Self Evaluation of my academic year (2009)

Introduction

This year, as I’ve surely told before, I’ve been in my first year of Psychology. Before anything, I should say that this year has been a very good one anyway, though it’s been more difficult than what I’d thought, definitively. Before entering the University, I used to have many doubts, of course, added to the normal expectation anyone has in such a situation. At the beginning, I was even afraid because I wasn’t making friends as fast as I’d proposed myself, but I didn’t know that it wouldn’t be hard at all. In fact, I feel this year I’ve learnt to see the life in a different way, and I invite you to search for more.

Body

When the classes started, they didn’t seem to be as difficult as after they’d be, but if I’m specific, last semester Social History of Chile was the subject which makes me look that semester as a difficult one, because the other subjects weren’t really so demanding. In that subject, we were asked to review (or read) six-seven books per test! An incredible abuse. Thanks to God, I obtained an excellent average of 5.5 in History, and in the other subjects my academic performance wasn’t so different.
This second semester that I’m finishing has even meant to me (and my classmates) a greater challenge than before. On the one hand, I’ve had more “psychological” subjects (Learning, Personality and Psychological Processes), and all of them have inquired me new skills, new time organizations and new studying methods, so maybe I’m grown up: I’m more mature. I’ve realized –more this semester than the last one- that Psychology is a science which can make me feel completely satisfied with myself if I achieve my goals in the future: to progress in the Clinical (or Social) Psychology, apart from the Researches, and I feel the knowledge and attitudes I’m obtaining can really help me to get them.

Conclusion

In 2009, Psychology has been maybe the word I’ve thought the most, not only because that’s the career I’m studying, but because I’ve discovered that’s my vocation. In fact, I project my life, on the one hand, attending people, activity which supposes the creation and development of the best intervention strategies; on the other hand, as I’m also interested in researching and studying the human behavior, I plan to carry out several investigations for discovering more and more about what makes us “humans”, but always oriented to help people be better, overcome their traumas, etc. Perhaps those are very “humanistic” goals, but I don’t care. And the knowledge I’m obtaining are the structure in which I’m cementing my wishes and wills.

Next Elections

Presidential Elections is something that’s always been very interesting to me, and opposite to definitively most of young people who are as old as me, Politics it’s something which I’ve always been so much interested in. I’m eighteen years old, and last winter vacations I inscribed myself in the Election Register: I’ll vote in next elections.
I think that the election campaign is something very funny, though I don’t omit it’s used as a joke – I mean the candidates use it to make many promises (and it’s usually commented too), and to promote their selves, but more as a way to achieve the power than to listen genuinely people’s real needs. In spite of that, it can serve (I suppose) to think about what one expects from a President, what a better country can be like, etc.
In that same way, I think in this Elections 2009 there’s not a candidate which can convince me completely. Anyway, I’ve already decided who I’ll vote for: Marco Enriquez-Ominami. Why? Because he’s a young man, someone new in the politic, who although doesn’t have much experience, has good ideas a “new winds”, and for me, he’s someone who’s absolutely opposite to the stagnant and grown stale politic that’s hegemonic in our loved country nowadays, and he’s definitively closer than any other candidate to represent something like a “change”; and I really want a change (though I’ve liked President Bachelet’s government).
Finally, I’d like to add that though I like Politics and I love to talk about it, I won’t be a politician in the future: maybe I don’t have the needed skills, but I don’t care. Bye.

Relationships: Would you date a narcissist?

In this very interesting –and maybe innovator- article, taken from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/24/narcissists-love-partners, titled “Relationships: Would you date a narcissist?”, we can see how the typical prototype of the narcissist person is questioned, so defended and even promoted to the reader as an effective way for getting better mental health.
Of score, the author isn’t referring to the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which as himself explains, is the extreme when the person isn’t capable to make and mantain close relationships, because they use people just for achieving their own ambitions, lacking empathy and being very self-involved.
Instead, to be narcissist in a mild extent, in a “normal” way, is advisable at all; in fact, it’s “natural”: everyone loves himself. In that sense, according to a research of the University of Texas, narcissits people were found more extrovert and less likely to be depressed, being often pretty resilient, because they believe they can cope with whatever life throws at them: they feel important and capable.
I’ve already said to be narcissist in a normal way is natural and that’s right. In the same way, one usually tends to say and to believe that the other people are narcissist, and even though we recogmize we are a little narcissist, we think those features aren’t so evidents. As it appers in the article, that’s just one way of narcissism.
Against all odds, in this article it’s asserted the narcissism has plenty of advantadges in the relationships, if the person manages to improve his defect (let’s remember that to be narcissit is, above all, a psychic defensive mechanism that, in its precise measure, can be very functional): "If they can connect, stay in a relationship and be committed, they have a much better outcome”.