a strengthens self-image,

Probably you could say that you don’t have any money to expend it in a gym, but that is not the only way to do excercise. You don’t need to go to the gym to do any physical activity. You just could walk in the park or run in every place you like. Maybe it could be an instance to share with friends and family. This is a great opportunity to do something all together, like play football or basketball.

Chile has high sedentary levels. 91% of the chilean population is sedentary, and most of them don’t see the problem.

We are young and we are able to change this statistics. As futures members of a health team, we must to contribute changing these levels, promoting physical activity and a balance diet as a lifestyle.

The Big Bang Theory, one of my favorite tv series

Hi everyone! This time I’m going to talk about one of my favorite television series: The Big Bang Theory (TBBT), on Warner Channel.

The sitcom is about two geniuses who work for California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Both are brilliant in their work areas, However they have a remarkable deficiency to interact with other people, especially with women, resulting funny situations.

They share an apartment and across the hall from them lives an attractive neighbor who has aspirations of a career in show business.

The Big Bang Theory’s main characters are Sheldon Cooper, a theoretical physicist, and Leonard Hofstadter, an experimental physicist.

The first one, played by Jim Parsons, was a prodigy child who started college when he was 11 years old. He has a master degree, two Ph.Ds and an IQ of 187. He loves maintain a routine in his life, he doesn’t understand irony, sarcasm or humor and he shows a complete lack of humility. He also is uncapable to lie and keeps secrets. His logical vision of each circumstance forces him to do things with strictly scientifics results. Sheldon Cooper features’ are the focus of most of the serie’s episodes.

The second one, played by Johnny Galecki, has an IQ of 173 and he recieved his Ph.D when he was 24 years old. While Leonard is much more sociable than Sheldon, he never has been successful with women. He is in love with his neighbor, Penny, who eventually had a short love relationship with him.
Kaley Cuoco plays Penny, a beautiful blonde actress who hasn’t had success in spite of having a thousand of auditions. Meantime she works as a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory.

Friends group gets complete with Howard Wolowitz, an aerospace engineer and and Rajesh Koothrappali, a particle astrophysicist who can't talk to women.

The funniest thing about this serie is watch the intellect and lack of common sense of this four guys contrasted with Penny's social skills.

Dealing with stress at the university

The word stress has become one of the most popular of recent years. Many activities can cause us stress. For example, have you heard about stress at the work, or post vacation stress or even Christmas shopping stress? Apparently, stress level increases proportionally to the number of activities you have to do. In my case, I’m a university student so you can imagine what kind of stress I have.
Stress is an organism physiological reaction in which a lot of defense mechanisms act to face a situation perceived as a threat. It is a natural response but the most of the time we confuse it with a pathology because, in certain circumstances, it triggers serious health problems.
University is a very demanding place. I think you need to be committed with the courses if you want to pass them with good marks.
This semester has been exhausting. I have at least three evaluations a week, so I have to study every day. In addition, students who study health related-careers are very competitive therefore if you want to stand out from your classmates you have to make efforts and sacrifices.
At these days another thing is bothering me...I live far away from the university, so the distances drive me crazy. During the first semester it didn't matter. But now I can't take it anymore. It is awful. Especially the subway, with all the heat inside of it.
Well, I suppose you notice I'm quite stressed...but I have my own methods to feel better.
Spending time with the family because into the week there is no time enough to talk with them all I want. At least once a week I go out with friends. Sharing experiences about what happened to each one in the week is a great therapy to de-stress. I like to do exercise, so I try to do it as often as I can. I like many comedy series on Warner Channel so I watch them when I have free time.
These are some of the activities I do to avoid daily stress. But one of my favorites is sleep.

