Khan Academy on YouTube

Today I watched my first video on khanacademy channel. He's Sal Khan, a high school valedictorian, MIT & Harvard Business School graduate. In other words, he's really smart. :p I subscribed to the channel a few weeks ago after I saw a post on it on one of my favorite blogs, Page F30. It is basically a channel that teaches different types of academic subjects (alas, no languages though). He was even featured on CNN and PBS for his service to humanity. The CNN spot even talked about a girl in the UAE (I think it was) who was getting help with her calculus college class through his videos. Very, very cool. The videos I watched were on the credit crisis, the four videos in his Housing Conundrum series. Very interesting, perhaps business school wasn't a waste of time for me, I just needed to find someone who could explain things in ways I could understand, and being able to watch over & over again doesn't hurt either. Most of his videos seem to focus on math and science, although he does talk about business and history as well. It's a very cool channel and I highly recommend it.

RE: Moses McCormick's Video, Polyglot Project Question

Today Moses made a video about what he would do if he were in control of language learning in schools and how to get people interested in learning language. If you don't know him: http://www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000 He's a really cool guy. His main point is that he would not make languages mandatory and he would use a different method of teaching, presumably his, to get students more motivated to learn the language. He also seems to think his idea would sell itself and students, through word of mouth, would persuade other people to take languages. I have mixed feelings about no longer making languages mandatory. The first language class I took was a mandatory one quarter French class in sixth grade. We also took one quarter Shop, Home Ec, and Art. The next year we would take Spanish for a quarter, and in 8th grade we could choose. If French would have been optional I probably would have still taken it since even back then I liked languages. I think that is really the time to have mandatory classes: in elementary and middle school, and in high school and university allow the students to choose whether they would want to take language classes or not. The lower grades, I think, are appropriate places for mandatory cultural and arts courses, so young students can understand who they are and what other cultures are like. I don't think this would work, though, since school funding might not allow this to happen in the lower grades, and the best an elementary teacher could muster might be to play some Spanish children's songs or go through a Spanish book for kids. One example of a mandatory course I didn't think I'd like but ended up liking were area studies and cultural diversity courses. We needed to take 4 credits from this category for a Bachelor's degree, and since they were 2 credits each, naturally, we took 2 of them. I took China and Japan. China was OK, the only reason I really didn't like it was because the textbook was long and dull and the professor had been in a skydiving accident and couldn't get up when he fell down, so a lot of classes were cancelled when he fell. I loved the Japan class. They were both basically history classes with a little culture thrown in. I agree with him that colleges and universities are basically businesses so they would require their students to take GenEd classes to make money. Well, maybe not exactly, since the universities and colleges may have to conform to certain requirements from the state or accreditation agency. If you don't want to take GenEd classes, go for an Associate's degree. Anyway, I wrote a comment on Moses's video. I basically said that I started taking Spanish at my university as an elective in summer school since I needed an elective and that appealed to me the most among my choices. I started to study Spanish about the time I registered for classes, which would have been late February or early March, and have been studying ever since. I think I may have been the only one in the 2 classes who was taking it as an elective and not just as a GenEd class, which is what the Arts & Sciences students have to do. I think I may have gotten some strange looks because I said I like languages and that was the only reason I was taking the class. During the spring semester before summer school the university offered free Saturday classes in Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, and French. I took Mandarin, and stopped going about halfway through. That is the sort of thing I would like to see more of, schools offering these programs - to everyone connected with the university in some way, such as the children of students, not just students - to try to get people interested in languages.

Classes for Fall Semester 2011

Today I have a mandatory meeting with my advisor. It's mandatory because I'll be dropped from the Medical Assisting program if I don't meet with her. I already scheduled my classes and will get the go-ahead from my advisor then. The classes I'm taking next semester are: Medical Assisting I (a 5 credit class) Reimbursement for Healthcare Services (a senior level class; I'm surprised I was able to schedule it) Principles of Human Structure and Function (a five credit class) For a grand total of 13 hours The best part about it is that I won't have any Monday classes, but I do have Friday classes in the afternoon. My MA class is split between four days instead of one really large class two days a week since I hated taking Gerontology as one really large class on Friday. The good news I only need to take one more class to fulfill requirements for a Gerontolgy Certificate, and both the Anatomy class and the Reimbursement class fulfill those requirements. I'm also positioning myself to go into Billing possibly, and I can take Human Diseases next semester, which is a required class for Billing but not for MA. Spring Semester 2012 I'll take: Medical Assisting II Human Diseases Office Procedures I I guess this year isn't going to be so slow after all. ETA: I met with my advisor and found out I can't take the Reimbursement course, I'll take an Insurance class in the Fall of 2012. Why they offer two classes and will only allow people to take one I don't know. I also have to get a ton of shots and titers, which is when they draw blood and see if you're immune to a certain disease. If you're not immune, you need to get a shot. Fun times.

