Life Update #4 | I'm Judging You | 2017 Goals

Hey!

It’s 2017 and it is a new year and it has brought me to my attention that I have not been posting on here in like a minute.

Seriously, need to do this on a more regular basis.

I guess I can do a Life Update thing and just keep you posted on certain things that are going on. It’s going to be a stream of conscious thing so I am going to do some bullet points to attempt to have it be more organized.

• December happened. Don’t really celebrate the holidays but I was off for two and a half weeks.

• I started working again! It’s not fast food this time and I actually enjoy my job. I work with the local school district and the elementary school kids are just so adorable. I tend to have more patience with the younger kids… I definitely think it’s because they are so tiny. 100% believe that is the case.

• I am going to start nursing school soon in the next couple of weeks. I’m just so happy to be back in school, I haven’t been doing any sort of formal education in over six months so I’m really glad to be back in the swing of things.

I guess what I can tell you that I’ve been up to, is that I made ONE New Year’s Resolution.

NOW, I really dislike it despise it when people say resolutions are just not worth it and full of crap. It really isn’t. Everyone should have a personal goal that they would want to achieve and the thing is, you don’t have to necessarily fulfill that goal in that same year. It can be a life goal. A ten-year goal. A five-year goal.

New Year’s resolutions are something that can have someone refocus their life goals and if it so happens to be on New Year’s Day so what? Let people live.

Anyways mine is just to be healthy: physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally; just be well-rounded. Not a hard goal to do, and something that I would aim to do. If I feel like I haven’t made it by the end of this year, there’s always next year.

Courtesy of The Huffington Post

Next thing, I have going on is this book I’m listening to called I’m Judging You by Luvvie Ajaye. I’m only an hour into the six and a half hour audiobook but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It’s witty, funny, but gives everyone the time and place to look at themselves and see what they can do to improve on themselves as a person.

I’m Judging You is basically the perfect book to give to someone who, you know, needs a little bit of help in their lives when it comes to being a decent human being. And sometimes, that includes you. Or me. I’m guilty of being an awful person sometimes. And it’s okay.

For the most part, I think that’s about it. I want to do another Muse of the Day or make another segment of this blog, I don’t know yet. Until next time.

Sincerely,

Jante

America - Languages - ERGGGHH

Hey, it’s Jante and I got a topic to discuss. Languages.

We use it to communicate with each other so here is my point. Why in America is it such a normal and accepted thing for someone to know only one language?

Look I definitely understand that there are going to be incidents, backgrounds and just times where someone cannot afford to know a language either because it costs money to formally know a language, they don’t have family or friends who know another language to teach them, or it just isn’t a priority because there are more important things to worry about, such as food, water and shelter.

I am not ignorant to this and I’m pretty sure I’m leaving out other situations where learning a second language just isn’t even conceivable.

BUT when I take all of this into account it still leaves many of us (I included) who for too long of a time, were perfectly content with being monolingual. And I realize that me being comfortable with that was just stupid. Plain idiotic.

I come from a background where my mom and step-dad are bilingual, they speak both Swahili and English and my biological father being trilingual where he knows Swahili, Hindi and English. When I grew up, my parents didn’t really enforce Swahili onto me so of course, I didn’t end up speaking it when I got older and I still till this day am not fluent at it at all.

And I’m kinda sick of it.

And the thing is I feel like Americans are so easy to dismiss not learning a second language, because hey, other people should know English.

And the argument does have stuff to back it up. English is the fourth most commonly spoken language with over 510 million people speaking it.

However, the argument becomes flawed when you look at how many native speakers….it’s only 340 million people who actually spoke English as their native language…..which leaves over 100 million people to learn it as a second language.

It just bothers me so much that we have this nonchalance about it and this righteousness about ourselves as English speakers that we absolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that it’s completely unfair to just assume other people should just learn the language. And it has gotten to the point that English is recognized as an official language by over 60 countries and even though English is not the native language that the populace speaks to begin with! Just so bothersome. So so bothersome.

But sure I understand that two of the major superpowers of the world (America and England) are English speakers and they do have a lot of say in trade and business so it is advantageous for others to learn English as a second language. But why as English speakers do we not feel like it is a necessity to learn another language??

For instance, in the US there is a huge Hispanic community, something that has definitely become more relevant since I moved to Houston. I mean Mexico is like right there. Why isn’t it required for the American public school education to teach Spanish from kindergarten to when they are a senior in high school?  

Like what cons are there to learning two languages? None. Absolutely none.

And the thing is, this can be done. Sure you would have to rework the entire school curriculum but I don’t think that it can’t be done. It’s feasible and it enlightens people and gives people a necessary and handy skill that they wouldn’t be able to get on their own.

But yeah, until that happens, I really do urge other people to LEARN A LANGUAGE. Specifically, a language that you have people who can practice with you but honestly any language that you are interested in will do. I mean, don’t be arrogant. 60 plus countries have listed English as an official language for a reason man. The least you can do is attempt to learn a language.

I understand, you may never be completely and utterly fluent. And that’s fine. What is important is the intent and the effort to do so.

So for me, I am making a pretty big goal for me to accomplish but I think I can do it, it’s gonna require a lot of practice but I’m really determined to do this.

•         At 28 years old, I will know and be able to communicate Spanish and Swahili adequately.
•          At 35 years old, I will have a basic understanding of Arabic.
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But that’s just my personal goal, and in the end, just don’t be an arrogant fool. Learn a language if you can.

And app I really suggest downloading is called Duolingo. Free language service that helps you learn a language by playing games and activities and “messaging” their robots in order to help with the conversational skills. I am learning so much from this and I urge everyone to use it. It can honestly jumpstart your second language journey.

I wish you all the best of luck and have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Jante