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Learning to Breathe — Leo's Fourth Blog

 RAHHHHHHHHHHH!



Today marks the day of the fourth blog! The entirety of the weeks following the last blog was all about learning about essays and learning about time management, because we had way too many suspensions on a supposedly normal Monday morning. Regardless, I have learnt a lot over the interval of these blogs. Although, I doubt I can remember the specifics, like Janek in his blog. Let's see as we go through the menagerie of random thoughts I've cultivated over AEP class!

We'll start off with the spotlight of the class: the project. DUN, DUN, DUN! On a duration of 10 days, we had learned how to ... drum roll ... breathe! Using an app, named "Balance", we had to do a course where we learnt meditative skills. It was difficult during the first session (yes, breathing was difficult), since I was often stressed and hated feeling like I was spending time doing something that would waste precious minutes, but it was my grade, so I had to do it. The project was an overall struggle, only because I was worrying about the wretched exams every time I tried to meditate for only 5 minutes. It was just me screaming in my head, "BREATHE IN! BREATHE OUT!" over and over and over again. Of course, I didn't have the expectation that I'd be a monk in the midst of the Chinese mountains doing nothing but saying "Ommmmm, Ommmmm" for the rest of my life, but I had expected me to be able to at least enter some sort of plane of spirituality and silence my thoughts. As I moved forward with the project, it began to come through easier—breathing became easier. It's safe to say, with all the people that had barged into my room during it, that I was successful in transforming into the Chinese monk! Also, I was the first one to finish out of all grades, woo!

Jokes aside, though, I did learn some meditative skills to help me when I slept. Nowadays, I try doing breathing techniques to aid my slumbers, and it helps to some sort of extent. I still have my troubles falling asleep, so it's not perfect, but at least better than nothing.

The project alone was finding a needle in a haystack (yes, breathing was very difficult), but when we had the midterms, I felt like finding an atom of uranium in a haystack! I studied a week before, before it was moved due to a suspension. Then I studied again the week after, not realizing that it was moved the week after the week after that week—2 weeks later. I had studied the vocabulary probably a million times, to the point where it's carved into my head, and I just gave up after hearing that it was the week after. Thankfully, I was well-acquainted with the words enough to not study the day before the test and run out of the examination room with flying colors.

We had learnt essay writing for majority of the classes, being taught how to structure an IELTS Writing Task 1 exam, by having 4 paragraphs which talk about the graph, the data, and the comparisons. I'm finding it easier as we continue to learn. However, my vocabulary sure is lacking to find words related to increases and decreases. It's good in poetry at least (hint: subtly wavering ...). What I mainly want to aim for is fluidity, more than lexis. I feel that once I figure out how to use words in transitions rather than hard periods and not-so-great comma placements, I would be able to let the synonyms flow simpler.

There is not much else to say other than the fact that we had a 159-try game of Contexto which was horrible, and the aforementioned. For the next half of this term, I'm only looking to improve.
Thank you for RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Comments

  1. 159 try game of Contexto? And I thought 49 guesses for the word "evening" was bad enough.

    ReplyDelete

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