litnerd

[litnerd]

Study update - semester break (feb/march 2025)

Hey ho y'all. I haven't updated in a while so here's what's been going on:

- somehow survived all my exams. Got a 2.7, a 1.3 and a 1.7 in German and a 4.0 (pass) in the only English literature course I was taking (more about that later lol)

- I passed my German sign language exam

- I'm now taking an online Korean course and it's still a lot of fun learning Korean. I will probably do the higher level one too once I've finished this one.

So, let's continue with what my next university semester shall look like once the break ends in April. These are my courses (after page break) :

- German main lecture

- German linguistics 1.2 (seminar)

- German Mediävistik (medieval German) (seminar)

- medieval German lecture

- German literature (seminar)

- German sign language 2 (lecture)

- German sign language 2 (seminar)

- Medieval English (basically swapped modules to take this instead of semantics and pragmatics, which was the course I dropped out of last year. A man gotta admit his defeat...)

- Medieval English (lecture)

- British Cultural studies (lecture)

As you can see there are quite a few lectures awaiting me next semester... and my attitude towards lectures has never been good. I tend to just. Not go.

Remember how I wanted to talk about my 4.0 in my English literature exam, which was an insane close call? Yeah. I went to 2 lectures and paid attention to...like...half of ONE of the lectures. I studied day and night for 2 weeks straight to somehow squeeze all the information in my head and SOMEHOW I managed to pass even though I hadn't read any of the books we were supposed to read. In German we call this Bulimielernen aka you stuff yourself with information to puke them out during the exam and forget about them immediately once the exam is done. It's always been my problem that I do this. I'm the king of procrastination and it tends to somehow work out for me (I'm very good at memorizing things, have always been great at vocabulary tests for example) but this time it was extremely, extremely uncomfortable and nerve wracking. I don't want to repeat these two weeks ever again in my life. Never. I also feel like this way of consuming information is slowly but surely ruining my ability to remember anything at all. Might also be adhd but I have serious concentration issues.

So with this disclaimer. Here comes my plan for next semester (and the preperation before the semester)

Preperation:

- go through all the old sign language slides to refresh my knowledge before the course starts

- fix my sleep schedule. YES I AM STILL AT IT but I know I can do it. I've done it before.

Semester:

- read all the books for cultural studies immediately

- go to all the lectures (or at least!! to medieval English, medieval German and British Cultural studies!)

- do homework

- prepare for seminars (it makes it so much easier, I noticed that during my German literature seminar last semester and I'm doing the same thing for Korean atm cause attending the lessons would be way too stressful if I didn't do it)

- do sign language exercises regularly

- start preparing for exams at least 3 weeks prior (this plus going to the lectures is kind of the most important point. 3 weeks isn't that long but for me personally it's the max time I've ever spend in preperation for any exam (my A-levels) so it has to suffice for now.)

So. Yup. There we are. Idk when you'll get the next update but this is it for now. See you!

[litnerd]

Study update

It's the middle of the night but my schleeping schedule is horrible atm (I will fix it at some point I swear...) so I might as well update.

Before christmas I finally managed to hand in my term paper... Didn't have a super great feeling about it (mostly cause I really had no idea if anything I had done was any good, that was my first term paper ever after all...) but got back AMAZING results. I got a 1.0, which is an A and almost the best grade you can get!! (unless you get a 0.9 or something but that shit's rare, one of my teachers in grammar school said they'd never give a 0.9 unless the student writes something that even the teacher didn't know about yet :'))

I dropped out of one of my courses because I realized I just couldn't handle it. It stressed me out and I didn't understand anything (I'm not the only one who dropped out though, so I guess it's not just a me-issue). Now I'm muche more relaxed and actually able to handle the work load of the other courses :')

I started learning Korean (aka teaching myself, watching videos and stuff...) why, you may ask? Because I f*cking wanted to. Idk how long this will hold but damn I'm interested in it. It's quite cool cause every language I've learned before (besides English) I didn't really like. Took French classes cause a friend took them (I hate French. I don't like the sound of it at all), took Latin classes cause I wanted to drop out of French, etc... The Korean script (hangul) is especially interesting to me (it's so logical, I love logical things) and the main reason I'm looking into this. Idk if I'll ever even be able to make simple conversation (mostly cause I put knots in my tongue trying to pronounce "ㄹ" ...) but maybe I'll at least be able to write some Korean. We'll see. I ordered a Grammar book and one for practicing Korean handwriting. :)

Deleting Tiktok and Instagram was the best decision ever. I feel like my brain has woken up from a year-long slumber and now it's hungry and wants to consume everything. I love feeling productive like this.

