Self evaluation of my academic year (2009)

It’s hard to make an evaluation of my year, because I have the impression that it’s been very long. I actually can’t believe that my last semester was part of this year, maybe because we had a lot of things to do, besides this semester have been very different from the first, especially in terms of subjects. But, to begin with, I can say that one thing that the two semesters have in common is that they have been very stressful, I’ve been very tired; the only thing I want are some vacations.
From the beginning, this year has been tiring. The first semester we had a lot tests, pieces of work or essays (in group or individual), and this semester I haven’t had many tests, only two, but a lot of pieces of work. The complicity in this is that the most of them were in group, so it’s harder than when you work alone, because you have to organize yourself and fulfill with your group partners.
But besides this, I really enjoyed my first semester, especially for the subjects…well, actually for one subject in particular: anthropology III, materialistic theories. I really liked it, maybe for the content of the subject, the teacher was very good (compared with other professors) and because I think I really like materialism. I had psychology, physical anthropology elements, Latin American History, Statistic II, and Linguistic. In materialism I really enjoyed the classes, and besides I probably have forgot the most of the things (my memory is kind of bad), I really learned. The other subjects weren’t bad, but they could’ve been better. But the worst subject of all was Latin American history, it really sucked: the teacher was bad (very bad, actually), the classes were a joke, the tests were too long and though we read come interesting books, I didn’t learn. The saddest thing of all is that I really had expectations about the subject, so the impact was stronger.
This semester has been awful, not only because of the stress and all the things I had to do, but of the subjects I had. The most of them are not as good as I thought at the beginning, I really expected more, especially from the contents. But I can rescue three: Social History of Chile is the best subject of the semester, the teacher is very good, and the contents are very interesting, the classes are good; Methodology Workshop, it’s kind of boring, but the idea is good, it’s a very useful subject; and Anthropology of gender, because I’ve learned a lot of new things that probably I will not going to take up again.
Well, I really haven’t had much time to do other things besides the University, but I can’t deny that I really enjoy the degree and, though this semester in particular had been boring I have learned a lot; not only in classes, but in the investigations I had to do for the subjects. But this doesn’t mean that things can’t be better next year, I really have expectations that the next year it’s going to be better that this.
Penny

Anthropology Challenges

Anthropology faces a lot of problems, one of them in terms of technology. In contrast to other careers, we don’t use a lot of technology, except for computer programs to analyze data. One of them, for example, is the SPSS. The thing is that, related to education; in University doesn’t teach us how to use these programs properly. We have statistical courses, but there are very basic and beside SPSS, we haven’t met other programs so far. This is related, once again, to educational and methodological problems, because it is believed that anthropology only uses qualitative techniques, but we use quantitative techniques too, like surveys. I think there are computer programs to analyze qualitative data, but we haven’t met them either.
In terms of education, the anthropology challenges are related to the curricular program, the courses, and their relation with the application of this science in the work field. Our courses are very theoretical and not practical (especially in archaeology and physical anthropology), but is more than that, because we have only a few subjects about investigations techniques. This is very important, because when you work in something related to social sciences you have to know how to design a properly investigation problem (this is not only for the people who want to work in public policies). The other problems are mentioned in the preceding paragraph.
I think that the problems I mentioned before can be resolved easily, because they depend of the University (in this case I only speak about my experience in this University), but I think that the methodological problem is general. But one of the biggest problems is that the social sciences are not valued in Chile. The State doesn’t give money to these degrees in the “public” Universities, and in the work field there are only a few spaces to develop these careers. They are not very good paid, and there are a lot of people who doesn’t know what anthropology and archaeology are and what they do. The State and other careers doesn’t value or appreciate what the social sciences can do, or how they can contribute.
These problems can be resolved, at least the first ones, easily; because these kinds of subjects, related to methodologies, for example, can be introduced in the curricular programs, but all this depend of the University. But the last problem is difficult to resolve, a lot of things would have to change before the State and the people appreciate social sciences.
Regards,
Penny