Blog post 5 Topic: Changes to my study programme

 

 

I'm from the faculty of science of the university of Chile, where my professional and a scientist training took place and I ended liking it very much, I feel that I am what I am today because of this training. Because of this, I feel that my view of the faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy could be biased, which doesn’t change that I may be true. 

 I have many things that I would like to change from the faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, like the green areas, infrastructure, teaching methods, available teachers, courses not specific to the career and the way the evaluations are made. To express my opinion in an orderly manner, I will talk about each topic separately. 

• Green areas: in the campus the faculty of science was, Juan Gomez Millas, there were many green areas where you could and get away from the academic pace. That is something this faculty is missing, there is no place where you can go and relax from some minutes.  

• Infrastructure: This is the biggest problem of this faculty, there are not enough classrooms for the number of students we are, which makes academic activities, like laboratories or assistantships are not well done, and those activities are the most formative for our career.} 

• Teaching methods: This is a personal view, when I started this career, I was very angry with my professors, it was like they didn’t care if we were learning or not, they cared about you answering what they said in the class and not that you could use that information. In science the focus was always that, from the things they taught you in class and the practice of using that information in laboratories, they expected you to be able to use that information in a problem without being able to recite the information. Here it’s the contrary, the more things you know, wich doesn’t imply you being able to use that information, the better you are, and that is something I still struggle in this faculty. 

• Available teachers: This is a university problem, the lack of teachers and the lack of classrooms, the classes are of 100+ students, where classes are made more as an exposition of information without explaining the information too much. 

• Courses: There are many courses that looks more like electives than something every pharmaceutical professional should know, like cosmetic or clinical biochemistry. This makes that you cannot dedicate the time you should learn the real important thing from the career, like the pharmaceutical chemistry or pharmaceutical of systems.  

• Evaluations: Since every teacher must look over 100+ per class, they are not able to do good test, instead they make multiple selection test where they cannot evaluate the way you view the information. On top of that, every test I have done, it has errors from the drafting to the impression.  

With all that said, it is obvious that I don’t have a good impression on this faculty, but I have the impression that the faculty is working with old methods of teaching and hasn’t renewed them. I stayed here because of the prestige that the university gives and because my previous career made me like the University of Chile.