Student's strikes in Chile

Nowadays, Chile suffers a lot from inequality, and from the enormous gap between poor and rich populations. Therefore, gratuity for public schools seems to me as a huge step toward equality. This means that every single people in Chile would have the possibility to access advanced education. To me, this would be a great progress for the education in Chile and for the equality within the Chilean population.

To that end, the student’s strikes through Chile with the objective of getting free education are very important and necessary to the development of the country.

Nevertheless, from what I can understand, for some time now, the strikes take a real place in the education calendar, in the Universidad de Chile at least. To my mind, when you do strikes too many times, or for too long, or too regularly, it tends to lose its point and lose its impact.

To me, the difficulty with strikes is to use it well, and not excessively. I know it as a fact, because in France “we” also have a tendency of striking a lot, and at the end, it does not change anything, because it tends to become more like a habit than something punctual.

In this situation, I think that “skipping” two months of class is not the best way of saying its ideas. As a matter of fact, I find it a little bit contradictory: to strike for a free education, when yourself decide to put your studies aside, and not go to the university for two month when you paid for it.  Because of course, when you do not go to class for two months in the middle of a term, you tend to lose your effectiveness and your rapidity to get back to your work and thus pass aside a part of the benefit of your education.

Tales of Passion - Isabel Allende's talk

To my mind, Isabel Allende’s talk was very touching and strong. We can understand her life’s work and mains ideas by listening to her presentation. The way she brought the main subject, that is feminism, sexism and the feminine part of the world, was striking: she talks about powerful women, but also beauty, things that can matter to every women, but that becomes insignificant as soon as you think about what women can endure in the whole world. The other thing that stroke me during this speech was the examples she used, and the great heart every women she talked about had. Also, the great thing about her way of talking and expressing herself, is that she just has hope for a good world and is not here to give you a lesson. She just tells you stories that can touch you and makes you ask yourself questions.

Of course, I can just agree with everything she said. I guess that sexism is everywhere at different levels. There are countries where women still don’t have rights. We are lucky to live in countries where women have rights, they can work, they can play any sports they want... But sexism still exists. In France, we can say that, as a woman, you do not endure sexism daily but there are still discriminations, not in the way of living - most women work and the percent of house wives decreases - but the best example would be salary. However we can see progress in France, for instance, in the government there are more and more women ministers, and we also have, since the last government, a ministry of women’s rights. To me, it is very important to have equity in the government, to have equity in our society. Nowadays what we can assist in France is, I hope, the future of many other countries. But I guess that the creation of association for women and  the volunteering are more and more present and useful to the women of the world.

What you need to be good arquitect

To my mind, to be a good arquitect you must be passionate about arquitecture , its history and it evolution. You must know arquitecture before practicing it. Therefore, a good arquitect must be curious about the world and the cultures that surrounds him. To be able to create a building, a house, a public space, you must know the people that use or will use that place. For that reason, the arquitect must be a good listener and must understand the needs and the culture of its clients or the people that will live in his creation.

Furthermore, a good arquitect must be a person who can draw, represent his mind on a sketch or a drawing. In my opinion, an arquitect who can't draw by hand but only on a computer is not a good arquitect because the computer can't be as expressive as the hand, the computer fixes thing that aren't yet to be fixed.  

Moreover, a good arquitect must be hard working, perseverant and patient because you have to be able to take time to redo again and again a drawing, a plan, a seccion, in order for it to be perfect so that, if the project is constructed, it would be safe and well designed. 

Last but not least, to me, an arquitect must have humility, in order to design something for someone and not design something for him and for its own ego, and this is, to my mind, the problem with the "stars arquitects".