Trip to Washington DC: Plan Pais 2012

Hi everyone! Last weekend I went to a Venezuelan conference organized by Venezuelan students living in Washington DC.

The meeting served as a platform for debating major national issues and facilitated the networking process among the assistant.

Although most of us had different backgrounds, working together by policy area allowed me to gain a new perspective on the Venezuelan political conflict.

Assistants were majorly undergraduate students who has been living in the US for the last decade or so. This actually provided me a new approach to whom the new generations are going to be and what are the new and very different challenges we now face as a society.

I would say that staying connected with your country while studying abroad is a very good idea. However, don't let that overwhelmed you. Having an outsider perspective also gives you meaningful insights that you wouldn't be able to consider otherwise.

Below are some pics during my presentation on final conclusions regarding Violence, Crime and Democracy in Venezuela.

PS: If you have the chance, go visit Washington DC. Is a very beautiful and interesting city (although a small city) for meeting people and having great food :)

Great blog related to Industrial Organization and Managerial Economics

Just wanted to highly recomend this blog for those of you who are interested in Industrial Organization and Managerial Economics. Check it out!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/

A little bit of unrelated stuff... Finals, Spring break and Admit decisions

Hi everyone, I hope you are doing great. I'm on finals now so there is a little but of crisis time again...

But hopefully all will be over by tomorrow and we will be ready for sprig break.

Many people use to travel on spring break, but if you are on a tight budget, staying at home is also a nice strategy.

As internships are about to come, I am taking advantage of the fact that I will stay in Chicago to meet with some of the employers I am more interested about. So I recommend to enjoy your experience, but also to think strategically about your short and long term professional goals!

In unrelated news, to those of you who are waiting on admit responses, I know several public policy programs have been releasing their final decisions, so keep posted and good luck with that!

PS: the picture below shows my final study crisis that its about to end in a few hours!

Between Research and Practical Policy

In many graduate programs you get the chance to choose elective courses matching your professional and academic interests. In some of them, you have the opportunity to choose between different alternatives even when you are taking the core course.

Although this might seem trivial, it actually becomes in a ver distressing activity. This situation not only forces you to choose a professional path or specialization, but also requires you to define your academic career. In fields like Public Policy, the variety of options is huge and you can specialize in areas from Public Health to Economic Policy (and all the subareas within those ranges). Many people actually choose not to specialize and decides to go more broadly. 

In my particular case, I was between choosing something more research oriented and something more practical. After taking different courses, I think I will let the PhD for the future and focus on practical policy matters. When competing with people like you, you also get to know where are your competitive advantages and what you really are passionate for.

At the end, my motive for pursuing public policy studies was to make a real contribution to practical issues that affect people in major urban concentrations. So I've decided to go for areas like Transportation and Crime Prevention in cities, from which I can learn from of the best professors in these fields. 

There is no such thing as a free lunch

Even though studying abroad is a great experience, there are things that are quite important to notice when living far from your friends, family and well known culture.

This last month I have experience the classical adaptability crisis thing. Things like finding a job, making long lasting friends and even the evaluation system can make you feel like an alien in a world that you feel is not yours.

When English is not your first language, you may not sound as intelligent or funny as you are used to in your native language. This might sound as a silly thing, but after the months passes and you realize this is your new life, you kind I get tired of it.

The same thing happened to me with with the academic system. You know you have to adapt to a system that is not yours and you really do your best. But sometimes you inevitable get frustrated because you don't score the highest grades. With the grading system, it also happens that you feel you don't have complete information and so you might fail in little things and this process might be frustrating over time.

I don't want to make a drama out of it, but I think it is worthy to know that not all the experience is pleasant. The quarter system is also exhausting. There are weeks that you literally dot move from your chair or don't even have the chance to see the sunlight because the assignments keep you so busy. And this is what you wanted right?! A demanding program from where you can get as much knowledge as you can! And they really accomplish this goal! Hahahahaha. But this doesn't mean that you don't get tired!

I am a very organized person and I was not used to study until 3am every week. I though this wont happen to me, because I am very rigorous, but let me tell you it happens!!! Hahahaha

The thing is that I just wanted to keep you posted on these things that you usually don't have the chance to know from the programs websites or FAQ. sites.

The funny thing is that this might seem to be happening for a lot of my friends here, but no one speaks about it because everyone thinks is a "cultural shock". It's more natural than we think ;)

If you are considering to study abroad, try to keep a balance between your academic and personal life! And enjoy the whole experience!!!

No wonder why the Econ Department from the University is Chicago is well known from it's lemme: "there is no such thig as a free lunch"!

See you!

Traveling to..... Wisconsin?!

Hi everyone!

So this weekend we went to Merrimac, Wisconsin for a ski trip, disregarding the rare winter with no snow there! After an exhausting week, I had the time to "relax" (quotes for my magnicent fall while snowboarding that unabled me to do literally anything on Sunday)

People usually don't take advantage of studying in the US to make some affordable tourism. Even though Europe gives you an incredible life experience when talking about travelling, a big country like the US gives you the opportunity to met incredible cities and beautiful places that otherwise you would not be able to visit.

I've never though about travelling to Wisconsin, but this trips in fact give you the sense of how the people really are beyond the metropolis. Getting to know the true US is in fact meaninful for understanding the culture, history and public issues of this country.

If you are studying abroad, don't miss the opportunity to travel around your host country, even if the academic routine is driving you crazy. Travelling around (even for short weekends) provides you with insightful understandings of how things really work beyond your university cristal bubble.

Venezuelan Primary Elections: what's really going on?

Hello everyone,

I hope you are doing great. As some of you might know from the media, last Sunday Venezuela's opposition parties held the first national primary elections to choose the candidate that will challenge Hugo Chavez in the next presidential elections on October 7th, among other public charges for Mayors and Governors.

The results were given the same night, thanks to the automated electoral system runned by the national authority (CNE in spanish). Henrique Capriles (39 years old) won the election with more than 62% of the votes, more than doubling his nearest adversary, Pablo Perez (42 years old). More than 3million people voted, from a universe of 15million people registered. This big convocation represents the major achievement for the opposition parties in Venezuela, who had not been able to cohere in a single movement for the last 13 years. 

Even though the elections were held with the joint action of the national government authorities (mostly pro Chavez) and opposition partisans, the controvery arises from the fact that the opposition agreed to destroy the electoral rolls 48 hours after the results were given, in order to ensure the confidentiality of the vote. However, the Government calls for fraud (even when they control the electoral authority). 

This situation has provoke several popular manifestations from the opposition side. On the other hand, the authorities took actions that result in violent situations and the unfortunate balance of one student killed defending the electoral votes in his community. 

After all, disregarding of whether either part have the right to call for their arguments, the political polarization in Venezuela has lead to this radical balances over the last decade. My call is to rescue the values that someday identify us as nice people and work in favor of people's need instead of people's ego.

Above, all the opposition candidates sending a united message after Henrique Capriles was elected as the unitary opposition candidate to challenge Chavez next October.

If you want to know more about the elected candidate, visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17006224 or contact me at any time!

I also wanted to recommend a blog from good friends of me that relates better than anyone the Venezuelan situation: http://caracaschronicles.com/. To be fair, they try to show what's happening in Venezuela from an objective point of view, but all of the writters's ideas are more common to the opposition, so their posts are rather critical. However, they make a pretty good diagnostic of the situation and evaluate objectively both parties.

Here are some pics from the Sunday afternoon at Chicago's electoral center. Thanks to the people of Ciao Amore Restaurant who facilitated their amenities. Roughly 950 venezuelan citizens are registered at Chicago, but only 150 came to vote.