My ideal job

At university, a professor suggest me a career working in public affairs. Later, I knew that the Meca of public affairs is in Brussels with Fleishman-Hillard, one of the world’s largest PR firms. I hope to be in ten years, after an MA at the College of Europe (Warsaw), to be in the European Parliament working for a well-respected member. All in all, it is pretty much my ideal job.

Public affairs consultancy allows me to continue my fascination with the politics and policies of Brussels, while seeking out why it all matters to the real world. As a consultant, I will be fortunate to constantly gain an insight into the inner workings of a wide range of organizations from global consumer goods manufacturers to air traffic managers and chemicals producers.

I love giving strategic communications advice on public policy issues to getting down to implementing advocacy campaigns on individual amendments to legislative texts. Every day is different and every day you learn something new, whether from clients, the institutions or from colleagues in the office and elsewhere in the world.

While the public perception of “lobbyists” may be somewhat negative, those who have worked in Brussels know that successful “lobbying” in the EU is an open process based more on the use of good communication techniques than personal contacts.It's very difficult to obtain this kind of job, because you must compete with many great sociologists and political analysts for a few jobs, it is also the difficulty of the language, and sometimes even europeans can be very racist. So I only hope that that the current drive for regulation in Brussels does not destroy what it seeks to protect and that work continues as it is today; professional, challenging and fun, at least until I arrive there.

Do schools kill creativity?

In English class, we had to watch a short film about how creativity isn't encouraged in children's learning.

Thanks Ken, that was a great presentation. I agree that children need to be able to explore different avenues. I find more and more young people coming out of the educational system who did everything right according to the curriculum but are basically helpless and need to be retrained on how to work. I am reminded of what Mao Zedong once said. He said that the most important person in the aftermath of a major catastrophe will be the guy who knows how to make the plumbing work.

I think we need to match young people to their talents and train them to be a success in their chosen field no matter if they wear a tie to work or not. We need to find out what people are best at and then help them achieve success and not just “educate” the heck out of them according to some general formula and then put them in a corporate pigeonhole.

What an excellent speaker. I particularly agree with his comment about the academic world shifting beneath our feet. We need a new system that better suits this new world we’re in. I’d like to add that schools are one thing, but also, it seems to me that regulations hinder creativity. Arts funding promotes certain types of creativity in favour of others and so acts as a kind of censorship.

My favourite subject

My favourite subject is Sociological Theory I, because is the basic knowledge for my future as sociologist. Teacher isn't bad too. His name is Octavio Avendaño, and is so practical, very clear and friendly to explain difficult and boried theories of classic authors of the sociology, even make them so interesting.

I like this subject, in first place, because I want to make Sociological Theory my specialization area, so it's too important undesrtanding perfectly classic theories. And in the second place because every process design of social programmes in Public Politics (which are considered relevant for overcoming of the poverty, central topic in government management) needs a classic theory for explain macrosocial behaviour and reasons of certain social fact, and, as the study of human social life, groups and societies, classical sociology theory is important, is a wide-ranging subject concerned with analysing social relationships and social institutions and the way in which they shape people's lives.

I have learnt a lot, for example, economical implications in human progress according to Marxist theory, religion as social representation and built by itself, german philosophy like influence in classic theory, laws and government institutions in modern society developmen, etc. I just want to conclude this semester to continue learning about sociological theory, but later it will be about the influence in other authors and in develop of sociology.

In five years?...

I don't know... I haven't thought really what do I want for the future, I mean, I just think now in pass my subjects better way that I can. But if I have to think about it, maybe the answer would be so simple for anybody. First at all, in five years, I will be done my undergraduate programme and its thesis (I don't have any idea about the topic of my future thesis). Then, I hope study abroad any MBA or PhD. England, Germany and United States are my options, for now. Sociology, Political Sciences, Economy and Law are my academic options to take an investigation topic.

Personally, I want to live alone in an own flat in Providencia or Ñuñoa, or anywhere nice and quite. It won't be bad come back to Belgium and make my own investigation about how people see religion and culture troubles. Also, it sounds interesting make an observation in the same theoric line that Pierre Bourdieu, a famous french philosopher and sociologist, who make a cultural survey, including social, cultural, economical, political and educational dimensions, and also describes french social structure through those dimensions.

The only thing that i really know now is that i want to finish my career, what happens after that i see him to his time.