Smelling the coffee in 2023

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MaggieMae
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby MaggieMae » Wed Mar 15, 2023 7:22 pm

I'm so glad to hear you're getting out of there! Your mental health seems to already be doing better in just this one post.

You seem to have everything well in hand. You have a good, solid plan, with realistic goals, and you've outlined what's most important for you RIGHT NOW. I'm also happy to hear that you seem to have rediscovered a bit of pleasure in reading in German. Right now it's definitely more important to focus on your priorities alongside what makes you happy. <3
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby Cavesa » Wed Mar 15, 2023 8:17 pm

Thank you, MaggieMae, and all my hearts giving readers. Your support feels great. As we all know, getting normal people (not language nerds from the forum) understand us in the offline world can be tricky :-D

Yeah, I feel much much better. Given the fact we are appartment hunting, and that even the official problems of moving to another canton seem not obvious (really, this country will never cease to surprise me), and I need to job hunt for 2024 etc... So getting this relief was necessary.

Btw appartment hunting is a nightmare. Appartments in a tiny "town" (=really a village imho) in the middle of nowhere, at the end of the world (ok, the train goes there, there are even isolated places without a train! Thanks God for a car!), but there are still 30 interested people per visit!!!!

I don't know whether I'll succeed in getting my refund. The school is really holding my money very strongly. Now I need to write a recommended letter to another bureau... Which is the last thing I'll try for this. I hope karma gets them. I wish the responsables to get into some bureaucratic impossible circle and suffer there for at least a month (stepping on a lego wouldn't be enough). I think they are really trying to make me give up.

But as an alternative, the person "taking care" of my case from the start is trying to be helpful, and is accessible to some options:
-a stupid alternative 1: transfer my prepaid money to my husband's learning. Nope, not a solution, and perhaps the same problem. He doesn't need more months of their classes up to B2 (the deadline is also motivating, we both need him functional asap), and he doesn't need 120/hour extra classes either. Nobody does.
-a very stupid alternative 2: give my money to "a friend", who will sign up, the school will transfer my money to their learning account, and the person give me the money back outside of the school :-D :-D :-D :-D nope, I am not gonna be your marketer, getting you another customer. Especially not as a reward for shitty business behaviour. This idea really made me laugh out loud, I hadn't expected this! I am in no mood to recommend them to anyone right now, in spite of liking their basic service up to B2, which is very good for my husband.

-a very partial solution (proposed by me, and the contact person agrees): if they don't give me my money back, they can at least postpone my remaining payments for 2 months (so that I am at least relieved now, that we need to move and have expenses). No other changement. But it would give me time to self study, and use the hours very differently later. If I use the time on my own well, I can use it much more efficiently, for example just for preparation before the C1 exam. It would still be the most expensive thing ever, but at least less of a waste and without the anxiety.

I will write that stupid recommended letter, I am really disgusted and the worst they can do is say "no". I won't be worse off. But for now, my classes are stopped, because the huge pressure on myself to make the very normal classes worth 120 franks, that was simply too much.
...................

But this decision is already bringing some fruits. Today, I signed up for the AI6WC!!! (Thanks to Badger for running it) and I've studied for an hour already!

Not sure how I'll stick to the chosen primary resources, I've already used something else instead (right now using the grammar part of Speexx as a review workbook), but who cares. The most important things are:
1. not to spread myself too thin (so, as long as I am doing one or two things per language, I am good)
2.to get again into the habit of learning German (anything done is a win).
3.disconnect German learning from anxiety and anger. "Thank you" for causing this, language school.

I am still gonna pass that stupid C1 exam this year. Because I will still need it professionally. I will apply for those awesome jobs in the germanophone Switzerland, just a year later. (After all, my generation is never gonna retire, so why worry so much about taking too long to specialise. I like it here, not like in Belgium, so I can take the time).
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MaggieMae
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:49 pm

Cavesa wrote:Thank you, MaggieMae, and all my hearts giving readers. Your support feels great. As we all know, getting normal people (not language nerds from the forum) understand us in the offline world can be tricky :-D

Anytime! You helped me through my C1 German nightmare, and the very last I can do is try and return the favor!

