“Give Yourself Time” 🌙

sunday, august 2nd

finally moved out of my first college apartment! honestly if there’s anything i’ve learned from living with roommates is that i really need to get to know their cleaning style before rooming with them bc i keep getting really messy roommates :(

but on a better note, i finally finished my japanese AA degree!

2020, August

I wrote and deleted the caption about ten times, but I’m just going to say it: I haven’t been feeling well recently. The fact I failed all my exams in June again - and meanwhile most of my friends are finishing their bachelor degrees - makes me feel overwhelmed and like a failure. All I wanted to do in life was go to university, but is it really worth it all this pain and loathing? I try not to linger too much on this question right now, and I fill my days with studying and working. It’s the best solution for now, but I guess at some point I will have to face the reality of things and decide whether I should drop out and do something about my future. I still love studying physics, but maybe it really isn’t for me.

I’m supposed to be doing an English comparison grid right now but my motivation has failed me... 💕✨

🎧 two punks in love 🎧

12:04 | Oxford Bookstore, New Delhi.

I read a piece on Pinterest and could not agree more. It said 'Every book you read changes you; changes how you think, what you say, how you act, or how you look at the world. If a book doesn't change something about you then it has failed at being a book.'

This is so true.

9/100 days of productivity ✨

Achievements:

Did some chemistry revision

Tidied my room a little

Ate healthily today

Did some maths past papers

Edited my drama moments for the final time

Read some more of my book Cinder

Not a whole lot done today but not terrible 🥰✨

My Favourite Youtube Channels for Studying Languages 🌷

 - innerFrench -

innerFrench is a channel ran by Hugo Cotton, a French teacher situated in Poland. Hugo is a native French speaker and speaks only in this language on his channel - you will never hear a word of English! Even when he explains the meanings of more obscure French words, he still uses French to both convey the word’s meaning, and enable his viewers to continue practicing their comprehension skills. The French Hugo uses is slow, clear and easy to understand for intermediate speakers. Begginners will also find this channel useful as a way to immerse themselves in the language. Hugo focuses on explaining different aspects of French culture in his videos, with a foreign target audience in mind. Since he is both a French teacher, and has had to learn Polish, it’s fair to say that Hugo understands the struggles of learning a foreign language and so is able to help his viewers improve their French skills in a suitable way. This is by far my favourite channel for learning French and I truly believe it has helped me a lot over the years!

- The Purple Palace -

The Purple Palace is a channel ran by Shayna Klee, an artist from the US who moved to Paris for art school. She makes videos in both English and French, often combining the two. When she speaks in French, she always includes English subtitles so that beginners don’t feel lost. Most of Shayna’s videos are vlogs in which she talks about art (which is incredible btw), fashion, French lifestyle / culture and her own personal life. She is quite open about her personal life which definitely makes her viewers feel more close to her as a person. What makes Shayna’s channel so unique is her artwork. I have never seen anything like it before! Seeing her creations makes learning French so much more enjoyable. If you love art or French culture you must explore this channel!

- Easy German -

This is my favourite channel to use for learning German. The hosts of Easy German just seem so sweet and every video puts me in such a positive mood. The Easy Languages network make videos on a range of languages (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Polish, Greek, English, Russian, Turkish and many more) and the main premise of their videos is to “learn from the streets”. Most of their videos consist of street interviews with native speakers on various topics. This, of course, is a great way of learning because you get to hear conversational phrases, different accents and see different parts of the world. What makes Easy German so special is definetely the hosts. The channel has several hosts but the two main ones seem to be Cari and Janusz who just seem so lovely. Idk why but it seems like everyone they interview is always so friendly and sweet. It definetly breaks the stereotype that Germans are cold and distant. Easy German also make videos about grammar, vocab and any other things about German which they feel are important to point out. Another thing about this channel is that they don’t just focus on Germany - they also have videos situated in Austria and videos that talk about Swiss German and Austrian German.

- Spanish After Hours -

This channel reminds me of innerFrench as the host (Laura) speaks only in Spanish. Like Hugo from innerFrench, Laura uses a clear, slow register that makes it very easy for intermediate speakers to comprehend. Laura is a native Spanish speaker from Spain and so, if you are looking to speak Castilian Spanish, her accent is perfect to take inspiration from. Her videos are usually shorter than those at innerFrench which might help viewers who find it hard to concentrate for long periods of time. Laura’s videos are very diverse. In some she reads Spanish children’s stories, in others she does ASMR and sometimes she focuses on vocabulary. Nevertheless, her videos are always enjoyable and have definetly helped me with my Spanish listening skills recently.