DISPELLING NEUROMYTHS: There is no time to lose as everything important about the brain is decided by the age of three

There are many information explaining that the child’s first years are crucial for his/her neurological development and that practically everything is decides at this age.
Some physiological phenomena that take place during brain development can, lead to beliefs that the critical learning stages occur between birth and age three.
Neurons are the basic component of information processing in the brain. Humans have 100 billions of them which are interconnected. Thus, information can circulate in several directions at the time. This process is known as synapses. Synapses allows skill development and learning capacity, if we consider that learning is a creation of a new synapses or the strengthening or weakening of existing synapses.
Compared to an adult, the number of synapses in newborns is low. However, when the baby is two months, the synaptic density of the brain increases exponentially and exceeds that of an adult, with a peak at ten months.
For a long time, science believed that the maximum number of neurons was fixed at birth and weren’t thought to regenerate and each individual would then lose neurons regularly. Now, is known that new neurons can appear at any point in a person’s life.
I think this neuromyth is pretty common. I’ve heard it a thousand of times. There are so many products to stimulate babies in this stage of their lives like music, food, even special training to develop their intelligence.
In relation with the use of these products, studies have been inconclusive. Although, is scientifically proven that the number of synapses in children under three years is higher than adults. But this discover doesn’t imply a relation about the density of neurons in early life stages and the ability to improve learning.

A healthy lifestyle. Is it possible? How?

What is a healthy lifestyle? A healthy lifestyle is when you have a good diet, do sports, don’t smoke, sleep 8 hour at least...
Do you think you have a healthy lifestyle? I think I don’t. In my personal experience, as a student, I sleep like 4 hours a day so I feel tired all time. I don’t smoke and I drink alcohol in especial occasions. I like do sports, in fact if I have free time after my classes and I don’t have to study for the next day I go to the gym. But it doesn’t happen to often. I consider I have a good diet. I really like fruits and vegetables and I eat them everyday. I am informed about how many calories I have to eat to keep a normal weight, considering my height and my body mass index. Therefore I have a balance diet which includes the proteins, carbohydrates and lipids that I need.
Like I said before, I enjoy do sports but I really don’t have much time. I have to say that is not just for all the subjects that I have and need to study. I think the real reason is I am a disorganized person. That is one of my biggest defects. During all my life I have been like that and it is hard to change it. But it is not impossible.
Of course having a healthy lifestyle is possible. In my case, I need to get adapted to all my daily activities and organized my time. For example, since like a month ago I have being avoiding the weekend study. That is too bad for me because I rest on weekends and enjoy them but my weeks are being very stressful and exhausting…I think that is my main problem. And the main consequence: I’m always tired.
So, I need to organize my time. In order to do this I need to make a big effort. Changing a habit is quite difficult. Just like if a smoker person wants to quit it. Thus, I will have more time to get distracted, go out and do more exercise.

My best childhood memory

When I think in my childhood a lot of good memories come up on my mind. A long time ago, I lived for three years in La Serena. I remember this stage as the best one of my childhood.
I'm an only child, so my two cousins were like my older brother and my younger sister. They went to visit me every summer I spent in that city. We used to go to the beach every time we could.
We never got bored because we always created new games to play. One time we put a tent in my backyard just to do something different at night.
We loved to ride a bike and go around the city, because is smaller and safer than Santiago.
In those years, during my days’ class I was a cheerleader. That was a nice experience. I really enjoyed representing my school. Each championship meant a big effort for all the girls in the team. We used to practice three times a week at the school' gym. Our trainer was the main creator of the choreographies. We also helped her with that. When she was young she was a cheerleader too, so she was very pleased to work with us.
As a team, we were very close and we always had fun. I met many different people from another schools and I made many friends. I still have contact with them.
I think I could never forget this stage of my childhood because I enjoyed it so much.
All the memories and lived experiences define what you are.

