English 4, Post 8 [FINAL]: 'English Language challenges'

My experience learning English at "Universidad de Chile" has been quite difficult, not for the learning method but administrative reasons. I entered to the faculty in 2016 to 2nd year of pharmacy (transferred from "bachillerato" academic program) and trying to take English every semester was so hard because the schedules between pharmacy subjects and English always overlapped each other. But in the end, here I am almost finishing this experience.  

English is a language that I've been constantly exposed to for almost my whole life, whether it be playing videogames that only have English translations, watching TV shows with Spanish subtitles, reading books, scientific papers, etc. So all of this "background" has made my "English learning process" easier for me. But I think that I still lack spontaneity at the moment to write or speak the language, there are moments in which I struggle to remind the correct word to say what I want to tell so, this kind of activity helps me practice that. This is something that I can improve by practicing speaking and writing more, so I'll have to do that actively.

Nowadays I've been using English a lot in a "professional" and a "common" way. The first way is because English is the language of science so studying it requires the use of English and also in my professional internship the translation of documents it's quite often seen. The second one is because I watch videos, play videogames, see TV shows all in English very often. So the language is a part of my life now. 

That was all I have to say for now. Thank you Mr! It has been a great english class. 

English 4, Post 7: 'Changes to my study programme'

First of all, I'm going to start this entry by mentioning that the pharmacy study programme had a big change back in 2016. That change included the add, elimination, and reformulation of some subjects, and I was part of the generation who "suffered" this transition period since I enter the faculty in 2016. 

In my opinion, the curriculum of the career is good, it has a variety of subjects all relevant to the field of pharmacy in general (the investigation field, the industry field, the clinical field, among many others) but there is one thing I consider that the curriculum lacks, the "professional" practical activities to experience how all the things we have learned through the years are applied to the different jobs that pharmacists can do. So, I would add more of these activities (with a considerable length) to be more prepared to face the work life.

Regarding to the workload, it's very tough, we have, on average, 7 subjects by semester along 11 semesters. So, it's not rare to have moments in which students basically shut themselves in their rooms for 1 month to approve tests. That is something that I would definitely change. As I mentioned before the duration of the career is very long, almost 6 years, but I think that this length is a consequence of the wideness of the field of pharmaceutical sciences.

Finally, the use of technology it's not the best because of budget problems (I guess?), "Universidad de Chile" it's a public university and doesn't count with a big budget or the best distribution of it. That is something to improve. About the teaching methods, different teachers have different methods so it would be ok to try to harmonize the teaching methods. 

English 4, Post 6: 'Time Travel to the future'

Time travel to the future, just thinking about the possibility of time travel scares me a little bit. I start to think about futures as described in sci-fi books or movies, a cyberpunk one in where technology has taken the control of every aspect of our lives that humankind no longer has free will, values, etc. So if I have the chance to travel through space-time I would like to go a considerable amount of time ahead, in that way I could see with my own eyes what will go to happen to the planet, to life and humankind, and I will also be able to check if the science fiction was right all the time. Obviously, only if climate change, multiresistant bacteria or viruses, etc., do not extinguish all life first (hahahaha).

If I would like to stay there? Well... it will depend on what I will find in the future and also if I have, first of all, the possibility to go back. If the "omens" of sci-fi were true of course I wouldn't. But, if it not and the future would be a better place and time to live, probably I'd think about it, but in the end, it would be a very shocking change that I think I would end up missing my family, friends, pets, etc. 

In conclusion, if I'd have the possibility to time travel to the future, I would like to come back to the present because my place in the world is here.

English 4, Post 5: 'My future job'

First of all, if you didn't know yet, I'm a pharmacy student and currently, I'm in the last year of the career doing my titulation activity a professional practice in "Laboratorio Chile | TEVA", specifically I'm in the department of regulatory affairs that is in charge, as the name states, of all legal affairs that involve a pharmacy industry regarding to drugs. So, as you can see I'm rather next to enter to "working life" and the question of what kind of job I would like to have, is a question that I'm usually asking myself. But unfortunately, I don't have a concrete answer yet.

What I actually know is that I would like to have a job in which I feel comfortable with, and not feel angry or disgusted doing it, either it be an indoor or an outdoor job. I'm not saying that I would like to have a job that makes me "happy" because find "joy" or "happines" working as a pharmacist is not something that I would expect, really. 

