Learning to write in the tropics

 You may well wonder what it means to study history as your main subject at university. Another thing that might puzzle those of you out there educated in the US is that I had to decide from the get go what to study. First of all, studying history is far more than just recitation of facts and years, it is a way of thinking and analysing the world. Second, in studying history, you learn not just about it but how to produce it.  As for choosing subjects before I had even started at University, well that is just the old  European system, which may or may not have changed with the implementation of Bologna after 2010. Before Bologna, you didn't study a mixture of subjects just one. Liberal arts and the common core don't really exist in Europe. My university did have something close to the common core that some catholic institutions have in the US in that we had to study two years of something called Anthropology and one semester of ethics.  Anthropology was not ethnography or analy

History is something that finds you rather than you finding it, or at least that is how it feels. I sort of stumbled upon the discipline and hadn't realised I had decided upon it until I was half way through. I had had some inkling of historical interest during high school when I whimsically thought I could study both chemistry and history as a joint degree somewhere.  Somehow I ended up applying to study economics instead and I applied only to one university reducing my options considerably. In reality,  this story didn't start in Pamplona but on the road, both literal and physical, that lead to my living in that northern Spanish town.  After a summer spent in Spain with one of my brothers I no longer wanted to study in Central America. The freedom of being halfway across the world was too much of an attraction. That is how, following my brothers advice, I played it safe and applied to study at the Universidad de Navarra. A small private, catholic university in the north of Sp

 I have toyed with the idea of writing for some time, really ever since my failed attempt at a blog in the early years of my PhD. Writing is fairly important in academia and academically inclined careers so my slowness in writing has always been somewhat of a concern. What better way to practice than writing regularly about any topic that crosses my mind? You may well wonder what I, a Salvadoran who has barely lived in El Salvador might have to say about the world? Or you may wonder how the title relates to the actual content? Maybe a bit about me might help clarify some of your questions though maybe not all. I am a third-culture child, brought up in many different countries by Salvadoran parents. In spite of all this travelling I do consider myself Salvadoran, first, I  think this was a matter of misunderstood loyalty and second, it has become a late-stage realisation that my taste buds are in so many ways Salvadoran.  What landed me here has been mainly my research or rather realisi