#studyblor

♡ 2020.03.06 ♡

圣诞快乐！(Shèngdàn kuàilè!) Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! We’re entering the last few days before Christmas, and also the last few days of our Christmas special. If you sign up for eChineseLearning before December 21, 2016 using promo code XMAS2016, you can get up to 20 FREE lessons. Get started here: https://goo.gl/6xcJs3 Why study Chinese?

Employment Opportunities:

China is the world's second largest economy, having surpassed Japan around five years ago. When Japan's economy began to boom in the late 1980s, the world saw flurries of entrepreneurs, corporations and investors scrambling to embrace Japanese language to get a slice of the pie. The same is true of China today. You'll find many students from all over the world studying Chinese language both in and outside of China, and a lot of them are motivated by job prospects.

Many of those students come from regions and countries where China is deepening its economic investments such as Africa and Colombia, and many come from other places. These students know that learning Chinese will give them a leg up on their competition. Opportunities are vast, extending across business, government, and even education.

Challenge:

Chinese is by most accounts a difficult language, but not one scores of students haven't already conquered. You can do it, too! You'll find Chinese challenging and rewarding at every level.

There are somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 Chinese characters actively in use. Sound like a lot? Consider that some dictionaries put the number of characters in the language at 10,000. Luckily those characters are mostly unused today. You'll find learning the characters an exercise in memory, but there are a few tricks you can learn to make better sense of them. Many learners also tell me that actually writing in Chinese is calming, even meditative. Just letting your hand move across the page feels really nice.

Spoken Chinese is also challenging. Chinese employs a tonal speaking system, meaning how you say something determines what it means. There are four tones in Chinese: high, rising, falling-rising, and falling. For non-native speakers, mastering the tones means learning to manipulate your mouth in new ways. It's not easy, but if you like a challenge, you'll like learning to speak Chinese.

Travel:

China is a big country, and there's a great deal of interesting things to be found here. If you're interested in history, consider that China has 5,000 years of history for you to survey. Digging into that history is even more enlightening if you can do it in China with your Chinese language skills.

Like to look at beautiful scenery? China is good for that as well. It's a geographically diverse country. You'll find bone-dry desserts, bitter cold mountain tops, tropical forests and, if you like, mega cities with their own urban geography. You can see almost anything here.

Finally, the food. Chinese are just as proud of their food as they are their long history. Actually, food is such a big part of Chinese culture that simply asking whether someone has eaten is a common greeting. Have you eaten yet? In such a big country, it's only natural that you'd find all manner of cuisine to taste, from bitter to sweet, from spicy to cool, from expected to unexpected. Give your taste buds something new to try. I think I'll go do that now, actually!

I tag anybody who’s like me and browses the studyblr tag but doesn’t have any friends to tag them.

1. Do you like your teachers? At least most of the time, I like all of them except my Psychology teacher.  He’s okay, just not my cup of tea.  But I’m going to have an on-again, off-again liking of my history teacher.

2. Favorite subject? Oddly enough for me, Human Anatomy and Physiology.  That’s what a good teacher does.

3. Least favorite subject? If we talk about Pearl from The Scarlet Letter one more time in that class, it’s going to be AP Lit.  Right now, though, it’s either psych or choir, which is sad.

4. What goals/challenges did you set for yourself? I’m in the midst of the 100 days of productivity challenge!  I’m also trying to get to bed by 10 PM every night, and have As in all my classes - even my AP ones.  Finally, I want to do the play, get 5s on my AP exams, and graduate.  Just... let me walk the stage.

5. How many classes do you have close friends in? All my core classes!  Neither of my electives, though, which is probably why they’re competing for least favorite subject.

6. Something amazing that happened this week. We the seniors made almost $200 in the first four days we sold snacks at my school!

7. Something disappointing/bad that happened this week. My mom got bitten by a black widow.  Academically, for the first time, I had late homework this year.

8. Any cute new guys/girls you saw? Nope.  No new people, of any gender or lack thereof that I know of.

9. Gotten in trouble yet? No!

10. What Kind of Stationary do you use? Normal college-ruled and graph paper?  I use composition notebooks (college ruled) to rewrite my notes).  If stationary includes pens, then green pens for in-class notes and outlining readings and black pens for rewriting notes and in-class assignments (except math), and highlighters.

11. How do you destress? I clean and watch the Frey Life on YouTube, or watch other YouTubers, or I read a non-school book.

12. What music do you listen to when you study? doddloddle and the Undertale soundtrack (plus covers)

13. Most embarrassing school experience? Running into the boys’ bathroom while shouting YOLO, probably

14. What motivates you? I want to graduate - I’ve waited so long for that moment, and now I’m closer than ever.  I want to excel where people think that, because I’m chronically sick, I will fail.  I want to be so awesome that yesterday’s me gets jealous.  I don’t want to let my parents or my teachers down.  I want to go to college.

so i haven’t updated studyblr in ages. forgive me. i’m a constant sad fuck. 

so midway through last month I got selected for an interview with uconn's special program in medicine. it's my only combined med program and i was really worried about how to handle a group interview. turns out it wasn't half bad. but i still feel like i could have said more, to make myself a better candidate. gugh i wish i had known more about biology, bc there were some people just spilling facts

we had this take home thing to do and that was a wreck but the guy’s response seems like i didn’t do that bad

well two days, ago, i got a waitlist letter...which is really a rejection letter.

well i guess i didn’t want to do an 8-year-med program anyway

which tbh i didn’t, so someone’s spot is saved!!

:(((((((((((((((

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