Annual Bake Sale

Today at church we held our annual men & boys' bake sale.

I made mini cheesecakes, little cheesecakes the size of a cupcake or muffin. They sold for $50.

Yes, people actually pay that an excessive amount of good money for bake goods worth nowhere near that amount.

My brother's brought in $51. Beaten by a dollar! Dagnabbit!

They were selling a 12-year-old boy's peanut butter pay and a man told the auctioneer "I'll pay you $100 if you'll let me throw it in your face."

Yes, this wasn't the first time. The auctioneer has been doing this for about 20 years, and this is the second time he took a pie to the face.

We'll see if the YouTube video is up by tomorrow.

Language & Education Update

Well, the doctor put me on new medicine and I feel less lethargic than I have in the past. I don't know if it's because I'm off the old medicine or I'm just looking forward to doing something since I've had class for the first time in a couple of weeks. Anyway, I feel like studying languages again for the first time in a long time (well, not that long, just for about a month, but it feels really long for me).

I think I've finally found the list of languages I want to learn.

Spanish
French
Italian
German
Esperanto
Japanese
Swahili

For a total of seven, and I have material for 6 of them. Right now all I have for Swahili is a phrasebook and 10 lessons of Pimsleur. Someone bought the last TYS Swahili in the bookstore before I could get to it.

To go through them quickly:

Spanish: my main language right now, and one that I want to study everyday. I took 2 classes in summer school in 2009 and that's about as far as I've gotten with the language, since I don't think I've progressed very far since then. I have tons of books for Spanish, since I went beserk back when I got materials for it. I've studied off and on for the past 2 years, and I'm still a mid-level beginner! I should be ashamed of myself . . .

French: another language I had in high school, although that was 7 years ago. I don't think I'll study French that much this year, since I really don't feel like doing so. Maybe later.

Italian: my most recent fixation. I bought a TYS yesterday and have enjoyed going through the book since then. I don't think I'll confuse it with my Spanish, like I was concerned, since it doesn't really sound anything like Spanish in my mind's eye, it sounds distinctively Italian. I'll see if the pleasure lasts long enough for me to learn a considerable amount of Italian.

German: I think I'll only go with one Germanic language, actually. I might go for Afrikaans later, since there's a great Website for it, and I like some of the songs on there, although knowing Afrikaans doesn't really serve any practical purpose for me at the moment. I had a lot of fun going through Deutsche Welle's online course and Pimsleur and Michel Thomas CDs, although I stopped shortly after the middle of January. I want to start again, although I'm a little hesitant about studying more than one languages at a time.

Esperanto: the most well-known IAL, and a great gateway into the world of IALs. I went through some of lernu's courses in the beginning of February, and would like to continue. My activity on lernu has dwindled for the past few weeks, so I'll have to start again soon.

Japanese: I have the first 4 CDs of Pimsleur, a TYS book, and a phrasebook, so nothing major. I should have bought the Japanese instead of the Mandarin Michel Thomas, but I guess my library will like it when I donate it, which I guess is what I'll do with my Mandarin MT. I've always wanted to learn a language that uses characters, and I guess Japanese has beaten out Mandarin since I'm more interested in Japan than China, there aren't really any tones (but it does have a slight pitch accent), and Japanese has a syllabary system, so you can always write out what you need to get across to native speakers using the syllabaries instead of using kanji, although that might look childish to native Japanese speakers and might actually be more difficult on the learner. This will be the first time I learned a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet.

Swahili: I like how it sounds, it's non-Indo-European, it's grammar isn't supposed to be too hard, I would like to learn a little of an African language, and I like the movie King's Solomon's Mines and safari movies. Enough said.

The best part is I can learn any of these languages, with the exception of Swahili, whenever I want to since I have TYS books for all of them, with the exception of Swahili. I guess I should try to find a book for Swahili, but I'll just watch some YouTube videos on Swahili such I have far too much on my language learning plate as it is.