- Parpalhon Blau -

This channel focuses on the Occitan language which is definetly a language which has very few learning resources. Occitan is a minority language, referring to several dialects spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Northern Spain and Western Italy. It is a romance language which has very close ties to Catalan. On Parpalhon Blau (which means blue butterfly), Gabrièu teaches his viewers how to pronounce Occitan words and helps them to improve their listening skills, catering for both beginners and intermediate learners. Before finding this channel, I had never even heard of Occitan but after hearing how beautiful it sounds, I just had to subscribe. Often with smaller languages like Occitan, the learning resources are very limited and the ones that do exist aren’t really the best quality. Parpalhon Blau however, is a great channel and the perfect introduction to the language.

- Langfocus -

On Langfocus, Paul makes videos surrounding an incredible range of languages. He has videos on almost every language I can think of! the chances are, if you are studying a language, Paul will have made a video about it. I genuinely cannot understand how one person can know so much about so many languages. Most of his videos focus on individual languages or dialects, however, he also has some very interesting ones in where he compares two languages together, highlighting the differences and similarities between them, whilst also explaining the reasons behind this. In each video, Paul aims to give a good overview of the language, discussing it’s origins, pronounciation, alphabet and grammar. Sometimes these videos can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know anything at all about the language so I mostly use his videos to learn more about languages I am already studying or as an introduction to a language I want to study in the future. 

- JuLingo -

This channel is quite similar to Langfocus in the way that Julie mostly focuses on a different language per video, offering a general overview of it. Julie tends to focus on smaller languages, like Ainu and Basque that people may not know a lot about rather than more popular languages like Spanish and French. Julie’s channel is a great way of exploring new languages that you may have never thought to learn before. Like Paul from Langfocus, she doesn’t just talk about grammar and sentence structure, she also includes information on the language’s origins, which I personally find fascinating. 

- Ecolinguist -

On Ecolinguist, Norbert challenges native speakers of different languages to try and understand a language foreign to them. Through these experiments, he reveals how similar and how different languages are to one another. Usually, he chooses speakers of the same language family as the language which they are listening to and, being a viewer, you are invited to test yourself too. As a native English speaker, I particularly enjoyed discovering how much Old English I could decipher but also since I speak intermediate French and Spanish, I was able to test myself against Latin, Italian, Romanian and Lombard too. Since Norbert is Polish, he also makes videos focused on learning Polish, mostly regarding speaking and listening. Another series Norbet has is his guess the language challenge, in which a guest is presented with audios of language from anywhere in the world and has to guess it. Although I am very bad at these theyre always fun to watch. Its incredible how skilled his guests are!

Day 70/100 days of productivity ☕️🌙

Finally committed to a paper bullet journal! It looks pretty good so far and I’m super proud! It’s really therapeutic to fill out. I also got most of my jobs done today! There were a few I missed but I’ll get them finished tomorrow ☺️✨☕️

14th July - Have your plans changed at all because of the pandemic?

Yep! I was supposed to do GCSEs this year but those have been forgotten :/ it’s nice to not do exams but it feels kind of anticlimactic and a bit like the work I did for the last two years DIDNT end up being used properly. However! It did mean I got to relax on my birthday instead of revising, every cloud ⛅️ ☺️✨☕️

Day 44/100 days of productivity

Achievements:

Finished writing the first draft of my language project

Annotated some of my research sources

Set up a new morning routine

Read 4 chapters of my book

Started reading “the miracle morning”

Had an alright day today, feeling a lot better recently ☺️

Warning: not studyblr content

Okay, I don’t have many followers but I want to say something all the same. Right now? We’re living on a planet tht is slowly being destroyed and for some reason everyone is ignoring it.

It feels like no matter what we do, people are just going to see us as crazy, idiots, silly kids. I’m sick of it.

The Dakota pipeline at Standing Rock leaked GALLONS of oil. EXACTLY what everyone said it would do. But rich capitalists seem to have the crazy idea that they can continue to exploit the Earth and all the people with it with zero consequences. And that crazy idea is RIGHT. We MADE it right, WE buy the tech they produce, WE forget to boycott and WE are the ones that don’t make a big enough impact.

We aren’t the villains, but there’s no kid with superpowers to save this dystopian nightmare world. In this book, the uprising begins with us.

Studyblr intro!

Hi I'm Amy, I'm 17 and I am studying 3 A Levels and I use she/her pronouns

About me

I take history, politics and art

I want to do a history/politics course at university

Virgo

INFP

British

My interests

Books

Culture

Languages

Eurovision

Baking

History