[litnerd]

Update on studies (weeks 2-6)

Yup I realize I've not updated in a while. I've been to London for a few days, been sick two times in the course of a month (my immune system is so shitty that I've decided to go back to wearing a mask in lectures) and am now insanely stressed trying to work through every bit of homework that built up during that time :')

A little update on goals I've set for myself just so that I don't lose sight of what I want to do:

- Practice sign language every day.

I actually love the course, it's very fun but I keep only repeating the exercises a day before or on the same day as the course. I wanna do at least 15 minutes of sign language practice every day.

- Finish my term paper.

Yeah, I still haven't finished it simply cause I haven't had enough energy to actually sit down and do it between or after classes. I need a free day, which is hopefully gonna be this thursday, to actually sort out everything. I hope I'll finish it until the 9th of December.

- Stop watching youtube (until the term paper is done). I've successfully gotten off of Instagram, Tiktok etc. but now it sometimes happens I watch YouTube videos for an hour instead of doing something else. And honestly even if I can't concentrate on something productive I'd rather sleep. Or read a book. Or write. Honestly, fuck passive entertainment.

- Go to bed 11 pm latest.

My sleep schedule reverted back to being horrible because I keep texting friends once I don't have classes out of fomo and text them until like 2 in the morning.

That's it. Hopefully once I'm less stressed you'll get a more detailed update. :)

[litnerd]

Second week of lectures update (28.10.-30.10.)

This week is cut rather short cause the 31st is Reformationstag in Germany, so, a public holiday (and I don't have lectures on Fridays anyway).

Update on classes

I now have had all introductory classes to my German seminars and so far everything seems very chill. The teachers are nice and I don't think the courses will be too hard. My finals will be one written test and one oral test, plus I gotta do a presentation in one of them and write a protocol about one of the lessons in the other. In the third there is going to be some assignments, but not regular ones as in semantics and pragmatics. It's gonna be fine :)

I also had my first scenic writing class and it's the same teacher as my acting class, so that's also totally chill. He's a very funny person and lessons with him are very comfortable. I'm thrilled to see what we're gonna learn next time as this was just yet another introduction to the course. It sort of bothers me that the first classes are so slow tbh. Like. Lectures have started. Let me learn. Teach me something!

On the weekend I was busy reading texts regarding the term paper in the library but since my deadline has been moved to "whenever" I'm not stressed about it at all. I also got a few books I still got to work through but I reckon I will do all of this next week and on the weekends. I really want to hand it in on the 15th of November so I don't drag it into my christmas holidays.

Plans for today

- Do this week's Semantics and Pragmatics assignment

- Check out which texts to read, for both my German medieval studies and my English literature classes

- Go to my second DGS class! This is exciting!

[litnerd]

First week of lectures (21.10. - 24.10.) update

Hm well, I guess it's not gonna be daily updates with me after all :') but I'll try to update you as often as somehow possible.

There's some great news regarding my term paper-- after consulting my teacher she allowed me to extend the deadline/ ignore the deadline. This means I can do all this in my own time without getting horrible backpains from being hunched over in front of my notebook, working in the library for hours on end. Still, I want to finish it till the middle of November to get it out of the way so I can better concentrate on the rest of my classes.

Today's plan:

Today I will go to the library of the Seminar of English Philology (it's the coziest library 'on' campus) to work on an assignment.

Some background info for those who are interested:

In my semantics & pragmatics course we have to do weekly assignments (each will give us 4 points) which will then be added to the points we get in the final exam (adding up to a 100 points max), which is a take-home exam. I took syntax last semester and I'm so glad that semantics & pragmatics doesn't have a midterm exam and the final isn't an open book exam that you have to complete in 90 minutes! It takes a lot of weight off my shoulders.

You must know that I take a loooot of courses this semester. I have more than 30 credits (you're supposed to take courses between 28-30 credits, because they would make up 40 hours of work per week, homework time etc. included) so every course that doesn't have a super complicated final exam is a big relief!

New courses

So, I only visited 2 other lectures so far (many things only start next week): the introduction to German sign language (DGS) and one on the early modern literary period of English writing (yeiz, Shakespeare!).

I also visited two seminars: German sign language practice and my acting course.