I wouldn't like to travel a lot in any of the future jobs that I might have, because I think that working trips doesen't allow you to really meet other countries or places, instead, as the name says, you go to work. Of course I would like to travel a lot but as turist, in that way I could really visit and get to meet other cities or countries. 

For me, money it's not the most important thing in the world but I know that it is a help to survive in this life and it is a mean that allows me to do my hobbies. So, as long as I win enough money to survive and get to do my hobbies it will be ok.

English 4, Post 4: 'Themed Free Post [II]'

Today, I'm going to take the chance of this "themed free" entry to recommend a music band that I recently found. The name of the band is "Pigeons Playing Ping Pong" an extremely weird name, for sure, but I like it, it is catchy in some way. But what I like the most of them is the genre of music that they compose, a kind of a mix of funk, blues, and rock that every time I listen to it makes me want to move my body. If you don't believe me thus far, here you have some of their songs, go ahead and feel the rhythm yourself:

King Kong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMOx20vqpfU&ab_channel=PigeonsPlayingPingPong. 

Oceans Flow (Live):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpEut44gJjo&ab_channel=PigeonsPlayingPingPong-Topic

Melting Lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smpn6dQGQx8&ab_channel=PigeonsPlayingPingPong

Investigating a little bit about them I found that they are active since 2009 but released their first album, titled Funk E P in 2010. Nowadays, they have 5 studio albums and 1 live album (which I consider the best because the songs have long sections of improvisation that are really cool). 

Current members of the band are mentioned below:

• Vocals, Guitar: "Scrambled" Greg Ormont
• Vocals, Guitar: Jeremy Schon
• Vocals, Bass: Ben Carrey
• Drums: Alex "Gator" Petropulos

Well, that's all I had to say today, I wish that you liked my  "music recommendation" and who knows, maybe they'll become one of your favorite bands. 

English 4, Post 3: 'Themed Free Post - Carrer Related

Today I'm going to talk about a very interesting paper (scientific article) that I read not so long ago, as part of an evaluation activity of an elective class called "new nano and micrometric size vehicles for biological applications" and I will try my best to summarize the paper as much simple as I can. 

So the title of the paper is "Exosome-mimetic nanoplatforms (EMNs) for targeted cancer drug delivery" and all the investigation developed in it was aimed to solve a big problem of anticancer therapies: the non-selective reaching of the drugs to tumoral tissues. 

Some kinds of cells are capable of secreting extracellular vesicles and one type of these vesicles of a nanometric size is called exosomes. What is important about these exosomes is that someones had tumor-homing properties and can be loaded with anticancer drugs, these two properties made them a pretty valuable technology to develop anticancer drugs but unfortunately, they are not exempt of safety problems (adverse effects) and bad production yields. 

So the proposal of the scientists was to develop a platform that was pretty similar to exosomes but safer and easier to produce, using lipids and proteins that are present in exosomes. And to summarize, they managed to develop this technology and called it "Exosome-mimetic nanoplatforms". Of course this is not a reality in anticancer medicine yet, but it is an important advance in the nanomedicine field and who knows, maybe in a couple of years we'll see this technology applied. 

Link to the article: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12951-019-0517-8 

English 4, Post 2: 'The best concert'

I haven't gone to a lot of concerts in my life, mainly because concert tickets prices are too expensive here in Chile, but one exception was a concert of one of my favorite bands of all time, Pearl Jam. The concert took place at the "National Stadium" in Ñuñoa on November 4th of 2015.

Pearl Jam is a rock band that was formed back in the 90s during the "grunge era" of rock music. Initially, they were 5 members, but today they are 6. Current members are mentioned below:

Vocals and rythm guitar: Eddie Vedder.
Lead guitar: Mike McCready.
Rythm guitar: Stone Gossard.
Bass: Jeff Ament.
Drums: Matt Cameron.
Keyboard: Boom Gaspar.

The atmosphere during the show was incredible, all the people were enjoying the music and singing along with the band, it was just amazing. I can't describe exactly with words what I felt in that particular moment, it was a kind of pure ecstasy, I guess. But not everything could be great, because the next day I had a chemistry test, and my mark was not particularly good (hahaha).