Garda's English Blog

 The best way to prepare for a good paying job is to be well educated. It's not just enough to become knowledgeable or certified in the career you want to pursue, you need to learn a skill set that sets you apart from others and makes you valuable to employers. Become flexible, strive to be irreplaceable. Having a diverse skill set is also only half the battle though. You need connections, or to find the people you want to be employed by. Schools can get you in touch with partners, and you can go to job fairs. Today in class we watched a video about living on minimum wage. I hope I never find myself in a situation where I have no other choice to work minimum wage, and although the future is uncertain I will work hard so that I can be prepared to live a good life.

 Back when Tiktok was banned a lot of Americans moved to the Chinese social media app RedNote. This led to a lot of American and Chinese socialization, and I got to hear a lot of stories about how both the USA and China was mischaracterized. The US had pushed anti-communism propaganda for so long, it was a shock to learn that China was not this miserable government repressed, mean country. At the same time, the Chinese were shocked to hear how expensive our groceries and housing were, and how hard we worked. Limiting ourselves to one perspective can create harmful and untrue understandings of other people. To avoid these limited views we should try to get perspectives from both sides of the story. I think direct communication, like RedNote, does a good job of doing that. Today in class we read about the single story. I remember I've actually done this lesson in the past before, but going over it again made me think about things I've mostly forgotten about. 

 Mastering precise vocabulary can positively impact your daily communication and academic success in many ways. For one, it makes you sound smarter, which is a benefit to your schoolwork and communication in professional settings. It also makes you better at expressing your thoughts, which is good in day to day conversations and your writing for school.  Today in class we learned more vocabulary. I appreciate the simpleness of the lessons, it is a good way to start your week. Some of the harder words I don't remember what they mean always though. Also, as a follow up from my last post the mastery band made a perfect score at our LGPE. :)

 When I become an adult I think I will prefer living in the city. Cities tend to host more people who have similar views to my own, and it is very important to me that I live in an area where I am not alienated. Cities also have more things to do, and have better public transport. I used to live in a suburb in Idaho and the only thing you could do there is shop at Walmart or go to an escape room? Unless I start a family I have no aspirations to buy a huge house where I might want to move to a suburb for. Today in class we did commonlit. I also finished the commonlit I missed yesterday, since I missed class because I had to go perform with the intermediate band at LGPE. If you were curious how the band did, it was not great. That was to be expected though, and I know I will perform much better with the mastery band tonight.

 Out of the vocabulary words in lesson 13, nubile resonated with me the most. I think I have seen the word used before, particularly in fantasy books where they marry some 14 year old girl off to an old lord. I do not like this word, I think it is a gross description. Marriageable age? Just say she's a young woman. "Nubile" feels so objectifying and male-centered.  Today in class we finished vocabulary lesson 13. These words were more alien to me, I don't think I've heard the majority of them before. Some make sense though, like onus and onerous. 

 A time when failure was necessary for growth was when I was learning how to play trombone. You have to be willing to play weird sounding stuff and to have your mistakes be heard or else you can't get better. If you play too quietly you'll grow bad habits, plus your teacher won't be able to hear you and give you advice. If you don't come in confidently then you'll always miss that first note and you won't sound good. If you don't try to learn how to read music then you won't learn either.  I wasn't here today in class. It was nice writing while listening to other orchestras perform though.