The acting course was fun, even though there hadn't been any acting yet! The teacher said it would take too long pushing all the tables to the sides so we would start by getting to know each other a little bit. We introduced ourselves with names & the subjects we study (in my case English literature and culture and 'Germanistik') and then we played a looong round of 2 truths 1 lie, which was quite entertaining. The teacher explained to us how warming up before acting (which is what a big portion of this class is going to be about) is incredibly important and sometimes the only way to manage a play when you feel stuck otherwise. Sometimes the only way to get out of your head and manage to give the best performance is by starting at the very bottom and making your way up. I never thought about it this way, mostly cause I'm horrible at all the warm up shenanigans... It's gonna be interesting to see if I'll improve at all, though. Our final ist going to be basically a diary we have to keep about the course, which is going to be an easy pass! I mean I'm quite literally writing the diary right now already, aren't I?

The sign language course was very fun as well! I never thought about the fact that for a person who speaks German sign language, German would be their secondary language. Signers (those of them who were born deaf) can often write and read German (or whatever spoken language they grew up with) but it's more complicated for them because sign language has very short and direct sentences. As you might know if you read "the horrible German language" by Mark Twain... German is the complete opposite of short and direct. We tend to put our verbs at the end of the sentence (though not all the time) which means you work through a very long sentence having to remember the entire content of it until you FINALLY get to the verb so you know what the sentence actually is about... Sign language has different grammar in general- I didn't know that either! It does make complete sense, but I just never thought about it. And there are different dialects of sign language, even inside Germany. There are minor differences between those dialects such as how they sign colours or the days of the week.

Our teacher is deaf herself and for our first session there was a sign interpretor, translating everything she signed into German and anything we asked her into DGS. From next week on the translator won't be there anymore, so we won't be able to speak German to her unless we write down our questions on the board... Scary, but also kind of cool! She can write German, too, so she will probably give us our exercises via power point presentation. Our final exam in this course will be an "oral" test, aka we gotta practice some signing (it's not going to be extremely hard since it's a beginners course) like signing our names, using the finger alphabet, saying "hello" and "how are you" etc. Just the very basics. We tried doing the finger alphabet already this time and I felt like I was tangling my fingers into a knot :') I have absolutely no idea what my hand is doing when I don't look at it lol!

Anyways, that's it guys. See ya!

[litnerd]

First daily update, Monday 21.10.24

First lecture wasn't super interesting due to the fact I changed my course of study. It was the first lecture for new university students and I, since I'm already in third semester, didn't learn/need to learn much. But I'm excited about starting to study German as well as English and looking forward to next week's lecture! :D

After an extended nap (and contemplating all of my life choices) I started working on my term paper. Maybe "working" is a bit of an overstatement because I only did things like figuring out which font size to use, which spacing etc. I need for it and other formal requirements. I want to found an MLA hate club, please... whY is it so complicated to make a bibliography using MLA... thanks to whomever that word has the option of doing it for you, this is -literally- saving my life atp!!

Tomorrow I'll buy some groceries in the morning (running out of food is an adult thing I really haven't gotten used to yet, despite having moved out of my parents house a year ago), attend my first English seminar this semester and go to my acting class (which is 07:00-10:00, so pretty late...)

Somewhere in between I gotta continue on the term paper :') we'll see how I manage.

Today is gonna be the first night of 7h30 sleep to fix my sleeping rhythm, so, good night! 💚

[litnerd]

Today has been my first day of lectures and I'm motivated to finally start to study "right". I get good grades, so I haven't done horrible so far but I want to change the way I study fundamentally. I want to easily feel prepared for every final, every test, every presentation by studying and learning while lectures are still on, not only right before the test/presentation comes up. I want to feel smart and actually remember the things I'm studying instead of cramming the day before a test and forgetting everything right after I sat it.

For now, this is my plan:

Read textbook chapters BEFORE the lectures so it's easier to follow the lecturers.

Revise every lecture for at least 10 minutes, every seminar for at least 20 minutes on the same day.

When you get a task - do it immediately once you get home, no matter the due date. No procrastinating!

Use the 30/10 method - 30 minutes studying, 10 minutes break (either rest, or do something productive like cleaning... Nothing with content that distracts your brain).

Sleep 7h30 or 9h every night

No other social media allowed than tumblr, reddit and youtube (I've already deleted tiktok, instagram and twitter- no short form content!)

So far I think that's it. I'm currently working on a term paper that's due on the 31st of October (I'll have to upload it on the 29th latest though, because I'll be in London from the 31st till the 4th) which is officially my last bit of work I need to do for last semester... And then we can jump right into this fresh one! ... I got some seriously awesome courses this time (like scene writing for theatre, acting practice, German Sign Language...) which I'm sure I will update about loads. See ya!