Final Presentation

I thought I would blog quickly and describe the end of the SIT model, because my study abroad program was so unique in the sense that all of November was a research period for each of us where we could live and research wherever in Chile that we wanted and were basically independent.

Our academic director checked in with us weekly, helping us formulate a more specific idea each time we spoke with her and finally reading over the draft of our 20-30 page paper. It was really useful for me to have her advice, because she worked as a maternity nurse in Chile previous to her job with SIT, and I was able to use her a resource and for explanations of many terms and systems.

For our final grade for a class, which was just the Independent Study Project, we had to turn in the paper along with a work journal. The work journal was a log of each day of our month of November, complete with contacts we made, articles we read and cited in our papers, interviews we had, thoughts on our projects, how we felt about our progress, and how our themes shifted over the month.

Finally, along in this grade was a presentation grade. Like I said previously, we were lucky enough to spend our time at Hotel Arica during presentations. I went on the very last day of presentations (Saturday). Each person presented for a total of 20 minutes in Spanish with a powerpoint presentation followed by a 10 minute question and answer session. My advisor for my project came to see the end of my presentation (in Chilean fashion- she arrived late, halfway through).

Not only was this project a great way to practice writing in Spanish and to practice doing research, it was also a great way to practice my Spanish orally and practice presenting a topic I was seriously interested and invested in!

I'll post soon about Patagonia- we are going on a tour in Torres del Paine tomorrow!
marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu
- Marisa