Week 1

 

    

    It's the first week of my one hundred days of Spanish and the challenge has already been a blast!  I'm on track to finish the entire Duolingo tree before the end of this semester. I came up with this goal as a way to kickstart the apprehension of my third language. So far I have completed 95/136 lessons in this unit. That sounds impressive, but only about 20 of those lessons were from this week. I had already been working on Duolingo for about two months, but I still have a long way to go. Each of these tree sections are about 136 lessons on average. Each lesson takes about ten minutes to complete, meaning that I must spend forty minutes every day on this project in order to finish the tree by my goal date. My progress will be tracked by taking a weekly screen shot of the section lesson counter, plus a screen shot from the previous week for easy comparison.
   On the continuum of self and society influence, I would say that the meaning I derive from this one hundred day challenge is ninety percent self defined meaning. In our Idahoan culture, language is seen as a difficult undertaking, and seldom few citizens speak more than one language. As a result of bilingual rarity, languages are not pushed as a necessity for every day life. In fact, the learning of foreign languages is often regarded as being too difficult for the average person. However, because of this rarity, those that do speak a second language are seen as having great intelligence. My love of languages has always been part of me since hearing Elvish for the first time on Lord of the Rings, but I would be a liar if I didn't admit that some of my motivation is external. I know exactly how impressed my peers were when I came home from abroad speaking fluent Tagalog. I still crave that admiration to an extent.
    My choice of this new language occupation took equal measures calculative and meditative thinking. On the one hand, knowing fluent Spanish will make me significantly more valuable in the hiring process than other applicants. This will allow me to take more coveted positions, and will make me a greater asset to a medical team in regions were Spanish speakers are common. On the meditative side of things, I want to feel a true connection with each of my patients. Understanding someone in their own tongue is one of the most special things I have ever experienced in my life. There are great sections of the worlds population that I will never be able to communicate with and understand what matters to them because of language barriers set in place by societal circumstances. By learning to speak Spanish I will be able to learn what occupations matter to my Spanish speaking patients through the very language which they are most comfortable expressing themselves in. I think over time, my calculative thinking will increase as I get into the more difficult portions of the language. From what I've heard, conjugating in the past tense of Spanish is a big hairy beast that I will need to conquer. This will take repetition, new studying techniques, and most of all: time. 
    Anyway that's all for now! Have a great day everyone!





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