Bubión on fire, but...

Every year, around summer season, many wildfires appear as the heading of the news. They are becoming more and more frequent as well as bigger. Moreover , this is a catastrophe for us, humans, but also for the animals, plants and overall the whole planet where we live.

On the one hand, many of these fires are caused by a human action. Either intentional ones or accidentals (due to the rubbish we have thrown there), they are still our fault. As far as I am concerned, we are not doing enough to prevent them ,so we ought to apply harsher measures. For instance, in those cases where the fire has been intentional, there should be no other solution, but a jail sentence. And in the other case, a great solution would be creating a fine for any kind of rubbish thrown, even if it is just a cola can.

On the other hand, sometimes they happen because of natural reasons. Lightnings sometimes reach the top of a tree and burn it down, unluckily that cannot be prevented, but we could pay more attention to the forest when a electric storm starts, as it is easier to stop a fire when it is little.

Also, a wildfire can begin because of what they call "rule of 30" (+30º temperature, -30% humidity ,wind of +30km/h and +30 days without raining),conditions which are given more often because of the global warming.

All in all,  wildfires should be at the spotlight during all summer. Quite recently we have seen fires in Bubión, a really big one in Huelva and yesterday one in Motril. Because of that we should invest more money in developing the existing technologies to detect fires before they occur.

Are school exam results always fair?

There is no doubt that Covid-19 has challenged our education system in so many ways. One of them relates to the exams. Our grades rely very heavily on them and with the impossibility of doing them the government has struggled trying to decide how to mark their students in a fair way.


On the one hand, there has been a huge downgrade in the UK. Their government has developed an algorithm which takes into account factors such as the number of students of each class and the pass result of other students to formulate their grade ,with the aid of their teachers' estimations.
This has caused many protests by the students, who believe that this system has been very unfair. Specially the students who live in poorer areas claim that they had suffered a much drastic downgrade than the people from private school.


On the other hand, Spain is the exact opposite case. Here we were based on our teachers' reports and we added one or even two points to our grades if we had done correctly all the assignments during quarantine. Also it was more difficult to fail a subject and we were given many opportunities to pass them by doing projects. This is also unfair but the students didn't seem as bothered with the issue and most of them accepted happily the upgrade.


In conclusion it could be said that we ought to learn from this experience and find another fairer way to evaluate, because we don't have a clue of how much this situation may last.

Jane Eyre Reader

FOMO, the syndrome striking people these days

 FOMO is the acronym of  "Fear Of Missing Out", which is indeed a reconoced type of social anxiety. Right, so, in other words; it is the feeling of having an unsatisfactory life, when you believe that you are having less fun than everyone else and you feel like you are wasting your life.

This fear is , in no small way, due to social media. In fact it could be argued that it could have been the origin of FOMO.
In those social networks you see  all your friends being successful, having fun, going to parties, travelling , buying new items.. and all of that while you are staying at home. That may affect you and make you develop FOMO. However, you must keep in mind that those are the highlighted moments of that person's life and that they are not always happy  and that ,as any other human, they have their flaws and bad times- as well as you do.
 Also, I believe that it is worth mentioning that it is estimated that teenagers have spent this 2020 an average of 3 hours a day in social media -greatly affected by the quarantine-. and that is a scary amount of time scrolling through the mobile; gossiping about others' life instead of living your own.

However, there are many things you can do about FOMO, starting by getting away from your mobile.
For instance, you ought to set goals, you can focus on things that will make you happy and help you arrive where you want to be.  Furthermore, you have to realize that you don't need a lot of friends to have the life you see on the internet, what matters is having close to you the people who matter. Specially now that we are living a pandemia and we must avoid large gatherings, you should value the quality of the friendship over the quantity.


All in all, not feeling fulfilled is a problem that many people face. It is much more complex than it seems and because of that we should strengthen our emotional intelligence to identify our feelings and be able manage them.

He told me he hadn't done it.

Anxiety is an emotion which I am sure we all have experienced more times than we would have liked to. Some of its common symptoms are sweaty palms, an increase of the heart rate and more blood flowing through the vessels, besides it is caused as a response of a real or imaginary threat.

This feeling has been a true savior during evolution. "Fight or flight" is a reaction that has kept us alive, surviving dangers of predators and other dangerous situations that could have resulted in death. Furthermore, anxiety has another positive aspect applicable in nowadays' lifestyle and it's that anxiety pushes us to improve and do our best. If we didn't have this natural response we wouldn't be able to study hours and hours to do a good exam or to keep awake finishing some project. Quoting a CEO "Anxiety and a brilliant brain is the key of success".

However, anxiety is not a motivation to do things for everybody , some people find this feeling overwhelming and it disables them to do the pending tasks. Also for some people even a small decision triggers anxiety. In these cases anxiety is considered an illness and should be assisted.

Furthermore, we might be anxious for a long period of time, for instance we might be anxious due to an exam for days or even weeks, and that is not healthy at all.

To put it in a nutshell, anxiety is a natural feeling that we should be able to handle. I believe that most of it comes from school/work related matters ,so if we learn when it is worthy to worry and when it is not we will drastically reduce our likelihood to feel anxious.

Time to bite the bullet!!

I'm sure we have all heard the expression "Netflix and Chill" and yes, although it is a great plan for a lazy day or a meet up with some friends it can also turn into a problem with ease if we spend more time than we should and we become addicted.

On the one hand, Netflix is a good option to reduce our stress after a long day, when we just want to relax, get over it and maybe have a laugh with our favorite show.
Moreover, apart of its entertainment purpose you can also use it as a fun way of learning a language. Thanks to its many language option and subtitles you can improve your listening or reading skills (even both at the same time). I do really recommend it to learn some idioms and to get used to the different accents of a language.

On the other hand, being addicted to Netflix can make you waste a lot of valuable time. This problem affects mainly teenagers and it triggers difficulties of concentration when they study or in some cases a complete lack of study. Furthermore, a lack of sleep in the long run is a risk for your health. 

To sum up, I believe that Netflix is a great tool ,but you must use it carefully and have self-control.
I personally do not have an account because I don't watch series very often, but I used to have one and I enjoyed it.

Bread for today, but... (QUARANTINE: DAY 58)

One of the greatest loss of this pandemic is the one affecting education. Every kid from Spain is in this moment assisting to online courses instead of face-to-face classes which ,of course, are not the same in any sense; not the same amount of hours are being dedicated to the subjects, the themes are not being explained in the same way.. every single thing is different.

But how does it affect this generation of students forced to do on-line courses?

On the one hand, this will cause with no doubt a lack of formation to the students, due to that this way of teaching is not as efficient as the classic one (at the moment), and that the fact of having to adapt to the changes has slower the learning process. 

Also it could create a gap between students who come from a wealthier and poorer families, specially in large families, where not every kid has his own device to attend to class correctly ,or maybe the device is not modern enough to access to some programs. This creates a difference between kids with a lot of facilities and other without them.

On the other hand, it is helping some students to set up routines of study, they are becoming more independent, organized and also they are realizing what study methods work the best for them. All those are essential skills for students, but apparently, most of the students are not used to do those stuffs.

Moreover, they are acquiring a much higher sense of responsibility and sensibility about their futures.

Furthermore, students and teachers are improving their technological skills, they use programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, which are really important.

All in all, this extreme situation is producing extreme cases. Some students are benefiting from the situation meanwhile others are ending up adversely affected. Hopefully next year things will calm down and we will be prepare for any circumstance.