What's going on in my head...

Well, of course, I’m about to get sick in the second week of uni. How could it be different? Today I treated myself to some dumplings because I felt like being crushed by everything. Since multiple days I feel a bit weak and my throat is getting sore, so I’m really afraid that I will get sick. I really don’t have time for this right now! I’m getting done so many things and that won’t be possible when I’m coughing and tired all the time!

Tomorrow there is a party I HAVE to attend. One of my close friends is being honoured and she asked me to do an introductory speech about her, so I cannot miss out on that. After coming home, I drank a lot of tea and ate a lot of soup, so that I feel better tomorrow hopefully... Thing is, I might get worse because of the party, which is why I will try to disappear as quickly as possible.

I still haven’t answered to some messages in my inbox, because my week has been just too busy and when I came home I just didn’t have any energy left. So I’m sorry for that and I hope you can forgive me!

I finished a book I started reading in June! It only had some 260 pages but it took so long because I had tons of presentations to hold in July and I‘ve put anything that wasn’t connected to my research paper in August.

Mastermind by Maria Konnikova is supposed to teach you how to think like the great Sherlock Holmes. She goes through multiple stories of Doyle‘s masterpiece, explains that his mind is a highly trained one and that we also follow his footsteps. She analyses his approach to cases and quotes psychological and neurological studies that support the effectiveness of his way of thinking and approaching everything in life. The secret to success is basically constant awareness and neat and tidily structured brain attic.

All in all the book is a nice read. Well, the first four or five chapters at least. Afterwards, there is a lot of repetition. She never quotes a study twice, but she does stories and the points she’s trying to make. Be mindful, be openminded, have an analytical approach and consider all important variables and only the important ones. And of course, again she quotes studies, anecdotes and parts of Sherlock Holmes cases that support her points, but shortly after, she again recites what it takes to be like him.

Generally, it is a nice read, but also I think it is kind of counterproductive to repeat yourself when you’re trying to propagate an efficient way of thinking and approaching things.

Lazy Sunday? Rather not! I’m going through my drafts with some nice tea and working on my texts in advance so I have something to post throughout the week, even if I happen to be too busy or too stressed to compose something.

For a blog to be successful, one needs to update it regularly. Sometimes there is a lot going on in the non-virtual part of life, so that time is a very scarce resource. But keep in mind, if you don’t post regularly your followers might lose interest in your blog. Also, when posting regularly your blog gets way more attention and therefore traction and new followers. Hence depending on what you want to achieve with your blog, it‘s important to put some content out there from time to time.

Whenever I have an idea, I open the app and I write a draft and when I home and don’t know what else to do, or I just feel like venting then I look into my drafts and write whatever fits my mood. Some texts require some research, others are about my feelings and many are about everyday stuff.

Today was a very Swedish day! I did all the homework in the Övningsbok (book of exercises) and I revised some vocabulary. Having German as one of my native languages really helps with the words and the syntax, but the pronunciation is really hard. You’re supposed to leave out a lot of letters and certain combinations are pronounced totally differently than they look. Hopefully, it will get easier with time and practice!

Although I was really tired from yesterday because I came home fairly late, the view from my library desk kept me alive. After class, I went home and took a nap, because I’m invited to a birthday party. I won’t be able to stay too long because of a work meeting tomorrow. So tonight’s motto will be rather “Party medium hard!” rather than “Party super hard!”.

Before class, I had enough time to start on my presentation on the Sorbian/Lusatian/Wendish language. “What is Sorbian?”, you say? Well, it is a western Slavic language, which used to be spoken on the territory of Germany reaching from the Baltic Sea to the River Main. Today it’s not spoken much anymore, but the initiative Witaj is trying to revive it at least a bit, since it is a historic part of that part of Germany, although it is not a Germanic language.

At first, I want to give a short introduction about its history and how it’s treated today and then I want to give a short lesson to teach people the most important basics everyone should know:

Hello, my name is... What’s your name?

I’m from ... Where are you from?

Where’s the toilet?

One beer, please

Things like that. I hope to spread a bit of awareness for the fact, that borders were artificially made by humans and that in a lot of countries there’s more than one language that is being spoken. In Europe, people don’t really get that, while in India it’s an everyday occurrence. And by teaching the audience a few sentences I do a little to keep the language alive.

Tonight for the sake of content creation, I’m treating myself to nice cold beer and some writing.

Oh dear gods of the golden beverage, please give me the strength and the creativity to produce something, that will not displease you!

Now, that my prayer is done, I shall begin! It is time for a story. A story about three tankards. Let’s start with the one you see right above this paragraph. Every year there is a beer fair in Cologne. “Beer fairs? What a german thing!”, you might think. And indeed it is. The beer fair in Cologne is a great opportunity to experience beers from all over the world. Next to all the different kinds of beer from Germany, you can try beers from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, Thailand, Singapore and a lot of other countries! After trying a lot of exciting new beers like Tiger and Delirium, I went back to one of my classics, Pilsner Urquell, a Czech beer that is one of my favourites. It was already pretty late and the stalls were closing so I tried to drink it as fast as possible, but still slow enough so I could enjoy it properly. Of course, I didn’t make it in time. And there I was. A girl with a tankard. I took it home and kept it and because I paid three euros of deposit for it, it’s not even considered stealing... I think.

