Choco-n-study - Studyblr

21.07.2024 - Reading log

I'm currently trying to summon back my old book mouse* spirit and start reading again.

I have already started a few weeks ago with an old favourite (from my childhood) to get used to read a bit every day again, but then I realized I was late with the school homework schedule so I have to overlap different readings, which I don't like much but I know I can do it 🐭

(the 🐀 is for currently reading, the others are to read)

🌼 school:

🐀 ~ 🇮🇹 ~ Italo Calvino Racconta L'Orlando Furioso

🇬🇧 ~ And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

💐 my choice:

🐀 ~ 🇮🇹 ~ Fairy Oak 1 - Il Segreto delle Gemelle di Elisabetta Gnone

🇮🇹 ~ Il Ritratto di Dorian Gray di Oscar Wilde

🇮🇹 ~ Cime Tempestose di Emily Brontë

* in Italy we say book mouse 🐭 and I think it's much cuter than worm, I'd like to be a mouse living in an old library(no offence to book worms 🪱 tho)

— Nitya Prakash

We could have lived in this world... damn you Rutherford

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

and then there were none spoilers under the cut

its so funny that wargrave went to all that trouble to create two aliases that fit his little u. n. owen = unknown hint and then he had to spell it out because none of the others even realized it

my #1 tip for school is to keep it simple and sustainable

don't get crazy with your bullet journal with the expectation you'll have that energy every week/month. sometimes its just gonna be a barebones checklist and that's okay! it is first and foremost to keep you organized, dont stress over consistency or aesthetic cohesion. same with your class notes; if you focus too much on the quality of your handwriting you'll forget what you were writing in the first place (ask me how i know)

dont go nuts color coding stuff bc eventually, inevitably, one of your highlighters will die, they wont carry folders in your Designated Color, etc. dont let that collapse your system

dont chunk up your time doing 15 minutes kf math 15 minutes of english 15 minutes of chemistry. you'll go crazy trying to be more efficient (ask me how i know!!! 😭) and retain less

basically dont spend so much time thinking about how you're gonna study that you don't focus on what you're studying. thats what made me have to drop out of my latin class in college; i was so sure that if i could just devise the perfect system the classwork would just flow and i'd be golden. well i never found the perfect system (bc it doesnt exist) and i went weeks without doing any work bc i was so petrified to start in suboptimal conditions. you know "do it scared"? do it sloppily. do it messily. do it on the back of a napkin. do it with so little fanfare that the anxiety doesn't have time to take hold before you're done.

i love how everyone on this website interacts with each other in ways that are so socially impermissible irl. how did we get here