I’m Constantly Torn Between “if It’s Meant To Be, It Will Be” And “if You Want It, Go And Get

my education life

The Fourth Week

We’re now only entering the fourth week of online classes and I’m already feeling burnt out. I’ve only started to pay more attention to my signs recently so I think this is a win for me, realizing and admitting that I am in fact burnt out.

Anyway, I hope you’re all doing better, drinking water regularly, trying to get decent sleep every night, eating your meals, just,,,, being healthy physically, emotionally and mentally !!

And if you’re like me, suffering from a burnout, I hope we get to find the rest we need so we can realign ourselves. feeling burnt out is normal, it’s okay. we just need to find ways to cope up. take care everyone !!

“Surrealist” Films & TV Alignment Chart

GUYS. GUYS.

GUYS.

HOLY FUCK.

GOOD GUY ADOBE releases the ENTIRE CS2 SUITE. FOR FREE.

That means free access to Photoshop CS2 - and that already has most of what you could ask for, really.

All you have to do is create a FREE ADOBE ID.

I am not sure about commercial use, but MAN. FUCKIN’ SWEET DUDE

50 Things To Do For a More Productive Summer

1. Find some work experience  2. Head to the theatre and indulge in a good ol’ play or, even a musical 3. Plan a local trip or a day in the city and soak up all the culture 4. Volunteer your time once a week to a charity/ shelter 5. See if you can get work as a summer temp 6. Deepen your faith 7. Meet up with family and friends that you haven’t seen for ages, take loads of pictures and have an AWESOME time (how about camping in the New Forest? Or in your back garden? Barbecues or a simple trip to the ice rink) 8. Try curing one of your fears 9. Do a movie marathon 10. Develop or find a new hobby 11. Attempt to create a business with your own innovative idea 12. Do a charity challenge 13. Start taking driving lessons 14. Learn a language 15. Give your room a revamp — how about jars filled with multicoloured or fresh pinecones? A fresh coat of paint? A cluster of assorted candles? 16. Begin your #100daysofhappiness 17. Soak up the sun with a load of picnics, beach trips and outdoor games with your friends 18. Have a wardrobe clear out and donate all the clothes to a local charity shop 19. Pick an actor and watch all the films they’ve been in 20. Start a blog! 21. Get baking and come up with some new creations 22. Make a list of all your skills and everything they’ve taught you 23. Become a dog walker for a neighbour 24. Start saving for something worthwhile … 25. … or blow all your money on some concert tickets (you only live once) 26. Designate a whole day to go without a TV, laptop/ computer, internet, music, phone and any other electric devices 27. Begin writing a novel 28. Make proper lemonade and sip reading your favourite book under a tree 29. Go out for a day with nothing but the things that you can fit in your trouser or cardigan pockets or carry in your hands … OR … with as little as possible 30. Read an entire series of books or pick up some classics and get through them 31. Host a tea party with your friends 32. Make an exercise routine and stick to it (for a month, at least) 33. Watch an entire box set 34. Get rid of your anxiety by writing your worries down on a piece of paper, folding it into a bottle and sending it out to sea 35. Make a scrapbook of your favourite memories 36. Get hooked on a new genre of music or a new artist that hardly anyone has ever heard of 37. Head out to the selection of free festivals and carnivals available throughout the country 38. Make a birthday cake for one of your friends or a member of your family 39. Get active 40. Buy dinner for a homeless person 41. Get your body to your ideal size/ weight 42. Set yourself a budget and see how far you can get on public transport with it 43. Read a collection of children’s books 44. Go to a book signing, find someone famous or attend a celebrity event to get a glimpse of the stars 45. Plan and execute a 3 course meal for yourself or your family 46. Spend a day being a child again 47. Start a diary 48. Spend a day detoxing your body – drinking green tea, eat plenty of fruit and veg, guzzling water and meditating 49. Re-work the way you view yourself 50. Write your bucket list

the most precious bunch

15 steps on making a sweet sweet powerpoint presentation*

*for class presentations and seminars, like at conferences or meetings. Lecture notes for teaching are different, though some of these may still apply:

Tell a story. A story always has 3 parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Create a compelling narrative so the audience feels invested in knowing what’s next. 