And I just like talking about languages... ;)

Cavesa wrote:Btw appartment hunting is a nightmare. Appartments in a tiny "town" (=really a village imho) in the middle of nowhere, at the end of the world (ok, the train goes there, there are even isolated places without a train! Thanks God for a car!), but there are still 30 interested people per visit!!!!

Apartment hunting here is the WORST!!! We got super lucky in our bitty village because grandma's best friend is the land lady and it wasn't even on the market yet. Like, it takes that level of "Vitamin B" to get anything even remotely good here. (B=Beziehung, or relationship, for those that don't German) And the Swiss definition of "town" vs "city" still weirds me out. IMO, Schaffhausen is a town. Winterthur is a small city, Zürich is medium sized. If your "town" has only one grocery store and that store doubles as the post office, it's a village. :lol:

Cavesa wrote:I am still gonna pass that stupid C1 exam this year. Because I will still need it professionally. I will apply for those awesome jobs in the germanophone Switzerland, just a year later. (After all, my generation is never gonna retire, so why worry so much about taking too long to specialise. I like it here, not like in Belgium, so I can take the time).

Yes you will! You got this! All the time in the world! Unfortunately true that we'll never retire, but hopefully that means we can take our time getting what we really want out of life first.
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby Cavesa » Mon Mar 20, 2023 8:49 pm

Learning at a snails pace (and mostly reviewing old grammar) but putting time in, as you can witness in the AI6WC thread. After all, I am now going thorugh a chain of four nightshifts, tonight is the final one. So, getting any learning done is something I'm proud of (while at the same time feeling ashamed about not doing much more. Nah, I don't make much sense at times).

A moment of pride: I caught my husband watching some documentary videos on youtube in French!!!!!! YAY!!!! He said it was an easy one and with very precise subtitles (or transcription. He was listening and reading French). It's a great start with normal media, awesome at A2 level.

Oh and my little sister, who some of you may remember from the German [s]torture[/s] success story, has finally completed her driver's licence, which leaves her slots of free time to prepare for a Goethe exam. Unfortunately, her normal German teachers are nowhere near as efficient as me (and they also need to respect some normal school schedule, unlike me), so she has been progressing slowly and is aiming for B1 only, which is still ok. It is sufficient to replace one of her highschool leaving exams next year, but not enough to bring points in university admissions (B2 and higher counts at her chosen faculties). Nevertheless, I am proud and gonna try to help a bit from afar.

Perhaps I'll inspire myself in the horrible Duolingo for once. Its notifications are famous in memes (too good work of their marketing team). So, I'll try to be even more intense. Random messages "Are you studying German right now?", tiny cute guilt trips with memes... there are also those tools for distance relationships, where you can turn lights on or make a bracelet vibrate. I should consider getting that, but rather giving mild electric shocks or something. :-D :-D :-D That Duo Bird will look like a cute puppy in comparison :-D :-D :-D

(btw I hope everyone got that I was joking... I'll just send her a huge box of tissues for German grammar induced tears)
...............................

Speaking of jokes: I don't think my recent one in Answers to Discussion topics got enough appreciation, so I'll narcistissisticaly quote myself (exceptionally) to rant about something:

Q: The age limit for studying
A: Oh, the booksellers are very strict. You are not supposed to study after 25. Enter the wrong parts of a bookstore too old, and this happens:
25-30: they frown at you
30-35: they politely try to return you to the fiction section in your own language
35-40: they start meaningfully playing with large blunt objects
after 40: RUN as fast as your crutches/wheelchair/walker allows!