One of my favorite books

Last summer I read a very interesting book called “The Cow”. My first thought was: that is a weird name for a book. It doesn’t tell me anything about it. It is a too simple name. I bet it’s a great book… that caught my attention so I decided to read it.
The main purpose of this book is teaching the readers how they can eliminate or destroy all the cows that they have in their lives. "Everybody has cows, including me. However, the most of the time we don't notice them", said the author.
Maybe you’ll wonder what cow must be eliminated if you don’t have one. Probably you even have a dog or a cat! Well, in this context a cow means every excuse, habit or belief which don't let us progress and keep us stuck in mediocrity. Camilo Cruz, the author of this book, argues that the worst enemy of success is conformism. In order to exemplify his ideas, he shares a short story told by someone while he was in a flight.
The Cow’ story is about a very poor family who lived in lousy conditions in a small house. Sometimes they had nothing to eat. The only one possession they had were a weak and skinny cow. When they had any money they spent it on food for their cow. They barely could obtain some milk of it. But, that was better than nothing.
Certain day, they noticed their cow was dead. Someone killed it.
Apparently this seems tragic, the worst thing that could ever happen to this family. However, they were forced to do something for themselves.
They grew vegetables to feed themselves. Then, they thought they could sell them in the market.
Now, they always have food. They have a nice house, and everybody in the family is happy.

The blog experience

Today I’m going to write the last post in my blog, at least for this semester!
In my point of view, write in this blog was a difficult experience, because think and write in English is a very complicated activity. I think my English skills have improved, my vocabulary has increased and also my pronunciation is better writing about different topics every week.
I can deny that sometimes I really hated this blog, because I spent many hours come up with new ideas, in order to create a good work related to the required subject. The class was never enough time for me to finish it.
Well, enough for criticisms. Now, the bright side of this assignment…
Currently I feel more confident when I write and speak in this language. I think that create this blog was a remarkable experience because is a good and effective way to learn.
In addition, this activity contributed that we know each other a little bit more, as a classmates, because we have to do three comments at least in the other classmates’ blogs.
During this semester, I had to write about several topics, which were very interesting: my experience with the earthquake, a career-related website, my opinion about what I’m going to do when I become a midwife, if there are gender problems in midwifery, mention different ways that may help to educate and prevent individuals, families and communities.
When I developed the ideas to write about every subject I had the opportunity to think in my own future, as a student and as a midwife, what I will have to face up when my studies end.
In conclusion, create this blog was a great activity which helped me in this curse to achive an improvement in this languaje.

Education and prevention in midwifery

Health area careers are mainly oriented and concerned about people care. There are several ways to achieve this difficult work, however there are two of these which are very interesting: educate and prevent.
In midwifery, education and prevention are essential topics. These strategies are used to accomplish health promotion, which implies to understand that health depends on a lot of different factors such as social, environmental, economic and politic; all of them focused on individuals, family and community.
Educate is a complex process which involve transmission, recreation, creation and knowledge capture in order to health preservation. Thus, we are be able to prevent appearance of diseases and controlling risk factors that may hinder in develop of a healthy life and even conduce to a premature death. Prevention is very important in policies formulation and health activities orientation.
Midwives, especially in primary care centers, have the opportunity to intervene in a community through education projects, using the education as a tool to get health reestablishing, due to in these places exist a closer contact with the patients.
As a future midwife, I’m going to mention five different ways that may help educate individuals, families or communities, in health terms:

1. Give information about how to have a responsible sexual life, which consider use of contraceptive methods to prevent an unexpected pregnancy or a Sexually Transmitted Disease.
2. Promote healthy lifestyles which include doing frequent exercise (at least three times a week), and having good alimentary habits. They may diminish fats consume and increase vegetables and fruits consume.
3. In families, mothers are key figures; therefore if I educate them I might suppose that their families will also be informed. That’s why they are an interesting focus group to intervene in any ambit.
4. Promote early detection of any kind of disease as the best way to be and remaining healthy.
5. Create commitment in patients because they are the only persons who are responsible for their health.

Gender problems in midwifery

Hi everyone!! Today I’m going to talk about gender problems.
A gender problem referred to a specific work area is related to any kind of discrimination suffered by a workers group due to form the minority. Midwifery is a good example of that. This is a career studied mainly by women therefore men make up the minority group. However, the discrimination which experiment male midwives isn’t precisely done by their colleagues, but some patients who they have attended. Sometimes female patients say they feel embarrassed when male midwives do them a physical examination. They do not feel comfortable.
In nursery happens the same situation. There are more female nurses than male nurses hence, in my point of view, they feel just like male midwives.
I don’t know if gender issues among health workers occur in other countries but I think it does.
A long time ago I saw a movie called “Meet the parents” (La familia de mi novia). In this movie, the main character was a male nurse who met her fiancé’s family and he had to stand for their mocking due to his profession.

