Summer School

I'm in summer school from June 4th to the end of July.

I'm taking a history course and a science course. I was going to take an online computer course, but I decided to take it in an actual class, because I'm an idiot when it comes to computers and need all the help I can get.

So far I like the classes. My science class is 5 hours a day twice a week, so it is a little long. We usually get a few breaks, because it's probably pretty tiring for the instructor as well.

Next week in class we're going out to the pond to catch snakes. I'm pretty excited about it.

I started an internship at the mayor's office to get experience with writing. I hope it helps me out. It's OK, but office work is kind of boring.

Good luck with work or school this summer, everyone.

Didn't Get the Job, Schedule for Summer and Fall

I didn't get the telemarketing job (renewal, actually) because it didn't fit my schedule. Maybe in May I can do it. They wanted me to work 35 hours the first 2 weeks and then 20 hours (with 5 on a Saturday or Sunday) the rest of the time, with me scheduling the 20 hours myself. That doesn't seem too bad

The school published the list for summer and fall and now I have a general idea of what I'll be taking in (I hope) my last two semesters of college. I'm taking 3 classes this summer and 6 classes in the fall, but 2 out of 6 classes are online and one is an internship.

Plus I have 2 volunteer assignments that I hope I can hold onto.

I hope I'll be busy enough.

Getting Back into Blogging

I'm going to try blogging again.

My life really isn't that interesting, but I want to be a writer, and blogging could help me improve my writing.

I'm on Spring Break right now, and the semester's half complete, so I have plenty of time to write, study languages, listen to music, visit the www.how-to-learn-any-language.com forums, and do other stuff I like.

Oh, and I started going to the gym recently to lose weight. It's going well so far. I'm also using www.myfitnesspal.com, which is helping me manage my calorie intake and usage.

I dropped Medical Assisting in favor of Technical Communications, and I might graduate by the end of the year. I'm not suited to working in healthcare, at least not working directly with patients.

I have an interview for a customer service position with a publisher on Monday. I hope I get the job, because it would be a good way to earn money and kill some time.

I'm volunteering at Project Learn in the advanced ESL class on Thursday nights and at Mercy Medical Center in Canton on Friday mornings. I enjoy volunteering and hope I can do it for as long as possible.

Right now I'm studying Esperanto and Spanish. I'm using the correspondance courses on www.lernu.net to study Esperanto and because I want to learn how to read Spanish I'm using Karl Sandberg's "Spanish for Reading."

That's about all I have going on. Like I said, I'm not very interesting.

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.

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.

Language Links

All right, I'll list some of my favorite language websites, such as blogs, learning websites, YouTube channels, etc. for other people to check out.

My favorite language forum:

http://www.how-to-learn-any-language.com

My favorite blog:

This blog is about both natural languages and international auxiliary languages. He also writes considerably about space exporation and technology. It is written by a Canadian working in Seoul as a translator.

http://www.pagef30.com

Another blog, by an Australian author & scientist trying to write literature for an international audience:

http://joyoflanguages.blogspot.com

Naomi Chambers's language blog:

http://thepolyglotexperience.blogspot.com

A blog by a young man sampling 37 languages and deciding on one, kind of like The Bachelor for languages:

http://37languages.wordpress.com

His second blog:

http://pardonmynorwegian.tumblr.com/

ikindalikelanguages blog:

http://ikindalikelanguages.com/blog

Language courses at this site:

http://ikindalikelanguages.com/lab/courses.php

Last blog:

http://languagegeek.net

Some learning materials:

Jim Becker's website, links for 14 languages, the one below is for Spanish:

http://www.uni.edu/becker/spanish3.html

Spanish conjugation trainer:

http://www.spaleon.com/index.php

Spanish basics, plus a site to connect with Spanish-speaking learners of English, by chat or as a pen pal. Completely free. No, I haven't tried it yet.

http://www.lingolex.com/spanish.htm

German:

Deutsch - Warum Nicht? Great site to teach the basics of German, produced by the Goethe Institut and Radio Deutsche Welle. It's a four part course with 26 lessons in each part. This is the site in German.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,2163,00.html

Paul Joyce's German website, a professor at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. I highly suggest reading his "Why learn German?" section:

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/abinitio/index.html

Some YouTube channels:

Alkantre, aka Dr. Peter Browne, a Spanish professor at, I think, the University of Texas, and top-notch polyglot. The cool thing about him is he comments on new users' channels and videos, sometimes in random languages, LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/user/alkantre