Why do I find this funny: Everyday, I meet people 90+ and I am simply amazed at how age is relative. A few days ago, I had a patient who was 102 and still pretty automous, just very hard of hearing and very stubborn (but I guess that's a prerequisite for reaching such an age). This is one of the oldest countries in the world, so the experience is very different from my previous jobs, and just this would suffice for a long post. Some of the hyperold people still have very good minds, and it tends to correlate with how they've been training them in their lives (it is not the sole factor by far, but it matters). And let's not forget the bias, I meet mostly the ill people (the healthy don't need me), so there are more of the functioning and still ok ones around, than I'd guess.

But then I go to any language learning forum, or in any discussion offline, and people act as if 25-35 was "too old for learning a new language"!!!! WTH???

Yeah, some things are harder, especially time management, when you have tons of responsibilities in your 30's or your 50's, compared to an average kid. And yes, learning may go progressively slower. But still, there is nothing wrong with most brains at such an age, you are perfectly capable of learning stuff, especially something you enjoy. And a skill learnt at the age of 40 can still be enjoyed for 30 or more years.

My plan to learn two or three more langauges is therefore totally reasonable.

....................................

MaggieMae wrote:Anytime! You helped me through my C1 German nightmare, and the very last I can do is try and return the favor!
And I just like talking about languages... ;)

I didn't know I made such an impact. I am glad I helped a bit. German is really a beast, we need to forge strong alliances!


Apartment hunting here is the WORST!!! We got super lucky in our bitty village because grandma's best friend is the land lady and it wasn't even on the market yet. Like, it takes that level of "Vitamin B" to get anything even remotely good here. (B=Beziehung, or relationship, for those that don't German) And the Swiss definition of "town" vs "city" still weirds me out. IMO, Schaffhausen is a town. Winterthur is a small city, Zürich is medium sized. If your "town" has only one grocery store and that store doubles as the post office, it's a village. :lol:

Yes, this is horrible. Exasperating. I will try to ask an acquitance, whether she knows anyone.... But it still won't be a sufficient dose of Vitamine B. Let's hope the cute "Oh, I am a doctor, who will be healing people a few km from here" image will help :-D

Yep, the city X town x village x isolated place from a horror differences are weird here. The good side is, that even the villages here suck less than in most places in Europe. But some things are still the same. My dream of returning ot live in a real city (a few hundred thousand inhabitants at the very least, a nice one, with normal stuff like open libraries) is very far from me.
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby tiia » Tue Mar 21, 2023 6:28 am

Sometimes I think I should throw some (random) German comments into your log. But I won't do that unless you want that. :D

Cavesa wrote:But then I go to any language learning forum, or in any discussion offline, and people act as if 25-35 was "too old for learning a new language"!!!! WTH???

This is exactly what I think at times, too. Online and Offline realities can differ so much.
Online I feel almost like an alien how I learn etc. Offline instead it's one method out of several and no issue.

My parents both started Japanese when they were over 50. My dad even while working full-time and travelling a lot. It may not have been super successful in the end, but they definitely learned something!
(My mom did it for a year but had a very fast course, my dad learned it for five years but sometimes had to repeat a course every now and then, because he was learning slower than the young people there. And his business trips definitely caused problems with the schedule. - But in fact those business trips were what actually made both of them to even start Japanese in the first place.)
My grandma also started to learn English when she retired and I tried to help her somehow with that.

So my direct environment never gave me the impression that it may be impossible to learn after a certain age. In contrast, they were supporting to just try when I became interested in Finnish. (I think it was my mom telling me they had newly added a Finnish class to the evening school.)

But then there's the internet and discussions going often to extremes when they should not.

And I remember that some study even mentioned that the decline one sees in the language learning ability after age 18 may be mostly due to the changed schedule when leaving school. From my experience that is so much more important than the age itself. Looking at the courses I had, those having a harder time were more often those already working.. And I noticed too, that once I entered worklife, there was simply less time for language learning.
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:09 am

Definitely never too old to learn a new language! I'm teaching some grandmothers in my English classes right now, in fact!

