Teaching

It's evident that we lack great public education here in Puerto Rico. Don't get me wrong the UPR is great. But, I can testify to knowing how it feels to compare education from PR to that of a decent public school in the US. When I studied at Emory University I could see how my peers were, so eloquent (some, not all), but most of these came from Public schools. And this isn't to say that I couldn't match up, but to know that people could express themselves and be this competitive and attend public school sound surreal to the average puerto rican. 

When we read Jim Cooper's chapter on teaching, I can genuinely feel his frustration on how it seems like an impossible task to teach under a lack of education structure. They had to implement systems throughout the year to try and educate in language (which is not his field; he studied literature), but we see that he tries and solve a problem that is deeply rooted in our way of learning and viewing english. 

English is seen as a privilege as snarky or foreign (high class or as weird; it has a social stigma to speak in english). For example, when people see you speaking in spanish and you switch to english they judge you because they believe you should only speak in spanish (when it's our second language!), and they create a stigma out of it. People who know it hide it, and aren't able to practice because of this stigma and does who don't know it are afraid to ask for the help because they believe they will be made fun of. Nonetheless, there specialized public schools that excel in english and regular public schools that may have better programs, but the typical norm is that if you want to learn english you have to learn it by your own means or attend a private school (and private school is not cheap, by any means). In the end, here we are approximately 60 years after the stories from this chapter are told and we still face an uphill battle, we've made progress, but we still have a long way to go. 

Life is a Trip

We were tasked with reading the section on Vietnam from the book Life is a trip by Judith Fein. We are recounted the story of a person who was repulsed by the atrocities that had been committed in the Vietnam war, so she traveled to Paris and then to Vietnam to see what had happened and to see how they felt about the war (and Americans).  To her conclusion the people from Vietnam were very forgiving, as they said that it wasn’t their fault. They were forced into the conflict; American and Vietnamese were forced to do whatever it took to survive.

I clearly was not born for this devastating war, but hearing and reading about the conflict you can understand the agony and suffering that troops had to endure. It was a torturous mental game as they had to wait entire nights under horrible conditions (rain, humidity, etc.) and fear of being attacked at any moment. Guerrilla warfare meant that anybody could attack you and you didn’t know who this person might be. Soldiers had to live with guilt of killing innocent civilians as they didn’t know if they would kill them (similar to conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan were kids would be armed with bombs). The mental devastation alone (aside from serious physical maiming that occurred often due to grenades, traps, etc.) was a lot to bear for a person who was in his late teens and probably drafted (against his will) to attend this hell. It didn’t stop there, when they returned they also had to endure the scorn of people who were against the war who criticized the soldiers for going to Vietnam. To be fair, some went willingly because of their intense patriotism, but I believe that most young soldiers that were drafted did not intend on going off to fight this conflict; however, being put in the situation it was survival to the fittest.

All in all, I believe that the Vietnamese soldiers were very mature in attitude about the whole conflict, they knew that this wasn’t their fault (Soldiers), but more of governments interests (resources, political ideals etc.). They knew that resentment and hate, would not bring back lives, but forgiveness would give new life and new meaning to theirs.

I remember when I was young my grandfather would tell me about his army days (he fought in Korea and had various friends who fought in Vietnam). He told me how he was very patriotic to his nation, but he never wished for anybody to experience what was can do to a person. If he could rule out one thing from American society it would be the militaristic approach to conflict, as it did more self harm than good (PTSD, destruction of families, injuries, etc.).

                                           Click on picture above to see footage from the war

Research Conference

Last Wednesday I was tasked with the role of moderator for our class presentation. We presented on Carl Jung’s travels, based on presentations we had given in our class. For me this was a stressful task, since I’m usually not very good at managing group projects and less so coordinating time, presentation, order and such matters (I manage to be very organized when I attend my work on my own). Non withstanding, I believe that this was a truly enriching experience to my personal and professional persona. I needed to speak in front of students, professors and other people who were invited to the event. This would help me overcome my slight fear of presenting in front of large audiences, but I won’t lie it’s intimidating to speak in front of crowds. Additionally, since I’m studying marketing I appreciate experiences like this to be able to overcome fears like this one and grow in my journey.  Also, this experience brought me closer to my fellow classmates (specially, the four presenters) as I needed to communicate with the presenters and other classmates to be able to coordinate the presentation.

In regards to the presentation, it was being presented in amphitheater 3 at the DMN building. This is a beautiful amphitheater, which is very pleasant in every regard, but it has no cellphone signal. Which could be regarded as a good thing as you are able to concentrate on what is being presented. When I arrived I discussed with my group members and prepared the PowerPoint, so everything would go according to plan. The presenters would sit down, panel style, and I would be standing on the podium presenting each member and our presentations. Also, I was in charge of changing slides for the presentation. In the end, I opened up for questions and we had a resounding amount of questions from our classmates. Even Dr. Pittmann contributed to the discussion and made our panel discussion on Jung even more appealing to the people that were present at the conference.  Overall, it was a very enriching experience and I’m very thankful for my group for being as collaborative as they were.

Here's the Tittle and first slide for our presentation: