#german study

So part of my joy at passing the German B2 Beruf exam on my first attempt comes from the realization that I can now say to the person who spent their whole life picking my brain with comments like “you're stupid and I'm smart” GIT TF GUD because they couldn't pass this B2 Beruf test even after three attempts and almost 3 years of studying.

Eh, but to be clear, strangely enough, Git Gud's logic (learn the boss's mechanics, find your weaknesses, compensate for them) fits perfectly here, because well. I told them this, and I'm telling you:

Look at the part you failed (or simply really weak at), and practice it/them.

It sounds obvious, I know it sounds obvious — but I watched day after day as they did nothing but write and read. And I really wanted to knock them on the head and ask, quite rudely: “Did you fail reading? Did you fail writing? No, three times in a row you only failed listening, so why the hell aren't you listening to german stuff on Youtube (they were constantly watching videos there, but only in our native language), only reading and writing?!”

To be honest, that's my message - “Listen to silly videos in German.” They don't have to be sophisticated, they don't have to be difficult — they should be able to train your brain so that you understand the meaning without translation, and in the case of Bad Speakers Who Saw Brezhnev on the test day — also be able to fill in the parts you didn't hear/understand.

And trust me, you will get a lot more out of silly german lets plays that you'll put on 1.5 speed, then outta pages and pages of reading, if listening is the part that you are struggling with.

My personal faves:

Lord Pappnase (gothic game letsplays/challange videos)

Ein Holzkopf (random talking videos, great to pick up concepts)

2homiedawgs (silly videos with animals and german voice overs)

i've never seen anyone on the internet recommend this website (i found it by chance while stalking my uni's german department ig account).

it's called blueskywords (and no, it's not related to the app). it includes materials for all levels. each unit offers a text and the rest of the items revolve around it: questions, vocabulary notes, audio tracks, grammar quizzes... it's a limited compilation but it's 100% reliable and FREE! (i know this sounds like an add but i've just joined tumblr and i literally have like 5 followers?).

here's the link! https://blueskywords.com

A picture of said cat for the algorithm

hi everyone! since it’s the end of the month, i thought i’d tell you what i do at the end of every month, to prepare for the new month :)

brain dump tasks for the month ahead

this includes any events I have, such as a party, someone's birthday, important deadlines or exam dates, as well as the revision I want to get done in the month.

organise my calendar

i use multiple calendars to keep myself organised. first, i use ical and a physical calendar for birthdays and parties/events. then I use google calendar to time block my week out, adding in when I'm at school, my morning routine, study sessions, workout sessions and my free time. to organise my revision, I have a separate monthly study planner from emmastudies.com that I fill out. i have this above my desk on my corkboard, which helps me to know what revision I have to do on any given day.

set goals

to do this i look at my yearly goals (which i have on my yearly notion page), and then i decide how my yearly goal can be broken down into an achievable yet challenging monthly goal. for example, one of my yearly goals this year is to learn german, so one of my recurring monthly goals is to do german on duolingo daily. as I'm doing my a levels this year, my german study isn't too intensive, but once I've sat my exams in the summer I'll increase how much I study german.

tidy my environment

to bring in the new month it's super important to have a clean and tidy environment. for me, this means clearing any clutter off my desk, vacuuming my bedroom, cleaning my windows, windowsill, mirror and makeup brushes. i also like to tidy my clothes shelves and make sure everything is folded nicely, as well as my underwear and socks in my drawers. don't forget to change your bedsheets as well!

self-care

my favourite thing to do is have an everything shower and do my skincare routine, so I can get into my nice fresh bed all clean :) I also love to go to bed a little bit earlier than I usually do, and read for a little while before going to sleep.

a few journal entries from recent

There were 2 notable publications today, one on reinfections and the other on Long Covid in a large, matched control cohort. I’ll address each separately and then bring them together.

The Veterans Affairs Reinfection Study

I wrote about this important study when it first came out as a preprint here: the reinfection red flag and little changed in the final paper in Nature Medicine. From over 40,000 reinfections among over 440,000 people who had Covid, and over 5 million controls, the 6-month follow-up demonstrated that reinfections are bad for your health. A 2nd or 3rd infection is associated with worse acute and post-acute (Long Covid) outcomes than not having a reinfection. It is important to acknowledge that while the VA is the US largest health system,  it is not representative of American demographics with respect to age, sex, and race.

...

The German Long Covid study

Now the 2nd paper which is a very large cohort of ~157,000 people in Germany including nearly 12,000 children and adolescents all of whom had documented Covid, and with matched controls (1:5 ratio, cases vs matched controls, respectively). The Figure below shows the incidence risk ratio (IRR) for adults and kids for each symptom domain and you can see there is considerable overlap between adults and kids/teens. far more so than many previous reports. Notably, for absolute incidence at right, adults (in red) are more impacted across the board of symptoms/systems. Their conclusion summed it up well: "The results of the present study indicate that post-Covid-19 cannot be dismissed among children and adolescents."

...

Bottom line

You don’t want to get Covid or reinfections. The risk of Long Covid is real, along with potential adverse outcomes across all organ systems, and it is largely unpredictable.

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See also: