My Goals

October 18, 2020

My situation now is very different from what it was as I wrote my last journal post. Getting it out there made me put a more active effort into finding time for myself to study. This weekend hasn't been great since next week is absolutely full with work (trying to lessen the pressure so maybe I can study during the week). Today I'm writing about my goals.

Stay tune for an extra journal (when I have time) about the difference between studying for a test and for conversation/real life. An additional idea is a timeline.

To begin, a reminder of the problem I addressed last week: No time to study.

Next, an idea for my monthly assignment: One of my biggest ideas going into this was to incorporate music into making Chinese easier. I've written songs in Chinese for a long time, but this is for the teaching aspect. Each song should be about one or multiple unusual concepts in Chinese that an English speaker wouldn't be used to. The main song should be general, about why Chinese isn't difficult. It will also include a music video (hopefully). It might have to end up just being one song, though, considering the end of October is just around the corner.

I'm not sure how I'm going to line up the music and singing easily, or what software I'd like to use besides GarageBand and the recording equipment I have, like a keyboard controller and sampler. Yeah, so the song part is figured out, but not the music video part. Somehow I want to incorporate collaboration into this but it will be very difficult considering the amount of time I have left. If that isn't possible this month, then next month it should be important. Of course, the default C with something like the idea I have is creativity.

Curiosity is somewhere I haven't gone enough but it's very broad so not a concern for me. The goal of this assignment for me is to go outside of my comfort zone and be okay with how my voice sounds in Chinese. I haven't talked much about it, but I think it's something everyone deals with at some point in learning a foreign language.

I am very much looking forward to using music in my study of Chinese- without EMC I might not have gotten the opportunity. What am I dreading? The time and effort needed to get to the end product (the expectation), and also the idea of what "reality" looks like.

明周見/见！(See you next week!)