Reingreso

Adivinen, esta semana he vuelto a la Uni, empezando con mi tercer semestre de la carrera de Ciencias Computacionales.

Por el momento todo va según lo planeado: Estoy tomando 7 materias, de las cuales 4 son las que me faltan por cursar de 3º semestre, 2 son de quinto y una de sexto.

Si se preguntan porque estoy tomando tantas materias que no son de mi semestre, la razón es que me creo mucho y me la estoy tirando de bien vergas, adelantando materias a lo tonto, para así poder ver con aires de superioridad a mis compañeros.

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Ya pues, la verdadera razón es que dentro de mis planes futuro es tomar un convenio que tiene mi universidad con otra en Holanda, en el cual yo me voy mi último año y termino mi carrera en Europa, obteniendo un grado en esa universidad además, de mi grado como ingeniero en México.

Es una oportunidad muy buena que se me está presentando, y haré todo lo posible por tomarla. Y pues parte de ese "todo lo posible" es el hecho de tener que adelantar la mayor cantidad de materias para ser candidato al doble grado.

De las tres materias que adelanto, hasta el día de hoy dos me han llamado mucho la atención. La primera es Ser Humano y Medio Ambiente, la cual por si misma no es tan interesante, pero existe la posibilidad de que el profesor nos lleve de excursión durante el semestre a la laguna Hanson o al observatorio de San Pedro Mártir, de las cuales preferiría la segunda opción.

La otra materia es Comunicación Avanzada en Inglés. El profesor es algo divertido y la gente con la que llevo la clase me cae bastante bien.

Antes de irme, quiero dejarles por escrito la primera tarea realizada este semestre, precisamente para la clase de Comunicación avanzada en inglés. El profesor nos pidió hacer una metáfora, o más bien una analogía, sobre el proceso de la comunicación, comparándola con otra situación cualquiera. Este fue el resultado:

Communication is like going to the bathroom. First of all, to communicate is a personal need that resolves a lot of problems, like defecating. Also, we can see that the different parts of the communication process are much related to the different parts of pooping.

First, when evacuating there is guy in the bathroom (Us) that has digested the food, as the sender has encoded the message, and then we send it through the rectum, that is like the communication channel. Then the shit goes down and passes through the air and falls in the water of the toilet; the air and water represent the environment of the sender and receiver.

When the poop hits the water and enters to the receiver environment we hear a little plop that is like the feedback that the receiver sends to the sender, making him understand that the message has arrived as expected.

Finally, if everything is going O.K. the poop gets into the S tube, as the receiver would decode the message and then passes through the plumbing toward a water treatment plant. This part of the process represents what would the receiver do with the new information he have just get. He would try to use it or learn from it, but not all of it, just what he really needs or wants to know.

But we are forgetting to talk about a very important part of the communication process, the Noise.

They are a lot of “noises” when we are in the bathroom. We could begin talking about farts. They are normal noises that come with the “message”, but they are not necessary for the communication and in some situations they make harder to finish the process in the expected way. Think of them as all that not useful information the sender throws with the message that only makes the process longer.

At last, we are going to talk about an embarrassing situation. All of us have a friend of a friend that has gone through this. They go to the bathroom; they take their shit out and then, when they flush the shit just stays there stuck in the tube.

If we analyze the situation we could see that this also happens when communicating. The crap got stuck because the tube was not enough to take it. The same happens when the receiver has a different language, culture or age than the sender. The sender could give more and more “information” but if the receiver can’t take it, this data would not go anywhere and later we would have to clean the mess.

So this is how going to the bathroom and the communication process are so similar. Both are a transfer process, both resolve different needs, and both can get you in embarrassing situations.