Danielish 101

For me, one of the most important things of studying English at the university is the fact that even when many students had English classes as a compulsory course during schooldays, it's not such at university. And without practice on your skills you would eventually start forgetting what you learned during school. On this line, the use of a weekly blog is an amazing way of practice writing skills and, eventually, improving them. This have been very useful for me, as I have learned a lot of expressions during the research process for writing the posts.

The main aspect of my English that I have always thought that I have to improve my oral comprehension skills. Although I have studied English for plenty of years by know (since I was in kindergarten), I haven't been able to fully understand at a 100% what I'm listening in English when I'm not using closed captions. I practice a lot by listening a lot to English music and watching also, a lot of English-spoken movies and series. But still there's a long road ahead to keep improving.

Outside my English classes I'm pretty sure that I use English everyday. The main reason is that because of the fact that most of the information on the web is in English it very useful for me when understanding it when I look for Breaking News in English papers websites like theguardian.co.uk or similar ones. Even, when I need to know something about history I go straight to Wikipedia's English version as it is the most complete one. Also, I love to watch movies in their original language and I don't like to watch them with subtitles in Spanish as translations do not always capture the meaning of the expressions in their original movies.

Other main reason is because in legal practise is being more and more required a good level of English knowledge in order to get a good job. That's why I think that is very useful to learn English more than ever.

Je veux étudier à Paris

I have said in multiple times how much I like to travel and how much I’d like to study abroad. I think that at this point that is not something new for nobody.

Working in an embassy in a foreign country is not the only reason of why I’d like to study a postgraduate degree in International Law. We are in the wear 2016, and every minute that pass the world becomes more connected, countries become more dependent on each other, and within that relation of dependence lawyers that have a deep understanding of international law will be more demanded by multinational corporations, national governments, international organizations, etc.

I would like to study law in France, in the University of Paris I Paris-Sorbonne. France is not only a country that I admire because of their culture and history, but also because of their importance in the study of international relations. French has been considered for centuries like the “Language of Diplomacy” and is actually, along with English, the official language of many international organizations and institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.

Although nowadays it’s becoming more and more common the possibility of taking online programs, I disagree with this method of study. I strongly believe that nothing replaces de interaction among student and teacher, the discussion of the ideas is one of the most important aspects of college studies.

With that in mind, and apart from the fact that I think that studying in other country is not only good for acquire new knowledge in your area, but for growing as a person by learning other countries’ cultures, my personal choice would be always to take a full-time studies programme, instead of taking online courses.

Daniel & Co.

I’d like to have a job where I have to travel a lot. It doesn't matter if I get paid a lot or not, but I'm amazed by the idea of spending a lot of time in foreign countries.

I don’t like physical work, nor I would like to have a job where I have to read a lot of stuff with the sun burning in summer or freezing myself in winter. So definitely I would like to work indoor.

But as I said in of the videos I recorded some time ago, one of the bad things about studying laws is the fact that you are not able to travel a lot outside your country. However, there’s some jobs that an attorney can perform that allows him or her to work abroad. The most common and the one that I’d like the most to have, is to be a diplomatic in a country like France, the UK or Japan.

With that in mind, after graduating of the Law School I would like to start studying a Master in International Law in France or applying for the diplomatic academy here in Chile. But there’s a lot of time to think about that…for now, I’m okay with taking French classes.

That’s my main goal, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t think in other possibilities. I also have been seduced by the idea of becoming a judge, by the idea of being “The sword of the law”, the responsible for applying justice to the people. Maybe it’s a bit idealized, but still is a possibility.

University of Tchile

The study programme in the University of Chile Law School is a very standard programme and many times it’s adopted by other universities with some modifications. The key feature of the “The School” programme is, apart from the study from the main subjects in law study like Civil Law, Procedural Law, Commercial Law, etc. Is the possibility to choose between different teachers of the same course, so you can get different visions about a same object of study in the case of compulsory courses, also you have to choose a course in a specific area from different options in order to deepen your knowledge in areas like Law Science, International Law, Economic Law and Environmental Law. Also we have to take a required number of elective courses, who are freely chose by the students in any area of study that they like. And finally we have some “Free Courses” that most of them are not related with Law, like Sports, Languages, Artistic and “General Formation” courses, which is a fancy word for “Courses that can be useful to you but not necessary”.

The workload is the usual for an under-graduate student in a University like this. Yet, the problem begins from moment you actually finish under-graduate studies, because the process to get your degree (which is given by the University) and become a lawyer (the professional title which is given by Supreme Court of Chile) takes an insane amount of time unlike other careers…more than 2 years! Good look finding a Lawyer from this school with least than 27 years…

Talking about infrastructure…we could be worse. The main building if very ancient and is a national monument, so the classrooms are very old and we are not allowed to fix them without a lot of paperwork from the government. Also, the number of students have grown so much in the last years that our library has become too small for us. But is I said before…we could be worst: Like the 90% that other University of Chile’s schools and institutes.

The use of technology at least is bit more advanced in this university: We use an online platform called “U-Cursos”, where teachers and their team post us information about the courses, papers, post exam marks, etc. Also we have another platform called “U-Campus” for inscribing our courses at the beginning of each semester, which is pretty cool when you’re not in Santiago during summer.

Finally, about our teachers is not as cool as some may say: Yes, It’s cool to have a lot of teachers full of knowledge, doctorates and that kind of stuff. But it’s not so cool when they don’t take care of you and don’t worry if you learn or not. That’s something that I’d like to change: I would like to study in a Law School where professors were more devoted to their students than they do now.