How to improve my english?

Some years ago, I was talking in english with some friends and this girl (she was from New York) told me "you're from latinamerica, right?". Apparently my "H" sounded very spanish-like and it gave away where I was from immediately. I didn't take it as a bad thing, but it made me more aware of our different accents and some sounds that we "borrow" from our mothertongue when we speak english.

My biggest practices on the language are reading and listening. Internet is an insanely huge source of information, and english is preferred in almost all areas of knowledge. When I'm unsure about a topic, I'll most likely search it on the english Wikipedia rather than the spanish one, for instance. There are also many more sources for university assignments and thesis in english than spanish, so it's a great tool. When it comes to hobbies and free time, I also follow plenty of english-speaking YouTube channels, such as vlogging, science videos, sketches and so on. One of my favourite YouTubers is VSauce. VSauce explains several topics of physics, chemistry, maths and psychology in such a way that you get hooked by the video regardless of what your interests are. There's something for everyone.

And due to all these pages and channels, I also tend to write every now and then in english. I even contributed in a videogame page at some point, creating posts such as these ones. Those were quite challenging as I needed to use correct language, be precise and funny at the same time.

The best (and maybe only) way to get better at something is to do that often. Speaking a language follows the same idea.

A few things about my study programme

Oh man, this one hits me on the soft spot hahahaha.

Since 2013, the Faculty has been working on the CIC (Comisión de Innovación Curricular) to improve our courses and our overall progress through the years, seeking for newer and more updated classes, deleting the old ones, and so on. I joined CIC around July this year, when they were planning on how to create a new study programme for our Natural Resources Engineering.

A common critique among my classmates is that we lack many social-focused courses. We study plants, animals, chemicals and legislative systems, but when it comes to society, we are very "do it yourself" and we don't really have the tools to approach a group of people and work with them. Also, since we do plenty of things with satellital images and remote sensing, we need many new courses about these topics. However, we are stuck with a programme made in 1998 and the softwares and updates have been a constant struggle for many of us through the years, so we're also thinking about upgrading that area and giving us useful tools to work with as engineers.

Talking about Law, we have only one class solely focused to environmental law. Back in 1998, it was enough. But today many things have changed: we have a Ministry of Environment, a new energy policy that will end up in 2050, an improved environmental impact assessment, and so on. So perhaps one course in only one semester won't be enough anymore.

And many other things. It has been quite interesting to be part of CIC, because I really feel that I'm understanding my whole programme.

My summer plans

I haven't made any plans for my January yet. Maybe I'll do my internship at a company that helps other companies with their environmental programs. I went to an interview last September and they were interested in me being part of them. However, they were looking for a full-time practicant, so they told me I could join in during December and January, after I was done with classes. They also said that they want practicants to become regular workers with them once they finish with their studies, so so if everything goes smoothly on January I could actually get a job! :D

On February, it might get a little more relaxing. My grandma has gone with my aunt and cousins to this cottage for the past years, and they invited me to join in now. It's a swimming pool, lying on the floor, sleeping without guilt, and nothing else to worry about. It would be a nice a change of air and I'm looking forward to that. Besides, I haven't seen my cousin in quite a long time, so it will be a good way of catching up in our current adventures

For me the summer is the story of me running away from the heat and the sun, so as long as I can accomplish that task, it will be a good summer for me. My dream summer would be in Antarctica running with penguins and enjoying a -5ºC on average, but I would have to content myself with a swimming pool for now.