My future as a midwife

When I become a midwife, what am I going to do? Which area I would like to work? Will my expectations come true? It is kind of difficult to give an accurate answer for those questions...Probably it might be because I am just beginning in this career and there are a lot of things I do not know yet. However, at this moment I’m very interested in a few career-related topics: public health and psychology.
In my opinion, public health is an essential issue to consider to make that a country be able to progress. I would like to do research in order to contribute in new governmental policies creation and thus improve health quality offered by primary care centers to the community.
The psychology area is quite relevant in this profession. Nevertheless, apparently it is not completely developed by midwives. When I finish this career, I would like to work in a primary care center to have a deeper contact with the patients. I think is very important to know about patients’ needs, the way that they live and if they have any trouble that they want to share. Maybe this is the only instance to make a real difference in someone’s life.

Welcome to my blog!!!

Hi everyone, my name is María Carolina Aguilera, I'm a student of Obstetrics and I have to create this blog for my english class. Welcome to my blog!

Due to write and think in english is a very difficult process I think this is a good way to improve my writing skills.

In this blog I woud like to share a little bit of my thoughts about several topics. I hope you enjoy this page and we can learn together.

February, 27th of 2010: Earthquake in Chile

The day of the earthquake I was returning from Arica to Santiago with my family by plane. It was about 4:25 in the morning and the plain starts to descend getting ready to land. Suddenly the plain is climbing again. As a natural reaction everybody on board look at each other trying to stay calm, but at the same time we want to know what happen. A few minutes later the captain tells us that he can’t land in Santiago’s airport because a huge earthquake occurred in the city therefore he must to land in Mendoza. A panic environment could be felt inside the plain.
After 30 minutes we arrive to Mendoza. The captain gives us more information about the earthquake and the current situation in Chile. Everybody tried to communicate with their family but no one had signal to call, so passengers with cell phones looked for local radios to hear the news.
Although I didn´t experiment the earthquake this day was the longest, distressing and exhausting day of my life.

A career-related website that you should visit

Today I’m going to talk about a career-related website that may be interesting you: MINISTRY OF HEALTH OF CHILE website.
Ministry of Health of Chile is the government department in charge to keep all the society informed about health issues related to current situation of our country. It provides health policies.

The link of this website is: http://www.minsal.cl

Ministry of Health website is organized in six sections: about us, we inform you, health topics, health protection, health problems and related institutions.
It contains a lot of relevant information. For example it has documents about social determinants, health economy, epidemiology and health statistics. Also it has links with another important websites like:

• saludresponde.cl
• junaeb.cl
• www.who.int
• new.paho.org
• epi.minsal.cl

I visit this page at least one a week due to a big part of the information uploaded in here might be used in investigations that we have to do.
As a future midwife, I think it is required being informed about each situation happened in our country in health terms. In Chile, Ministry of Health provides it and its website allow that everyone has free access to health news.
In my opinion you should visit this website because it has truthful information and interesting links that could be useful for you.

"Why I decided to study Midwifery"

A few years ago I was studying another career related to a different area; nevertheless I realized It was not make me completely happy.
When I decided to study Midwifery it was not a difficult decision. I must say that this career was not my first choice. In a first place, a wanted to study another career related to health area however I thought Obstetrics should be a good option.
Midwifery is a career center on women’s care during their lives which imply to participate in one of the most amazing process in woman’s life: the pregnancy process.
I think that any career related to health area has a huge social commitment, especially Obstetrics. I like this career because I could make my contribution to the community, helping it with the knowledge which I will acquire during this next years.
Since I took up this career I have realized that each subject has an importance in my vocational training, because a new knowledge makes a big difference in my creation of the midwife concept.
In my first year in this career I felt a special feeling about it. It could be due to I had a close experience with the practice of this profession. I think this is a considerable benefit which might help to figure out how you feel studying Midwifery or if this career makes you happy.
I really enjoy topics related to public health and psychology. Maybe when I become a midwife I will dedicate my efforts into these subjects.