Before talking about my current college life I would like to talk about a couple of years backs when I was studying advertising at a university in Santiago, Chile.

How I chose what to study?

It was 2014 when I had to choose what and where to study. I want to study something between Gastronomy and Agronomy. Quite broad. Isn’t?. That’s why I went to a guidance counsellor who, after many tests, I had in the result the career in advertising as a possibility, a career that I never heard in my life and that wasn’t in my mind as one of the possible outcomes. I began to investigate and to my dismay, when I started telling people about it, many people that I know, including family friends and relatives, work in the advertising/marketing field. I knew that I will have very good sources of information at my disposal.

I also always had in mind the career of Gastronomy, since it fascinates me to cook and prepare salty things like pizza or sweets like cookies and brownies. For me, cooking is a very beautiful therapy, which gives me a feeling of peace, freedom and tranquility. Also, the career of Agronomy, my father always showed me his passion for this career. My problem is that it is his passion and not mine. All this happened long before I decided that my final decision would be between Advertising or Marketing. I like it but not as much as I think advertising/marketing would be, looking forward in my life I took the right choice.

Welcome to Chile

There is a saying in Chile that people from Santiago says, “Santiago is Chile” and the year that I lived there (2015), I felt like I was living in a completely different country, like a foreigner in my own country. The people from the capital city are way different than people from other regions, especially from people from the south. That year was very important for me, because finally, after doing a full research about several options, I knew exactly which career call for my attention and passion and at the same time, I took the decision to study abroad (with the support and approval of my parents obviously). So definitively it wasn’t that bad after all.

In Chile, we start studying the first semester of the year on March (sometimes late February) until the end of June (beginning of July) then about 3-4 weeks of vacation from August to late November (beginning of December) the second semester and our summer holidays are from December. That year we started classes on the 23 of February, I’ll never forget that date because I had one week less than usual. We had a 3 weeks common plan with every single career, learning/improving our writing and basic skills so people from some schools with lower academic aptitudes could get a bit to the level of people from better schools. On those weeks I meet people from other majors and it was great, I’m still in touch with some of them and it is also a great way of networking from the beginning of your schooling. We also had classes with an actor who taught us how to project our voice and somebody language techniques which I still use. So, that’s how my first glances of university were.

What I learned and how I learned

As mentioned before I only studied two only two semesters. On the first one, I had a marketing class that opened my eyes completely that lit something in me that made me learn more and more about the subject, I even bought a marketing book to read on my free time, I wasn’t a reader type of guy back then. Now, I do like to read but only certain books. The other classes were fine the only problem was a class called “publi 1” (Publi is short for publicidad that means advertising in Spanish) where we were asked for things like using Photoshop for a campaign of a made-up product before they even thought us how to use it, It was something like figure it out by yourself kind of teaching. On my second semester. I had a class that was called modulo 1 (module 1) where two professors make us work in teams called agencies and gave us a client brief to work with. The goal was that we had to come up with a campaign in one week, sometimes they ask us only for a presentation, sometimes a presentation and a marketing plan. Every week we were asked for a new campaign and sometimes with a new group. They were some pros about this system. It taught us how to work under pressure and learn how to work with people. Even though there were always one or two people that did nothing for the assignment, we had to unite as a team and talk to that lazy group member and solve the problem. Sometimes we even spend the night on one of the group members house (my apartment was one of the headquarters of my agencies XD) and more than once we had to pull an all-nighter. But it was fun with some groups more than the others. One of the cons was that we had 4 to 5 more courses plus electives to focus on. So when we had exams and a campaign to do we got very stressed and in my personal opinion, I think that was a bit too much.

We also had to do something that will sound insane to you. At the time, it was something perfectly normal for me. Now, not that much. At the end of the second semester, we had to do one campaign after the other in the university for 27 hours, If the professors didn’t like your campaign you had to redo it and work on a new campaign. The idea was that the best group/agency gets the best grade, and that grade was a huge part of your final mark. One of the details that I haven’t mentioned is that we had to go to a forest first to do group works with things around us, compete against other agencies crossing a river, and things like those, professors made us bring a team flag that later on they stole, if you didn’t figure out how to get it back you failed that activity. That experience was the best and the worst at the same time, they “destroy” us mentally and physically. But I learn a lot, I learn how to divide task and trust on my teammates if we couldn’t trust in one another we couldn’t have done anything correctly.

Thankfully, I had the best team that I could ask for, they were so much fun and had a wonderful work ethics, we didn’t win, but we had a great time.

Likes and dislikes

I did like the university. Some of the professors over there are the best professors that I have ever had. I learn a lot but not, in my opinion, in an effective way, most classes were good, the profs taught you the theory behind concepts and things like that and then they ask you to implement them. That wasn’t the case with Publi nor modulo 1, which were the most important classes (if you fail them, you’ll automatically need one more year to graduate). They ask us to guess what client may like and learn by our self how to do some things which are pretty similar to how real life is, maybe in a second or third year of university, I wouldn’t mind that methodology but on the first year, I think it was a bit too much.

Why did I leave?

If I like the university why did I leave you may ask. The answer to that… is that I love my career that much that I wanted to learn more about it and I knew that a marketer or an advertiser need to stand out in any way possible, studying abroad helps in both reasons. I was happy living with my sister in an apartment, that was great, but as mentioned before, I didn’t feel that I belong to that city, the air was dirty, the people were always under stress, they were not kind to one and other, I didn’t feel safe, and like that I could list you many many reasons why I couldn’t/didn’t want to live in that city. That wasn’t the case with Toronto, even though it is also a big city and people get stressed, I’ve never felt as welcome as here and as mentioned in some posts ago, the university closed, so I was lucky to leave.

That was some of my university experience, I hope you find it interesting. On next week’s post, I’ll share with you my college experience in Toronto so you can compare them, have a great weekend, write you next week 😁.

Facebook Tweet LinkedIn