self evaluation of my year

Introduction

To start this year wasn’t easy at all. Like I said at the first post of this blog, I had to change everything about my life, the city, the house, the people who lives with me, and the rhythm of life. This last semester has been more intensive than the first, but it’s full of good memories and important things learned that will be useful to me for the rest of my life. Although, I blame myself for being lazy this year, specially the second semester, and get a lot of things without any effort. It is comfortably by now, but it’s no good to the future if I get used to be like that.


Bad feelings, good people

Those are the reasons because I evaluate this year like a good year by the personal side but bad in terms of studies, even if my grades don’t say the same. I feel that I haven’t learned things about the discipline the same as my classmates who had strained all the year, even if they have the same grades as me. It makes me feel good if I think in comfort and tells me that I have skills for this, but it’s not fear and, finally, I won’t be at the average level of anthropologists.

But that isn’t all. Personally, I have known a lot of beautiful people and I have made really good friendships which had served me a lot when I was troubled. Lately, I’ve been feeling really bad with the place where I live, and sometimes I don’t have the strength and the energy to still fighting, but my friends have been always with me making me law, giving me hugs and making me feel beloved =) that’s sooooo important when you woke up in the morning and feel like shocked by a truck. My boyfriend’s help has been vitally too. I always say that without his words and his constantly support, I would back home the first week of the year. Nothing has been easy, but everything serves like good experiences that makes me stronger and prepares me to affront anything in the future =)


Conclusion

Like the life, this year has been full of bad and good things. It’s different than any year that I lived before, because this has been the most intensive, but I’m happy for living this, because it’s what I’ve chosen for me. Even if at the start I felt like wanting to scream and run away, it has been good to chose to stay and wait with open arms everything that life has prepared to me. I don’t feel sorry for anything, and I think that’s EVER the most important when you chose to get risk in your life =)

Anthopology Challenges

Coming close the end of the year, I think that we haven’t learned a lot of things about anthropology nowadays: our formation as professionals has been focused only in anthropology’s history. But, I can suspect and approximate my answers to those things that may be a challenge to anthropology for these days.

First of all, the fast evolution of technology, globalization and all those phenomena related to make easier the human life by making machines that can replace us, are extinguishing the identities associated to the place where we live and the ancient traditions. The system established it’s forcing to the indigenous populations to let behind their original places and go to live to cities, converting them into occidental ones, just like bricks in an enormous wall sold as “progress”. But, if the identity losing it’s a trouble, may can be too a new phenomenon to investigate. The adaptation to new systems of life may be able to be described, analyzed and to be treated as a new topic of anthropology investigation (I think that surely it is)

Socially talking, I think that anthropology has to affront the social devaluation of its labor. People thinks that anthropology doesn’t have any importance to the world, and many persons say that we are lazy people that are paid for do nothing. Maybe the anthropologist labor isn’t so vital as a doctor or people dedicated to satisfy basic needs, but I think that culture it’s a need of second or third order to, but a human need anyway. Maybe people think that anthropology isn’t important because they don’t know about the discipline, so the solution to this problem should be to inform to the non-anthropologist about what we do and how important is. That lead us to the last challenge: the one about education. For the same reason told recently, it’s very important to inform and educate to the people about anthropology, its important labor and the amazing things discovered. It could be included in the schools and/or colleges as a topic of the history (because anthropology can be treated as a historical science too, narrowly related to geography). It can be a little step but a important one to give us a respectableplace in the world.