Heister

Over the last year that I’ve (intermittently) taken Arabic, it’s come to mean so much more to me than just the redemption of a good Groupon. As I’ve traveled into the city more frequently in honor of Birthday Month (6 days this week, 4 days last), I’m realizing that it’s more than just an excuse to be in the city. After comparing it to the Spanish class I’m taking concurrently, I’ve found it’s more than just something to do to pass the time. And especially, as I’ve started catching up on the coursework, memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules, conjugating verbs, comprehending readings, and, yes, even writing my own poem in Arabic, I’m really starting to understand that this is about so much more than just sounding cool and interesting when I say I take Arabic classes.

This has come to really mean something to me. Now that everything is starting to click, I feel so motivated to keep going, to keep trying. I feel like I’m hitting my stride, like, this is something I could actually be good at. There’s just enough push – study the vocab, do the reading, because it feels so good when it all finally makes sense – but it’s low pressure, low stress. Unlike my job, where I’m so worried all the time about every misstep, every struggle, it’s not the end of the world if I don’t do my Arabic homework. It just feels better if I do, and at a stressful time like this, I can’t emphasize how important it is to have a source of pride and confidence!

I’m not perfect yet, of course, and that’s what I like too – it’s a challenge, but a manageable one. Like today, as we were reviewing the homework, I asked if one of the sentences had “three iDaafas,” making the Arabic work for “construct phrases” plural by adding the English “s” at the end. “No,” my teacher corrected me with a sly smile, “there are thalaatha iDaafaat,” using the Arabic forms. I still make mistakes and have a long way to go, but I’m learning as fast as I can. I’ve been working hard on my poem for the Song & Poetry night this Friday in NYC, soliciting feedback from Arabic-speaking friends as well as my instructor. At the end of class tonight, I asked my professor if she would stay to help me with “my QaSeeda,” using the Arabic word for “poem,” but then caught myself making the same sort of Englic (? Arabish?) faux-pas I’d made earlier in class, and corrected myself by adding the first-person possessive suffix in Arabic, “QaSeedatii” – my poem.

My instructor told me how proud she was of me, and the more I think about it, so am I. I’m proud of taking this whim to learn Arabic and translating it into something constructive, taking ownership of it, making it mine.

Next Week on Multilingual Mondays: Can I pull off reciting a poem in Arabic? Will anyone come see me? Where are the dispatches from Spanish class? Will MTA’s FastTrack foil my well-tread travel path? Just how many times can my Spanish class make fun of me for living inNew Rochelle? All this and more next time, on Multilingual Mondays…

It goes without saying that, here at #MultilingualMondays, we’re a big fan of the letter “M.” M is in a lot of cool words like “multicultural,” “macaroni,” “me,” and “May,” as in the Greatest Month of Them All. That’s right, friends, Birthday Month is upon us, and we intend to celebrate in an appropriately alliterative manner.

I’ve had most of my Birthday Month celebrations planned for weeks – parents this weekend, Florence + the Machine AND Neon Indian next week, Great GoogaMooga & AIDS Walk the week after – but this week I added some special activities to the exclusive Birthday Month calendar to make May more, well, multicultural.

First, I realized when I checked my calendar at work yesterday that I start my new Spanish class this week, not next week as I originally thought. I’m nervous, but excited to aprender más español medio del teatro. The class is Into This City’s 6-week intermediate Act Spanish class, which uses improvisational exercises and Spanish languages plays to build language skills. In other words, a perfect fit for me. I bought the Groupon months ago and I can’t believe it’s here already! #MultilingualMondays is about to get a lot more interesting as I really, truly, put the “multi” back in multilingual.

The second exciting addendum is a foreign-language Song & Poetry night hosted by my beloved Arabic school, FluentCity (née FluentBrooklyn), later this month and one day after I turn 24. When I heard about it in class last week, I figured I’d go, what with it being Birthday Month and all, but this Heister likes a challenge, so I officially signed up to read an original Arabic haiku. Yes. That’s, read. an original. Arabic haiku.

