Some "Spring Cleaning" remarks

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I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated! College definitely took a lot of my time and energy. As a result, I neglected things such as this blog. A fascinating question is whether my lack of time was because of my efficiency at completing tasks being too low or merely because of the external circumstances, regardless of my actions. But that's for another blog post.

 Well, I'm done with my first year at Michigan State University. It's been a crazy ride. I didn't grow in ways I hoped and learned things I didn't expect. I'm okay with that; sometimes the best thing we can do is leave our prior expectations for ourselves unfulfilled when life takes us down another road. I certainly learned a lot about music, myself, and the world. I can solfège and part-write in my sleep, and I've learned how to practice. Yes, I didn't know how to practice before college. That was something I just learned this past year.

 And the great fact is, all of these things I've learned are points on the journey to self-betterment. I've learned how much I still need to improve. I know that there are still vast continents, no worlds, no UNIVERSES of undiscovered knowledge for me just within the College of Music, let alone the world at large. And now I take back my take back my previous statement and say this: I still don't know how to practice as best I can, but I have been empowered with the knowledge of my insufficiency and given a will to improve. And though I claimed I can solfège and part-write in my sleep, I'm sure I've only seen the tip of the iceberg and will continue to have to learn and grow in new and vast ways.

 A few posts (or more than a few) could be devoted to my college experiences. I also took an introductory linguistics class this past semester that really impacted me and my view of the field. It was the only class I maintained perfect attendance in (even when quite sick). I was so enthralled with the material I felt such excitement walking into class each week wondering what I would learn. We covered basic phonetics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and syntax.

 Since I have always had a fascination with language and the acquisition of foreign language in particular, taking this class has upended my language studies to say the least. I've abandoned Hungarian for the time being, for a reason my former self would deem quite stupid. Since Hungarian is a non-Indo-European language (it is instead a Finno-Ugric language) it presents immense, immense linguistic interest to me and thus, though this may sound counterintuitive, I want to actually delay my study of Hungarian until I gained a more thorough and academically acceptable grasp of linguistic theory.

 I have instead been maintaining my French skills by speaking with native speakers on Skype and Italki as well as watching movies and TV shows in French. I still stutter and feel very uncomfortable in conversation, and my accent is lacking the finesse I desire, but I rarely have to resort to English, and that alone is a goal reached for me.

 In addition to French, this week I have began a 6-month Russian challenge with a group of people I met online. This is very exciting for me, and I have already witnessed how useful studying with a time-cap will be for me. My goal is to hold a 30-minute conversation in Russian in 6 months with a native speaker, along with posting monthly updates. Since I have a goal with a time scale it has really helped me analyze how to study in a way that will prove useful and profitable as well as search for methods that will reap the appropriate results for my goals. So far, I have already learned basic greetings and, perhaps more importantly, how to read Cyrillic. I would love to be able to translate my blog posts to Russian in 6 months as well. We'll see if that will happen. :) Lastly, this is a fairly loose commitment, as music is my #1 priority and if my music studies demand so much time that I can't study Russian, then so be it.

 However, (this goes for nearly everyone) I have found that most people, mainly myself, who claim not to have time to do something such as learning a language do actually have the time, it's just a matter of arranging your schedule in a way that will accommodate what you wish to accomplish. That being said, we'll see what happens with this Russian challenge! :)

До свидания!