But that beauty isn’t the only tankard I own. This one I got from a friend. One day I was invited to a “bring your own tankard”-party and I didn’t own a tankard at that time yet. So I asked around, whether someone could lend me a tankard. One of my friends said yes and told me to keep it. I thought of it as very generous so I asked: “Are you sure? It’s such a pretty tankard!” and she said: “Yes, I don’t like it much because it’s uncomfortable to drink out of.” And as a half Polish and half Swabian person, I was very happy since I just got something for FREE! Yes, I’m that cheap sometimes. So, I went to that party and everyone had their own tankards and all of them were so different and diverse! It was really fun to look at all of them and talk to the people and listening to their tankard-stories. At one point of the evening what my friend meant when she said it was uncomfortable to drink out of. Because the tankard has such a big belly, the beer will settle in there especially when there’s only little left of it. So, I would tilt the tankard a little more to get to the beer. Well, a little more was a little too much and I ended up spilling that little beer that was left in the tankard all over me. Luckily it wasn’t much, but since that event, I was drinking carefully whenever I was drinking out of this tankard.

My final story involves the tankard I acquired last. I was at some student convention where they would serve beer in tankards. At some point, I was approached by my friends, who told me they wanted to go to a party and some student accommodation thing, kind of an after-party you could say. But my beer was still pretty full and no way I’m just gonna leave it after I paid quite a lot of money for. So I told my friends to wait, but they urged me to come immediately because the last bus that drives to the party location departs in 7 minutes. I got nervous and didn’t know what to do. I looked around and just followed them. We exited the building, in front of which there was security. They weren’t bothered by me leaving the building with a tankard full of beer because they probably thought I’m just going out for a smoke. Well, I don’t smoke and so we went to the bus station, where the next panic moment hit me! I’m not allowed with an open beer like this inside the bus! Since we all have a student ticket, we decided to get into the bus via one of the rear entries so I wouldn’t be noticed by the bus driver. Of course, there are cameras all over the bus, but our group behaved calmly inside the bus, we weren’t shouting or being obnoxious and drunk, hence the bus driver didn’t do anything about us. When we arrived at the party, my tankard was empty so I demanded it to be filled! Everyone at the party was very jealous of my tankard and I got to tell the story a lot. It ended up being a great night!

After this introduction, you now know my tankards and their story! I know this kind of post doesn’t have any pictures of notes or books on it, but nights like this still belong to the life of a student, which is why I decided to add the studyblr-tag. Because at nights like this, it is when we engage with other people and talk about all the things in the world. Not only “party topics”, but philosophy, arts and politics as well! So don’t forget to leave your desk from time to time and engage in intellectually stimulating drunkness!

Oh, and if you enjoy my blog and you have some spare change that you want to throw out for something unnecessary, consider supporting me on ko-fi.

The new semester started today... FINALLY. I didn’t have much in terms of classes. Only Swedish really (small update: I ended up getting into the Swedish course I wanted to join originally so I took that one instead of Norwegian, but of course I wish I could know all of earth’s languages, which kind of annoys me …). After class, I was a model student and did some research for a paper I have to turn in at the end of the semester.

After a quick lunch break, I revised the things we learned in class today and I’ll probably do some additional DuoLingo, just to be sure. Right now I’m writing this post and might try to read a bit for FUN later. Yeah, that’s right! For fun! Not just for uni!

I really enjoy watching people talking about books, the problem is though, that after each video my “want to read”-list on Goodreads gets longer and I barely have any time to read anything but books and papers for uni.

My virtual pile of shame grows every day and it really does frustrate me. I feel like I should be doing so much more. I want to read more, I want to paint more, I want to practise playing the keyboard. After classes and work I sometimes just need to lay down and stare at my white ceiling because my brain can’t operate anymore.

Well back to the topic: Hence it’s Octobre right now, everyone recommends books about witchcraft, horrors, true crime and well historical works on witches. My favourite genre of all of them is true crime. I often wonder what drives us, humans, to do horrible things. That is why “Killers: the Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Times”, “Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: Profiles of the World’s Most Barbaric Criminals” and “Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History” are on my Goodreads “want to read”-list.

Another genre I like of those already mentioned, are historical books about witches and their hunt. Books I have on my list are “The Witches: Salem 1692″ and “Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power”. I’m especially excited about the latter, I just don’t know when I’m supposed to read it?

And then there is this huge pile of books I already own and haven’t read yet? So, I really should not add even more books to that pile, but it is not my fault that every year hundreds of amazing books are being published and there’S a lot of older works I haven’t read yet. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

It’s time again to lay down and stare at my ceiling before I lose my mind completely...

Uni starts on Monday again and I am pumped. I kind of slipped into a down phase during the free time because it’s hard to keep up a structured life when there’s nothing motivating you to do the things you need to be doing.

Of course, there have been days I was productive, but also there have been weeks where I have not gotten done as much as I wanted, which is giving me a lot of anxiety.

The structure of a schedule forces me to get out every day which means that I don’t really have the time to be sad, so I suck it up as best as I can. Additionally, I really love the learning environment uni provides. The smell of old books really helps me focus. Unfortunately, every semester more and more freshmen start their studies, which leads to little to no space in libraries to really learn. Frustration awaits!

But let’s try to be positive now: I’m really excited about learning Norwegian and the course about cross-linguistic language analysis! I think I have a very interesting semester ahead, considering while learning all of this I want to write two papers and my master thesis.