Changes to my study programme

As I already mentioned in a previous blog, the career I'm studying at this moment, Theory and History of Art, isn't my first career in Universidad de Chile. I study Theatre Design for two years and a half in the Art faculty, Theatre Department, where we had similarities in some subjects with my current carrer, however, the diferences on both of the faculty facilities (Las Encinas vs Theatre Department) are huge. First of all, we have to think about the fact that the theatre department is a patrimonial building, so they can't make any structural changes, so the estructural conditions aren't good for having two careers at the same time, sharing that space. I remember that sometimes we had to fight with the other career for the classrooms, because there weren't many of them; or we had to put the lecterns too close to each other so we can actually draw the model that we had to. We also had ilumination courses, but we only had one spotlight and a very little room to practice such an important subject. And the last but not least issue that we had on that place was that we didn't had a casino to had our lunch time so it was very common to saw the people eating on the floor. As far as I know, now they had implemented a space for a casino and I think is great, because it makes me think that they are trying to fix some of the problems that we already noticed them about in spite of the patrimonial issue. For that reasons, when I first came to Las Encinas, everything seemed better, the space were more open, it had green areas, a casino, available classrooms for each career, a library and recreational spaces. Obviously it can improve a lot of things, but like I said, compare to the Theatre Department, Las Encinas provides a better study environment.

About the academic part, when I made the transfer request, they were able to approve quite a few subjects for me, because they were similar in content and credits (hour duration); all those that had similarities with art theory, such as, for example: Art History, Esthetics, Color, Basic workshops and Realization worshop. Thanks to this, I completed almost the entire first-year of the study plan of my current career, so I have a more relaxed academic workload than the general. If we talk about the workload, I was impressed with how different one career was from the other, mainly because the first one was almost entirely practical and this one is pure theory. Without a doubt, Design had a harder workload than history. My study day in the first year was from Monday to Friday from 8 in the morning to 7 in the afternoon and I came home daily to work on projects, including making models and drawing plans for theaters in sketchup, ending my day normally in the early morning. The theory schedule is much more spaced out, I have classes four days a week and with a schedule that does not exceed 6 in the afternoon. The workload is much more intellectual, so the time at home is spent reading a lot and doing research work mainly. It's a lot of work but I think that is less exhausting. The other important factor is the length of each career, the first was five years and this one is four, so I can still use my previous free.

Speaking about the use of technology, if I'm honest I don't make much use of the faculty's technology, because I prefer to work at my home. And the other reason is the bad internet connection that I had at the faculty, I don't know why. Finally, I think that some of the teaching methods are great and others don't, but I have to emphasize that the teachers and university make an effort to listen to students suggestions and change some of the methodologies.