Know your audience, and adjust accordingly. Presenting to people with our same background (like students in our program) will differ from presenting to a broader audience like the general public, who may not care (or understand) nitty gritty detail. 

Use large readable font. Especially on graphs and figures, and..

Limit text. A busy intimidating slide = a distracted/zoned out audience

Refrain from using pastel colors with a white background, or dark colors with a dark background. Projectors =/= your computer screen, and these colors may not have the same contrast during a presentation. 

Also related, be considerate of the color-blind/visually impaired. Make figures accessible to them by not just relying on color but also patterns, shading, symbols, etc.

Show only what’s necessary. Try not to overwhelm an audience who’s seeing all this for the first time. Always remember: presentations are not data dumps; they’re stories. Simplify figures by remaking them if possible, or block out unimportant areas. 

And walk the audience through complicated slides. We should never assume everyone in the audience knows exactly what we’re talking about. Use animations to show only one point or figure at a time if necessary.

Speaking of figures, use high-quality ones! None of the deep fried-jpegs please. 

Also refrain from putting things that have no meaning. Examples include gratuitous eye candy (which are only acceptable in title and closing slides) or points that won’t be talked about. They’re just distracting.

Show interest when speaking. If the speaker sounds bored talking about their work, then I assume it’s boring and not worth my attention.

Refrain from going wild with that laser pointer. It’s there to bring attention to certain key points, not to continuously circle around the entire slide like we’re playing with cats. (If your hand holding the pointer is shaking, it helps to grab your wrist with your other free hand, or rest that arm on something (like the podium) to “root” it.)

Refrain from going wild with the animations/transitions also. Super cool in 4th grade; slightly nauseating at a national meeting. A simple “appear” animation will do just fine. 

Rehearse rehearse rehearse. Being well-prepared can combat stage-fright, as it takes away the anxiety of “not knowing what to do next” or “mental freezes”. You may also find yourself editing a few things as you rehearse, because something that seemed ok while making the ppt may not flow so well when you actually get to talking about it. Also, pay attention to the usage of filler words (like “um”, “sorta”), and body language: are you leaning on the podium too much? pacing a lot? looking at the screen and not the audience? 

Adopt a “power pose” to instantly feel more confident and relaxed. Stand up straight, chest out, shoulders back, uncross those arms, and smile. Hold yourself up like royalty, baby! Here’s a TedTalk on power poses. 

I’ve been asked a couple of times now what is my approach to self-study, and this is my messy attempt to answer that question. All of this is true for me, and might not work for someone else; still, I hope it may help somebody!

1. Getting acquainted with the language

When you’re learning a language with a different writing system than your own, that’s the first thing you have to tackle, of course; but I usually try to get some background information even when the alphabet used by my target language is the good old Latin one. One thing I pay extra careful attention to is phonology: you want to get the sounds right from the very beginning, before you develop any bad habits (also, learning IPA changed my life). Having an accent as close to a native’s as possible is not necessarily the goal (I do like to work on that, but to each their own), but being understood is! And incorrect pronunciation can sometimes hinder comprehension, in some languages more so than in others. So don’t obsess over it, but don’t overlook it completely either. Getting to know the sounds of a language right away can also help you understand what people are saying a little quicker, and figuring out how new words might have to be read. Wikipedia is usually not bad when it comes to phonology, and Omniglot is a good resource as well.

2. Finding a good textbook

I’m a free spirit so I often find myself not looking for a textbook right away, and just chaotically absorbing information from different sources (see immersion below). When I do set my mind to choosing, though, I try to stick to one well-made textbook that I like, which should possibly contain clear grammar explanations as well as exercises. The temptation to hoard resources is strong – and I’ve succumbed to it myself more than once haha –, but I usually try to steer clear from using more than one textbook at the same time (although I do have separate, more thorough grammars on the side more often than not). I’d rather use a physical book if I have the chance, but if that’s not your thing or you don’t have money to spend on that, that’s okay: you can find loads of perfectly good books or websites online!