Other languages I might be interested in:

Indonesian
Afrikaans
Occidental Interlingue (an IAL)
Sambahsa-Mundialect (another IAL)
other IALs, although I have no intention of being the Moses McCormick of IALs
a Slavic language - Russian or Polish
Persian/Farsi

I want to learn a Slavic language because I have Slavic ancestry, Polish on my mom's side and Slovenian on my dad's side.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'll never learn that many languages!

Languages I have no intention of learning, unless I'm forced to:

Portuguese (can't stand how it sounds)
Mandarin Chinese (don't like the tones, too confusing)
Arabic (don't like how it sounds)
Dutch (really ugly, rather learn Afrikaans, most speak English)
Scandinavian languages (don't like the sound, doesn't seem too phonetic)
Anything too weird or obscure - people think I'm weird enough as it is



*****



Now for what I'm doing to improve my education.

I have an appointment with my adviser at school to schedule courses for next semester, since it's mandatory. I'm taking a Medical Assisting course, which is the only thing for certain now, plus I'd like to know a little bit about medical billing, since it might help me get a better job, like a management position or even a sales position later on. I'm also thinking about getting a Gerontology certificate, which would mean two or three additional classes beyond my Intro to Gerontology class, since aging is pretty interesting and a lot of jobs are going to open up in the future dealing with older people.

I always love to borrow books from the library, and it's one of my favorite things to do. Right now I'm reading through The Personal MBA, which claims to have all the content of an MBA program (highly doubtful, but my professor DID give me a link to a Website that really DOES have all the content of an MBA program). At the site (the personal MBA site, not the other one) it has a list of books on business, so I'll have to see which ones are at the library and get them on interlibrary loan.

Oh well, that is all.

Class Today, March 25th

Well, had my ONE class that I'm taking for the first time since March 4th. March 11th was a snow day (we ALWAYS get snow days, even when there isn't much snow, like on the 11th) and the 18th was spring break. Bad times to be in Gerontology class.

Anyway, today we covered a lot of stuff, two chapters, but we still got out early. One of the things we talked about was creativity in old age, and we took a test that they give to see how creative people are based on one type of divergent thinking. This test was four letters (in our case, SALT, but they could be any letters) and we had to write as many four word sentences using the letters in that order in two minutes.

Some oddball sentences I came up with:

See, Amish love tales (my personal favorite)
Stan almost loved Tina
Santa always loves toast

I came up with six sentences in all, and the average is 6-8

The next test, which measured a different type of divergent thinking, was to name as many holidays, religious or secular, in three minutes. I came up with 22, but I think I may have gotten some wrong, because I wrote Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, and I don't really know if you'd call those holidays. I also wrote some foreign holidays (Canada & Australia Day, Bastille Day, Cinco de Mayo) but those count, of course.

The average for that is 14, so if I did it right, I'm somewhat above average.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

No, I'm not Irish, and I don't drink (because of medicine I'm taking), so the holiday really has no significance for me, but anyways, it may have significance for others, and I'm hoping the significance is in being Irish, not drinking green beer (not that there's anything wrong with that).

It reminds me of being back in French II class during my senior year of high school. Unfortunately we never changed seats, so I sat next to this racially mixed, loud-mouthed girl who was always playing the race card. One time she asked me if I liked her, I didn't say or do anything, and she took this to mean I didn't like her, and of course she attributed this to her being black, not to the fact that she always talked during class, had a sucky attitude, sucked at French, and I'm pretty sure was talking about the size of her boyfriend's penis a few days before she asked my whether I liked her or not.

Anyway, besides being black, she was also Irish. And on St. Patrick's Day everything about being black and how no one could judge her or understand her because of that was gone, and in its place she wore a "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" t-shirt.

Go figure.

Uses for Rice

A friend of mine wanted help with a problem she had with her laptop.

She posted on FaceBook that her mother spilled coffee on it.

D'OH!

I was the first to respond, by suggesting what I had seen on YouTube: use a little rice to absorb the liquid.

Another of our mutual friends posted that her husband had dried out a phone that he dropped in a pool with rice and then put it on the heat register, and it was just fine.

Unfortunately, she had no rice, so she just used a hair dryer.

Probably a good move, since rice may have made it worse. Of course I wouldn't have though to use a hair dryer, since I haven't used one since I was a little kid when I took showers at 9 PM at night on Saturdays before church in the morning. Don't ask why I didn't take a shower earlier as a kid. It would have saved me from the humiliation of using my mom's hair dryer.

I just wish I were bald, then I could have tried to make a funny remark about not thinking about using a hair dryer.