As far as cities with libraries and a semi decent amount of people go, a good number of the Cantonal Capitals will fit at least the first qualification. Books can replace people sometimes, right? Right? :P Winterthur is actually one of my favorite cities here. Not too big, not too small, rather large library (although the in print English section definitely leaves something to be desired) with a huge e-book library collection (including a MUCH better English collection), and is surprisingly multicultural. Doesn't hurt that it's closer to me. ;)

And the passive aggressive guilt trip is definitely needed sometimes, even if I disagree with Duolingo a lot. It could help, or you could even try just getting the ego boost of zooming through all the checkpoints, since you're already past B2. I did that somewhere around C1. :lol: Warning: they translate "Gymnasium" as "College Prepatory School" which isn't wrong, but it isn't anything a native American English speaker would say. No clue if Brits would use it, but we don't have many prep schools in the US that aren't just recognized as high schools instead. It just felt weird.

Anywho, best of luck to your sister, and congrats to your husband! Ich drücke euch die Daumen!
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby Cavesa » Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:12 pm

tiia wrote:So my direct environment never gave me the impression that it may be impossible to learn after a certain age. In contrast, they were supporting to just try when I became interested in Finnish. (I think it was my mom telling me they had newly added a Finnish class to the evening school.)

But then there's the internet and discussions going often to extremes when they should not.

And I remember that some study even mentioned that the decline one sees in the language learning ability after age 18 may be mostly due to the changed schedule when leaving school. From my experience that is so much more important than the age itself. Looking at the courses I had, those having a harder time were more often those already working.. And I noticed too, that once I entered worklife, there was simply less time for language learning.


Those are great examples from your environment.

I've observed in my offline environment a sort of double standard. People believe that you can learn SOMETHING later in your life, they just usually don't think languages can be that something.

MaggieMae wrote:As far as cities with libraries and a semi decent amount of people go, a good number of the Cantonal Capitals will fit at least the first qualification. Books can replace people sometimes, right? Right? :P Winterthur is actually one of my favorite cities here. Not too big, not too small, rather large library (although the in print English section definitely leaves something to be desired) with a huge e-book library collection (including a MUCH better English collection), and is surprisingly multicultural. Doesn't hurt that it's closer to me. ;)


Books are friends.

I have yet to visit Winterthur. So far, I only had one patient, who had been treated there, so I had to get their documentation (I had to ask in German!). Gets on my list of places to visit. And who knows, perhaps to work/live in :-D I must admit those two categories are rather mixed up in my case :-D


And the passive aggressive guilt trip is definitely needed sometimes, even if I disagree with Duolingo a lot. It could help, or you could even try just getting the ego boost of zooming through all the checkpoints, since you're already past B2. I did that somewhere around C1. :lol: Warning: they translate "Gymnasium" as "College Prepatory School" which isn't wrong, but it isn't anything a native American English speaker would say. No clue if Brits would use it, but we don't have many prep schools in the US that aren't just recognized as high schools instead. It just felt weird.

It's funny you noticed this in it, not the joke of sending mild electric shocks to someone :-D

Only the passive aggressive guilt trip is to be taken from Duolingo. Definitely not the game. Actually, Duolingo was a bit part of one of my past failures to learn German and overall part of getting stuck. I though like what you say, just review etc. But it became procrastination and a huge waste of time.

The problem is, that the gamification can make you totally lose any sense of progress, because it is replacing real one with all those points and animations and leagues. It's one thing to artificially create some goals to facilitate the slower parts of progress, but totally different to replace that.

I already have enough review tools, that are on the rather foggy line between "useful review" and "procrastination". Duo would definitely fall to the second category, if I fell for this game again.

For now, I am glad to be back at learning German. But I need to challenge myself harder soon.

Anywho, best of luck to your sister, and congrats to your husband! Ich drücke euch die Daumen!

Thank you! Those two have had to accept me writing about them :-D I'll pass the messages.
.............................

Earlier today, I visited Salon du Livre à Genève!!!! I was so happy! So many books, and so many people with similarly happy faces just from being surrounded by books!!!