Brian Greco, a young teenager who makes great review videos. He's interested in IALs and more unusual languages, such as Navajo (he has Rosetta Stone Navajo) and languages from the South Pacific.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BrianonLanguage

Cody, from Minnesota, a college student who is interested in German, Chinese, Swahili, Arabic, and probably many more.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Codylanguagesblog

A great Latin channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Evan1965

Anthony Lauder's channel, great even if you aren't interested in Czech, since he talks about issues everyone learning languages could benefit from hearing:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FluentCzech

Glossika, a YouTube polyglot heavyweight:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Glossika

A female polyglot:

http://www.youtube.com/user/katrudy7

Probably one of the biggest language channels on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000

Professor Alexander Arguelles's channel, probably the biggest language channel on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfASAr

And many others. I don't want to list anymore right now, since this post is long enough.

New Developments

I'm only taking one class in college this semester, Gerontology. I've decided to go for Medical Assisting instead of Physical Therapy Assisting or Occupational Therapy Assisting because there is a three year waiting period on those areas while with MA I can start this fall. So far I like the class, especially since we learn a little bit by doing instead of just reading the book and taking notes during lecture. I'm going to see what I'll be doing in the fall. I'm thinking about getting a certificate in dental assisting too since it could help my chances of employment, and it might be interesting, although I don't know if I have the manual dexterity to do the job. I'm pretty clumsy.

I'm going to start focusing on Spanish again. I found a great site that has tons of links to Spanish websites. It is the site of Jim Becker, a professor emeritus from the University of Northern Iowa. It is at http://www.uni.edu/becker/ and there are 13 other languages, so I guess the good professor was a language instructor, but I don't know how many of the 14 he taught and how many he merely knew.

I found a Spanish group that meets at the same Panera that the game group meets at. It meets at 11 in the morning on Saturdays, so when I get a job I should still be able to go to the meetings. Definitely a motivator.

More adventures in language wanderlust. I've decided that I want to study Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Italian caught my eye this week, and I don't think it would be any more difficult then Spanish. I tried the course on ikindalikelanguages and liked it, kind of like when I tried Afrikaans and Dutch on Christmas Eve. I've decided to let Dutch and Mandarin go for now, maybe I'll try them later. Needless to say, I can't study a bunch of languages at the same time. My puny brain can only handle one a day, and I know myself that I won't learn 8 or more languages during my lifetime. I want to focus on Spanish and German this year, with maybe a little French. Ugh, my poor brain is going to explode, even with a lot of free time this year.

I applied to Cedar Point, and since my brother knows someone in the food department, I might be working there. Definitely a step up from being cooped up in a warehouse all day, but not as good as having a supervisor rank, like my brother has.

Chez is back on YouTube. It appears he started uploading videos at 3 PM today, or earlier. I think I'm just going to leave him alone, although I thought about sending him a PM, since he friended me, but I really don't know what to say to him. If he's just after attention, that's probably the best thing for us both that I don't contact him. If he really is out to meet fellow language enthusiasts and doesn't know how to properly interact with people, I can accept that and maybe help him a little. All I was going to do was suggest he go on meetup and find a language group so he could find a language practice partner in real life instead of just interacting on the Internet. But I think I'm just going to let it go.

OK, till next time.

Something of Myself

Like I promised, here is a little more about me.



I live in Ohio, and have lived here for my entire life, the past 25 years. The depressing thing is I may live here for the rest of my life, LOL. Honestly, it's not that bad of a place to live.



I have a degree from the University of Akron in Business Administration. I attended UA from 2004 to 2009, but skipped 2008. I am currently enrolled at Stark State College as a health care student. I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do, but I'm thinking about Occupational Therapist Assistant, but it has a 3 year waiting period.



My main interest, and what I spend most my free time doing, is foreign languages. I'm currently interested in Spanish, French, German, Esperanto, and Mandarin, but really have been focusing on German. I really like German, and have been studying it for the past month or so. I would like to get into Mandarin since I have had some experience with the language and enjoyed it, it is different from the other languages I'm interested in, and think it could be useful in the future. I am interested in many other languages, mostly Romance and Germanic languages, but I don't want to list them because it will seem very unrealistic. There may be YouTube polyglots who say they've studied 40-50 languages, but I know myself. I'm not going to study a dozen languages, much less have any proficiency in any of them.



