English Language Challenges

Hi Everyone!

Today I´m going to talk about my experience learning english at university.  For me it was a very good experience. At school I had good grades in the subject but it was a bit difficult for me to learn it.

My base was not very good, for this reason I had a little fear of English at the university. But it was the opposite. I started in English II and I had very good grades. I learned to know the language better and to speak in English in a more fluent way. 

The following year, in English III I had to practice more dialogues and write through blogs. I think that blogs are a very good strategy to learn to write texts on different topics, such as our experiences in the university, our personal tastes, hobbies, our personal opinions. English IV was also a very good experience. At the beginning I thought it would be very complicated but I realized that it was easier than I thought. What I liked most about this course is that we could learn the language in an environment of trust and without fear of mistakes. In this university, it always happens that professors are excellent professionals in their area, but they question us a lot if we do not know something, by the fact of being in this university. I'm not saying it's wrong but sometimes it's exhausting.

In general, learning English at the university was a very good experience. At the beginning I was afraid but I realized that learning this language is very easy, it only requires a lot of practice and dedication (like everything in life). I would love to continue learning since that would open many doors in the professional field.

Changes to my study programme

Hi Everyone!
Today I´m going to talk about changes that I would make in my university studies program. This year in particular has been very complicated in terms of academic load. This year I am studying the subject of "Simulation for clinical practice" where we have to develop manual skills to perform treatments and restorations. The complicated thing is that they demand a great amount of evaluated activities and there is no time to have mistakes. If you fall behind you can fail the subject.

I would make changes by better distributing calendar times and privilege learning instead of the number of approved activities. The fact of doing so fast activities is that we stop thinking that we are attending to a person and we concentrate only on the teeth or caries and nothing else. The profession is mechanized. To this is added all the other amount of subjects such as "health promotion and education", "anthropology", "evidence-based dentistry" and "diagnosis", which have a high level of academic demand.

I think the most important thing for dental students is not to mechanize professional practice. But rather worry about the patients, that there are different factors that cause the diseases and that the treatment considers those situations. For example, the socioeconomic level of the patient, if the health center is very far from home, his work, his habits of dental hygiene, the illnesses of his family. All that influences their behavior and how we can guide a solution to end their discomfort. Do not concentrate only on the tooth, because this way we are not generating a change of consciousness to help the patient.

My Favourite Subject

Hi Everyone!
Today I´m going to talk about a subject that I enjoyed studing this semester. My favourite subject is "Scientific and clinical basis for the diagnosis II". This subject is very complete because it covers different branches of science that have to be applied in the clinic, in order to make diagnoses of diseases. The areas that are studied are; biochemistry, physiology, radiology, pathology, clinical semiology, microbiology and the specialties of cariology and periodontics.

At the beginning of the semester, we started with biochemistry studying the different properties of the cells and their relationship with systemic and oral diseases. We also study in depth the systemic diseases that may have an impact on oral diseases such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, gastritic diseases such as gastro-oesophageal reflux, ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, seizure disorders and anemia.

Another very interesting part of the subject was the study of the different laboratory tests to control the health of the patients.

In the last part we have been studying about the two most prevalent oral diseases in the Chilean population; caries and periodontal disease.We analyze what is the origin of the disease, how it affects the oral tissues, how to diagnose this disease and what kind of treatment we can indicate to the patients.


I really like this subject because it allows me to understand how diseases act and how we can diagnose and prevent them.