It is smaller than the usual bookfair in Prague, but I liked it perhaps a bit better. I think it shows, that Geneva is not a capital city, the size was appropriate.

There were several big sections, or themes: Swiss books, Africa, Arabic world, BDs, Kids' books. The rest was rather minority. Yes, there was Quebec and Belgian representation, but they were less huge, and there were individual publishers in between.

Curiously: there were no books in German or Italian. There were quite many in English, and a small stand in Spanish.

I bought several books, in spite of knowing Swiss books are so damn expensive! So, I limited myself in some ways. I look at the difference usually, I buy swiss specific stuff, etc. But I don't succeed always at being this rational :-D What I've got:
-Quantica by Laurence Suhner: swiss space opera written by a woman! 3 qualities I wanted in a book. I hope this will be a great gateway to the Swiss reading for me.
-Ceux qui changent by Aquilegia Nox (I guess an art name): Swiss fantasy, from a Swiss publisher specializing in it. I am not sure about this, but I want to try. I asked the seller, what her favourite book was, hoping she loved her work, she recommended this from their collection.
-Comment le dire à la nuit by Vincent Tassy: A french fantasy author using vampires, let's see how it goes.
-Comme une reine by Ernis: this doesn't fall into what you're used to in my logs. Not fantasy, not scifi, not thriller, not crime... It is a serious book that got Prix Voix d'Afriques. Une camerounaise moves from the city to the village, gets between traditions, modernity, I am curious. Again an author-woman, telling a story about strongwomen. I met her at the bookfair. This is my introduction to african literatures, as I must admit there's a huge hole in my knowledge.
-Féminismes Africains, une histoire décoloniale. Twenty interviews by Rama Salla Dieng with various women active in the fight for women's rights. I've believed for a long time that feminisme will change Africa for the better, but my knowledge of the issues is rather superficial. I hope to widen my horizons here
-Atlas historique de l'Afrique by Bernard Lugan: Again an unusual choice in my case. But it is mostly maps and introductory chapters about tons of historical events and facts and ties on the continent. In our globalised and postcolonial world, I don't think most Europeans should go around without knowledge of the african history. I may be more informed than many, but that just shows how little we overall care about general knowledge as a society. I have a lot to learn

I also took photos of a dozen other books that I couldn't afford to add to the pile today :-D
Last edited by Cavesa on Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby Le Baron » Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:22 pm

Cavesa wrote:I've observed in my offline environment a sort of double standard. People believe that you can learn SOMETHING later in your life, they just usually don't think languages can be that something.

Yes, I noted something similar in that thread I started about age:
I wrote:On the whole though, people tend to believe they can learn things like joinery, a computer language, pottery, hang gliding even mathematics. Are all these different from language learning?

No-one bats an eyelid if you say you're going to learn something new. In fact the older you are everyone starts cheering and encouraging you....except languages and musical instruments. People will say 'great and good luck!', but silently they're thinking "no chance old-timer!" ;)
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby tastyonions » Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:01 pm

MaggieMae wrote:Warning: they translate "Gymnasium" as "College Prepatory School" which isn't wrong, but it isn't anything a native American English speaker would say. No clue if Brits would use it, but we don't have many prep schools in the US that aren't just recognized as high schools instead. It just felt weird.

Not sure how common it is across the US, but "college preparatory school" is definitely a used phrase. In my neck of the woods (Dallas), Jesuit College Preparatory School is the best-known.
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Re: Smelling the coffee in 2023

Postby Nogon » Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:54 pm

Cavesa wrote:-Comme une reine by Ernis: this doesn't fall into what you're used to in my logs. Not fantasy, not scifi, not thriller, not crime... It is a serious book that got Prix Voix d'Afriques. Une camerounaise moves from the city to the village, gets between traditions, modernity, I am curious.

That sounds interesting. Especially the fact that the protagonist moves from the city to a village piques my interest, as more often it's a move from the countryside to a city. The library just received a purchase proposal. :D
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