sctroyenne: French, Irish, Spanish (new beginnings?)

[sctroyenne]

Just passing through and I noticed it's been a *really* long time since I've updated anything at all. This may be my longest hiatus yet. I don't have tons of language-related news, mainly because I was in the thick of job hunting when I last posted and I became distracted by...my NEW JOB! It took a while for it to go through but I'm so happy it did because it's basically a dream job: as in, after readjusting my childhood expectations for what work could be as the realities of adulthood hit I never expected that anything labeled a "dream job" could possibly exist. But this is a job that child/teenage me would have thought was really cool even though I didn't know it existed back then (or even a year ago before I found the job listing).

I'm working in the music industry and while I wasn't specifically hired for tech/data position there are SO many opportunities to put what I've learned/been learning about data science, Python, etc into practice. It's a position where I could basically keep the same/similar title long term (my whole career even) but continue to discover, learn new things, hone my skills and help improve the business overall. A job for life is another thing I didn't think existed anymore either and I didn't know if there was possibly anything I'd really *want* to be doing for life. In addition, it's a good middle ground between small and large business in terms of company culture, I have great coworkers, plus there are music industry-related perks. Soon we'll be planning for keeping me in Canada and if all goes through I'll finally be settled (*fingers crosssed*/*knock on wood*).

Given all that, I've been focused on my data science studies, continuing to learn bass, and enjoying life in general (especially Montreal during summer). And one drawback is that my office tends a lot towards English so I haven't been getting a lot of French lately outside of bass lessons which I'll have to remedy.

But to anyone who has been studying languages with the hopes that it will help you achieve a big goal in life (such as immigration), keep at it! Don't get discouraged by your goals being 1/3/5/10 years down the line, just keep plugging away at something and you'll get somewhere (even if it's not where you originally thought you were headed). And don't be afraid to take a leap to get the life you really want - sometimes you just have to act and let things sort themselves out afterwards. Anyone who has followed my log here and at HTLAL can see all the different twists and turns it took for me to get to this point and I never seriously could have imagined six years ago when I had to come back home from France what my life would be like now. Big thanks to my middle school band director who had us play Phantom of the Opera which led to a fangirl obsession of musical theatre which led to me taking French in high school which led to me taking the language back up several times in my life which led to me going to France plus a lot of other random life choices that led me to this point.

[sctroyenne]

Me updating right after the new year is just a coincidence, I swear. Things are still going well in Montreal and at my job. We're working on making sure I can stay right now. I'll have to retake my French exam as my previous one is now expired but my application is different having job experience here: I just need to show I know a minimum of French rather than maximize my score for points.

I'm focusing a lot on my data science studies as my work is obviously liking the insights it brings and I find I'm really motivated by it. I even hopped over to some R (after learning Python) as I found some good topic courses in it that delve more into stats, regression, and text mining. I can now confidently say that parallels between foreign languages and programming languages are vastly overstated. Learning a new programming language is nothing like a new actual language - especially if they're like-languages used for the same thing like R and Pandas for Python (you do run into different programming concepts when you use languages for different tasks, which I get a taste of when doing R/Python-wrapped front end libraries, for example.

Related to work, I have a new suggestion for a career path for those who want to be able to match their passion for languages and cultures with their career: music publishing (and the music industry in general). A lot of the music industry by necessity will be international since music from any culture is bound to be consumed around the world and so will be marketed worldwide and will bring in income streams around the world. Simple things like having some language knowledge to understand music societies in other countries, especially in major media markets and being able to recognize names and basic vocabulary in world music catalogs (adding a catalog with a bunch of Thai music to our catalog was fun...) are useful for day-to-day stuff. At a deeper level, as one of the jobs of music publishers is to pitch the music they represent to be used in media (sync licensing), having an understanding of media in other countries is big which is something language enthusiasts nowadays tend to pick up from seeking out media in their target languages. Understanding the major channels, popular alternative channels (like Netflix or a popular local equivalent), knowing major films/series and how they export - such as how telenovelas are consumed across Latin America or understanding the reach of Bollywood films, being able to communicate with music supervisors directly (or with a local subpublisher) in order to pitch music, understanding cultural intersections of music and media beyond everyone consuming major American media, etc is all really good insight to have. Also understanding how people in different countries consume media: do they spend money on their media, do they have good data plans that let them stream lots of stuff, do they have Spotify/YouTube or are there local equivalents that are more popular, are royalties being collected from the entities they're consuming media from and if not, what's the likelihood royalties can be collected in the near future, etc. In addition to all that, there are tons of music industry conferences around the world (and film/TV/cultural conferences that are relevant to music people) . There's all kinds of fascinating stuff to consider and people who are inclined towards wanting to understand whole other cultures might find that their knowledge can be really relevant to the industry. At the same time the music industry is always looking to expand into international markets and lacking this knowledge can really hamper their chances (especially in markets like East Asia). As I always say, be creative and look out for opportunities to make whatever niche interest/skill you have relevant to your work and you just might stumble onto something.

Hopefully this new year I'll seek out more opportunities to continue exploring Montreal/Quebec/Canada, meet new people, and bring some language practice back into my life. With data science studies keeping me busy there's less time but sooner or later I'll have to start learning all this material in French (time for a stats class in French?).

Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for all your projects this year, language-related and not!

[sctroyenne]

Just a short update:

A few months ago I had to start the process of applying for permanent residency to be able to stay in Canada. As I’ve been here through a temporary work visa I applied through the Projet d’expérience québécoise (PEQ) which requires one year cumulative of work with one or more Quebec employers and to pass the oral comprehension and speaking portions of a French test with level B2 or higher. I took the TEFAQ which I preferred to the TCF Quebec I took a few years ago (they consider results to be expired after two years even if it’s the DELF/DALF). I can post more in depth about that later.

It was all quite stressful since there are two applications to make: one to Quebec to qualify for residency under their immigration program and one to the federal government that would grant a new temporary work permit allowing you to stay and work while waiting for the federal PR application to be processed. The timing had to work out just right with my work permit due to expire. At the beginning of the summer my provincial application was approved and I received my Certificat de sélection du Québec (CSQ). Then at the beginning of this month I received my new temporary work permit meaning I can legally stay a few more years and now I’m going to work on my application to Canada for permanent residency. The hard part’s over, this last step is just paperwork and waiting - it’ll take about one and a half to two years going by wait times for others. In the meantime I get to start installing myself here permanently: new apartment, furniture, a cat, etc. For the first time in my adult life I’m permanent!