La Universidad de Chile

This will be a description of the Universidad de Chile or one of the largest and most prestigious public universities in Santiago.

The University of Chile, like the other universities I can attend, has many different campuses. The one closest to the COPA-IFSA office (where my program is headquartered) is the Architecture/Urban Studies and Economics and Businesss. This university is more comparable to the University of Minnesota. It is very large and has had many very important people graduate from there. These important people include most of Chile's post-dictatorship Presidents, including Ms. Machelle Bachelet, the current President, and first woman president of Chile.

This orientation session I attended was the best. They took us on a bus tour of the campuses and also fed us Dunkin' Donuts and sodas... what a way to welcome American students! Now, I am remembering though, that was the only thing I really remember from the orientation session. The presentation itself was quite boring. One librarian talked for an hour about the libraries like we had never seen a library before in our lives. We also got a lecture about how this University was world renowned and not like our universities in the 'sticks'. I was quite offended, especially because my university has much nicer facilities then his does. I mean, I am from the most developed and powerful country on earth, please don't dismiss my country, my mind, my abilities, and my educational system.

There was one class that I was interested in at this university, and I attended one class period. It was the republic and the community: democracy in crisis, which if in English would have been perfect and amazing, but in Spanish, not so much. The readings included Hannah Ardent, which I really enjoyed reading her work: On Revolution at the Yale Summer School program in 2003, but again in Spanish, it would have been to difficult.

The lecture at this class was also very different from the Catholic University because the professor stood on a very large podium that was almost 5 feet off of the ground. It made him look like he was a great ruler or something, which is very different from anything I have ever experienced at St. Thomas or at any university here in Chile. I personally really don't like it. I really like it when you and the professor are on the same level, it makes for a better learning environment I think. This made me feel very lucky and happy that I decided to go to St. Thomas where this environment is much more prevalent compared to the U of M (which I believe is a very good school by the way).

The students here are very different from Catholic University students as well. They are more the "common" students with not so much money, but definitely educated and intelligent. They asked very insightful questions --- actually better then the students at the Catholic University. They were also forced to answer questions that the professor asked them out of the blue and most of them had very good answers. It was actually quite impressive.

I ended up not taking this course, because of its difficulty, but I enjoyed visiting it and experiencing what the public university setting was like here in Chile. It definitely was different.