I've been studying Spanish off and on since early 2009, so it's been about 20 months. My progress in Spanish is embarrassingly slow, and have little to show for my efforts in the past. I took 2 years of Spanish in high school, and, like my math skills, my skills from high school Spanish wasted away to almost nothing. I bought and used Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Spanish in March of 2009 as preparation for taking college Spanish. I then took 2 Spanish classes in college and enjoyed them but took the classes as an elective, not as a requirement. I started self-studying Spanish seriously when I started Elementary Spanish II in June of 2009. After my college classes, I studied it off and on, studying seriously for a few months and then putting it aside for a month or two. I have not seriously spent time with Spanish since July of 2010, but would like to get back into studying it, as I like the language and think it can be very useful, especially since I'm thinking about going into health care. Pathetic as it is, I have yet to complete a beginner's book in Spanish yet. Very embarrassing.



I also studied French for 2 years in high school and, just like my math and Spanish skills, they have diminished. The good thing is it does seem familiar to me when I read some French in one of my beginner's books. I really like French, maybe even more than Spanish, but I don't intend to study French anytime soon, as I think it interferes a little with my Spanish.



It is a bit difficult to explain to people why you would want to study Esperanto. It doesn't seem to get the same respect as other languages of its size (about 2 million speakers) and even some language lovers on my favorite language forum, how-to-learn-any-language.com, don't seem to think it is a "real" language. The good thing is that you can learn Esperanto for free on lernu.com, a popular Esperanto site. You can also sign up for a free correspondance course, which I've signed up for last year at about this time but have yet to complete a lesson, since my interest in Esperanto waxes and wanes like the moon. I even bought some books for learning Esperanto, but really haven't gone over them. I don't want to argue about whether we need an international auxiliary language (IAL) or if Esperanto is the best IAL. I think some very interesting people know Esperanto, and you can learn one language and chat online with these interesting people in several different countries in one common language.



Well, enough about languages. I'll discuss other things I like.



One of my favorite classes in school, both high school and college, was history. I am particularly interested in military history and Medieval history. I'm not sure why, I just find that aspect of history interesting. The only problem is I read my last military history book (it was about the Battle of Stalingrad) in the summer of 2008 and I haven't read a book about Medieval history in a long time. I am changing this now, as I've borrowed books from the library about the Battle of Marathon and a rather large book on Medieval history. I have a break from school until the 18th of January and intend to use this time to the best of my ability.



One activity that I would like to get into is birding, or bird watching. I decided this would be a good hobby because I took an online survey and bird watching was the top match, which I somewhat agree with, since social aspect, researching, and a hobby that can be done inside and outside were my most important aspects in a hobby. I've always enjoyed watching birds, especially as a kid, when I was the family's self-proclaimed bird expert (well, as much of an expert as a kid with an identification guide could be). There are two Audubon Societies near me, one in Akron and one in Canton, and I might try to go to one or the other, or possibly even both if one meets at a more convenient time and the other has more field trips. I guess I should find a more experienced birder to show me the ropes and teach me the proper technique, as well as show me good locations. I hope to go to an Audubon meeting soon.



I am also interested in music, both as a musician and as a listener. I've learned to play the cello, recorder, trombone, and violin, the first three in elementary school and the violin I took my first lesson in May 2009. The trombone is the only instrument I feel comfortable playing in public, and I hope to start playing the violin more, but I don't think the violin is a very good instrument for me, as I need to use my hands. I don't have good manual dexterity. Oh well, at least it isn't the piano. As far as listening to music, I've come a long way from only wanting to listen to classical and hymns, since my religious leaders wanted me to think everything else was evil. I don't know what I really like, although I still like classical. Whatever sounds good, I guess.



Since this is a blog, I guess I should talk about religion and politics, as they seem to be a popular subjects to blog about. I have to say, I feel really uncomfortable about writing this. I really hate talking about religion and politics, as they are subjects that good people demonize other good people for not having the same values they do. I was raised Baptist, first GARBC and then independent. I really have a dislike for the fundamentalist Christianity I was raised with, for a variety of reasons. I'm not really sure what my religious orientation is, but I don't think I'm completely ready to give up on Christianity, just to find a less fundamentalist variety. My politics were very conservative and I considered myself a member of the Religious Right for a time. Now I am much less conservative and really dislike the major conservative pundits - like Hannity, Beck, Coulter, Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson - as much as I dislike the major liberal pundits, so I guess I'm a moderate on most issues. What I once considered major issues that I thought God would judge America on, such as abortion and gay rights, I now think is really none of my business. Ah, one religious fundamentalist ultraconservative American down, a few million more to go.



My favorite saying for religion and politics is:

If it's stupid, but it works, it isn't stupid.



Oh well, that's enough about myself. I'm not a very good writer. Thanks to anyone who's read this far.



See you later.