The Practice

I can’t really remember what I was going to write before the protest started. This post specifically was supposed to be up the third weekend of October, right when everything began. Now, and having past a month and a half, I would like to reflect on this year. Throughout this year I’ve learned a lot of things, specially outside of University. It was a time to think about all the things I stopped doing when I started studying Psychology and get back into them. I did this as almost a favor to myself, since I had been so invested in my career and taking care of others, that I started to forget about me. So, with that mindset my year began. I got back into painting, something that I never took seriously since I always thought I was not “good enough”. During summer I started a sketchbook and draw whatever I wanted, trying not to be harsh on myself. And it worked, that exercise gave me the confidence to take an Illustration class as an artistic elective at FAU. This was one of th

One of the things I like about psychology is the variety of fields in which you can perform . Because of this, in the past few months I’ve been debating on what to do with my career after I graduate. There are so many options I can choose from! One thing is certain; I would like to get a Master’s Degree. Last year I was very into environmental psychology, which helps people to become aware of the impact we, as humans, make on the planet. It also helps to combat climate change by studying the way people react and take part on actions around sustainability, recycling and others, to develop new behaviors people can adopt in order to lower their impact and carbon footprint. It also has a very critical point of view of capitalism and the carbon-based industry, depicting them as some of the main causes of the environmental crisis we’re facing today. I feel very passionate about this topic, and for a while I was considering getting a Master’s Degree on this topic in Australia, but for s

For the past four years I've been studying Psychology at the University of Chile, and although it's been an interesting journey I've always been involved with music and art, so I picture my future job a little different from what's expected.  Throughout my years in university I've learned the importance of community when talking about mental health, so I would love to work with groups of people using art therapy and music therapy. I think treating people’s problems by letting them express their emotions freely, through other means that are not necessarily words, it’s a powerful tool. This type of therapy can be specially used in interventions with children, people with low levels of education and basically anyone who can’t connect with their emotions and trauma easily. By using art as a medium of expression, you let the person explore their problems from a safe place. I would love to treat my patients from this approach, since creating art and/or music it’

I've always loved weird, fascinating and cute animals, and that's why today I will write about one of my favorite animals in the world: the axolotl. Axolotls, also known as "Mexican salamanders," are amphibians whose natural habitat are the murky canals of Mexico City and nearby lakes, like Lake Xochimilco. They live most of their life’s underwater even when they're adults and don't go through a metamorphosis, which makes them different from other amphibians. Their diet consists in mostly small insects, worms and fish. They can regenerate the entirety of lost appendages and sometimes more vital structures like vital organs. For this reason, they've been used as testing animals in laboratories all over the world to study the development of cancer and organ regeneration. In the last decade they've also became a popular exotic pet. I would love to have one but the amount of care they need is insane. Because of their anatomy and the fact tha

The internet it's one of those things that I don't really know if I could live without. Almost everything I do it's related to the internet in some way, and I hardly remember a time where I didn't have access to it. The first time I had internet connection was in my dad's workplace, when I was about 6 years old. I was visiting him and he let me use his computer to draw on Paint and surf the web, specifically to play games on barbie.com. Later, when I was a bit older I used to visit my neighbor to play said games and many others. I didn't have internet access in my home till I was 8 or 10, and used the computer mainly to play games, but also visit some forums like musica.com, where I used to review music at the age of 11 (mostly My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the disco performances, which I bet were quite funny). My computer was quite old and bulky, so when I started downloading music in Ares and chatting with friends through MSN it couldn't handle the a

Early this year, on January, I got to travel to Puerto Varas with my mom, my dad and my sister, and it has been my favorite vacation to date. I was born in Puerto Montt and lived there till I was 10 years old. I spend most of my childhood there, enjoying the wintry weather, dressing up my barbies like "chilotas" and being surrounded by the beautiful landscapes of the area. This year I got to visit the region after 13 years of not going there and it was like traveling in time. We stayed on Puerto Varas, which is quite near Puerto Montt, right next to the Llanquihue lake. While I was there I visited the Osorno volcano, the Vicente Pérez Rosales national park and the Petrohué waterfalls. I've always loved nature so it was nice visiting these places, specially since I live in Santiago and there's not a lot of green around here, specially where I live. My favorite day in the whole trip was when we went to Puerto Montt and visited all the places I used to g