Changes to my study programme

Physical Anthropology is a career kind of new in Chile and the curriculum isn't the best in my opinion. I feel that we don't end up well prepared after the 5 years we spend at the university, first of all because the first 2 years were common for Social Anthropology, Archaeology and Physical Anthropology and we only had 3 subjects related to Physical Anthropology, I know that they are currently changing that but I'm not entirely sure if it will be more balanced. After those two years, the next two are specialized in physical anthropology and we learn more about the biology of the human body, but I thinks the subject that are "theories" are not well designed, and we should have more theories related to the human and primate behavior from a psychobiological point of view. The workload is also a problem, we have to read and memorize too much from one week to another, and it's almost impossible to keep up with 6-7 subjects a week, and in top of that each subject is 3 hour long, so it's very hard to keep the concentration for such a long period of time.

In regards to the faculty facilities, we lack too many things, we don't even have gloves that are needed for the laboratory, the laboratory is also in bad conditions, the pc is very old, all the place is very dirty and with a lot of spiders. The Scaning Electron Microscope is broken and we couldn't use it when we had  the subject of Chemistry last year. I think the only good thing about the technology at the faculty is the open Wi-Fi signal

About the teaching methods, we don't have any fieldworks and I think that is something very necessary for our future, specially if someone want to work as a bioarchaeologist, because that is a very difficult job and it's really easy to mess up an excavation.

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Having an exotic pet at home

Today I'm going to write about my opinion about having an exotic pet at home. There are a lot of people that would love to have an exotic animal, like a chimpanzee, a racoon, a snake, etc. because they are very cute, or they are out of the common, but most of the time people don't have the space at home to have them. I'm positive that most of those people don't actually care about the animal, they just want to have something to show off, I could be wrong, but if they really care about them they shouldn't adquire an exotic pet, because what you are actually doing is taking a species away from their natural environment, a place that they are adapted to. 

The people who has exotic animal are not the direct responsible of this act, but they are contribuiting indirectly to this kind of actions. Another thing to consider are the photos and videos shared in social media, someone who publish a picture with his or her exotic pet is inciting more people to do the same, people will look the photo and think something like "Wow that's cute, I want one too". There are even some videos in youtube for example of people tickling a primate, it seems like the pet is laughing but it's actually hurting him, and what seems a laugh is just a defense mecanism.

I'm absolutely certain that a lot of animal are in danger of extinction for this kind of practices that should stop, that's why I'm in a strong disagree with having an exotic pet at home.

 

Postgraduate Studies

I have two main reasons to study a postgradute degree and I think they are both importants. The first one is because I want to keep learning more things, someone could argue that you don't really need to take a postgraduate study for that, but I think it's always better if you have professors that could teach you and classmates you could discuss with instead of learning something by your own. It's not always necessary to take a postgraduate study in my opinion, but I want to be a researcher and to get into the academia I think you need at least a PhD.
About the subjects I want to study, I really want to learn more about Human Evolution, but that's a topic that I had already read a lot, so maybe taking a subject like Psychobiology or Neurobiology would be a good option too because that's also closely related to evolution and I could learn a lot more things.
I would like to study abroad, in Chile there aren't too many postgraduate courses that are of my interest and also studying abroad is a good option to meet more people from a different country that are interested in the same things as me. I think a course with physical presence required is the best option, because it's more interactive and you can ask questions more easily if you don't know something.
Finally I don't know if I'm going to be accepted at a good university once I graduate from my current degree, because I don't have any published articles or something like that but I'm trying to get good marks right now to have better chances.

My future job

Hello, today I'm going to write about my future job. In a couple of years I would want to be a researcher and a professor in the field of bioanthropology and human evolution at some university. I don't think being a researcher or a professor is easy, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a lot of problem with the foundings for my research, the peer review could be hard sometimes and organize a course it's nos easy either, in resume I imagine a very stressful indoor job. 

I would like to travel to some countries to talk about my research and spread the knowledge to more people. I don't really care about the salary, I don't want a job just to get money because money it's not that important to me, but money is always necessary, so I'm fine with a salary that  gives me enough money to live in my own.

The major I'm currently studying is physical anthropology and I really like it. Once I graduate I want to take a master in something related with human evolution or anthropogeny, and after that a PhD in something related to it, maybe behavioral ecology or behavioral psychology, just to understand more about what makes us human and how we evolved.

I think being a professor is another fundamental part of being a researcher, because what's the point of doing a research if you don't share your findings. I also really like when people learn new things, and if I could make someone get interested in my classes it would be awesome.   

TED Talk: Team Human

Hello, today I'm going to write about a TED Talk given by the media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. The main topics in the conference revolves around the impact of the digital technology, it's evolution and how the digital era has changed us as human beings.

Technology drove us to a highly competitive place where creativity is repressed, because it's more important to value the people as data, so the "winners" in this kind of world, the tech billionaries, can make predictions about the future, and isolate from the rest of the world and survive only caring for themselves. On this digital era humans are being optimized for the market, and not for the future, for example now the education is purely about getting jobs. Besides that the digital era is making us extremely competitive, and is making us to lose a lot of values that could make a better future for our species. It doesn't help either that humans are not popular, in the sense that the popular media shows how robots are better and nicer than people, how zombies are like us, and how we should accept our extinction.

I really agree with Douglas Rushkoff about the highly competitive enviroment, and the importance of the creativity. We are so similar to other primates and even other mammals, but creativity and imagination is one of the few things that makes us humans, and we are losing it through a bad use of the techonology.

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