3. Compulsive translation

Anyone who’s been following my blog for a while probably knows that I love translating virtually anything: from songs to poems to short stories. It’s something that has always been a part of my life, and I thoroughly enjoy doing. It’s also an awesome language learning technique, which will help you enrich your lexicon and teach you tons of new turns of phrase in your target language. It works both if you translate from your native into your target language and vice versa: find a good bilingual dictionary (I prefer paper dictionaries because they provide more examples of usage, but again, you do you) and look for equivalent expressions, don’t just translate word for word! It might work sometimes but not always. When it comes to translation, Reverso Context is a great resource for some languages, because it provides translation in context, taken from a massive corpus heavy on subtitles – which you shouldn’t trust all the time, but will help you as long as you put some critical thinking in.

4. Immersion (you don’t say)

What a surprise, right? I usually start listening to music / watching video content right away; I wasn’t that big on YouTube before but language learning has made me change my mind. You don’t have to get everything: even if you understand 3 words out of 20, this will help you grasp the rhythms and intonations of the language. This depends on how many similarities my new target language shares with the ones I already know, but as a general rule I use Italian (or English) subtitles in the very beginning, then move on to subtitles in the target language and finally get rid of them entirely. Some people will argue against subtitles of any shape or form, but I can only speak for myself and they’ve helped me quite a lot in the past. The way I see it, reading is also essential: if I don’t have time to leaf through novels, I usually check out at least an article a day in my target language and write down the words I don’t know, plus their Italian translation.

5. Routine – the good kind

In short words, I strive to make the new language a part of my life. There are a thousand things you can do: change your phone settings? Great! Check out the news? Even better! If you’re out of ideas, here are a few suggestions. And don’t worry if you struggle at first: in fact, the start of this process is a bit rocky for almost everyone. Consistency, however, is the key: once the early, most difficult days are over, all of this will start to come natural and stop feeling like a chore! The more you do it, the faster this process will be.

Sentence Practice - July '19

Welcome back, everyone! It’s been a busy week and just yesterday I had my first ever Korean Food in a restaurant and I fell into a food coma instead of writing this post. So I’m a tad late, but here we are!

We spoke about a lot of things so far and last was the tenses with speech levels, so today instead of adding to the pile of overwhelming knowledge I’ll be doing some practice sentences. As always I may make mistakes but that is okay. We are here to learn not only a language but also to realize that it is okay to make mistakes and that they are needed to learn! So are you ready?

Good. Let’s go! 가자!

1. Yesterday I went to a Korean Restaurant.

Yesterday - 어제

to go - 가다 - Past tense 가았어요 -> 갔어요

Korean 한국 

Restaurant 음식점

-> 어제 저는 한국 음식점에 갔어요

2. In August I will visit my parents. (In August I will go to my parents)

August - 팔월

to go - 가다 (I use to go instead of literal ‘visit’ here) - Future tense 가겠어요

My - 우리 / 저의 (제)

Parents - 부모님

-> 저는 팔월에 제 부모님에 가겠어요

3. The weather is cold today.

Today - 오늘

Weather - 날씨

Cold - 추워

-> 오늘 날씨가 추워요

4. I like the flowers in front of our house.

Flowers - 꽃

House - 집

Our - 우리

In front - 앞

To like - 좋아하다

-> 저는 꽃을 우리 집 앞에 좋아해요

5. We live in this apartment.

We - 우리

To live - 살다 - Present tense 살아요

This - 이

Apartment - 아파트

-> 우리는 이 아파트에 살아요

6. My big sister went to physical therapy.

My - 우리 / 저의 (제)

Big sister (from girl’s view) - 언니

To go - 가다  - Past tense 가았어요 (merges into 갔어요)

Physical therapy - 물리 치료

-> 제 언니는 물리 치료에 갔어요

7. We will go to the hospital tomorrow.

We - 우리

to go - 가다 - Future tense 가겠어요

Hospital - 병원

Tomorrow - 내일

-> 내일 우리는 병원에 가겠어요

That’s it for now. If you found any mistakes, please let me know - how else would I learn, right? 

Also if you have any requests outside of the grammar posts that I am doing please let me know. I’d like to know what’s useful and what is not. I might to some small themed posts here and there with vocabularies and such, just to give our brains time to process the grammar with some vocabulary and sentences. Let me know if you think that would be useful! 

I don’t know what the next post will be about yet, but it’ll come soon! Until then, stay awesome!

파이팅!