See, now that I have my textbook and have actually been reading it and memorizing my vocabulary, my confidence has grown by leaps and bounds. When I do exercises (tamriins) in the textbook now, I OWN them like a BOSS (sure, they’re exercises from material we covered a month ago, but still!) Just as signing up for  5k Mud Run last month helped me commit to working out, I hoped that by challenging myself – and establishing a hard and fast deadline – I’d be more motivated to study and learn, and especially in a very relevant way. I’m not a total masochist, though, hence a short poem. Plus, haikus have always been a favorite, ever since I spent the entire ride from Western PA to the Outer Banks one summer writing silly haikus in the backseat of my BFF’s family’s car (Bum chins are so in/Dinner roll stapled to chin/Either way, you win! {it is seriously a loss to society that I misplaced that notebook…all that creative genius squandered}). I already know what I want to say (it’s pretty funny), AND I know how to say it in Arabic. All that’s left to do is figure out how to make the syllables work (and, honestly, start by figuring out how many syllables are in some of the words – it can get a touch confusing with Arabic!) and make sure it’s all correct. I’m stoked. I’ll no doubt have a panic attack in 2 weeks, but there’ll be some liquid courage at the actual venue, alHamdulillah (thank god)!

Next Week on #MultilingualMondays: Will I catch up to the current unit in my Arabic textbook? Will Spanish take the upper hand in the language center of my brain when I skip Arabic class to see Florence+ the Machine at Radio City next week? Are you going to come see me read an original poem in Arabic on May 18^th? RSVP to the Facebook event and tune in next week to learn more on #MultilingualMondays… 

I have lots of amazing coworkers, but one in particular adds to her awesomeness by being truly multilingual. I hear her chattering away on the phone in flawless Spanish virtually every day, she’s highly proficient – if not fluent – in Arabic, and she knows at least a functional smattering of Russian. I’m also pretty sure she’s got a solid grounding in Swahili, and the Portuguese books I took with me toBrazil are her old college textbooks. Even with all that said, I still have a nagging feeling I’m forgetting a language.

She’s also been with my organization for almost 10 years, which is a really, really long time at an organization that’s only been in existence for 16 years, and which tends to attract recent college graduates who only stick around for a couple years. So, when I found myself stuck in an abysmally deep rut at work last week, she was naturally who I turned to for some big-sisterly advice. It was one of those conversations that started in the concrete (prioritization, time management, etc.) but quickly devolved into a therapeutic session in which we pondered why exactly I was having such a hard time. One of the things that came out of our conversation is that I have been putting too much pressure on myself, worrying when I fall behind on work and getting stuck there, immobilized, because I’m overwhelmed by what needs done and afraid of getting “caught” in such a defeating position. Pressure can be good, she advised me, but not when it starts producing negative results.

And that’s pretty much the same message my Arabic textbook gave me tonight, and when I hear the same thing from two different sources (and in the same day, no less), I take all the more notice. Tonight’s Arabic class marked a turning point for sure: with 5 classes down, I’m now halfway through the class, but I am also, for the first this entire course, the proud owner of the required textbook! I can’t begin to tell you what a difference this makes. I have been practically floundering through our class sessions for the last month; I could complete the homework, but was still reading things very linearly, looking up vocab words I should have already known, and making very little progress by way of actual comprehension. And while I may have suspected the reasons why before, it was reinforced tonight care of my textbook, right there in the forward to the student: “Nobody ever became fluent in a language simply by attending class.”

My Arabic proficiency hinges on what and how I am able to teach myself, using the book and class as guides. And that, friends, is a lot of pressure. When I didn’t order the book before the course started, I was ashamed, and I put off buying the book for a month because with each passing week it felt like I had dug myself deeper and deeper into a hole, and the pressure to “do it right” was so overwhelming I didn’t even want to try. One of my classmates distributed photocopies of the first 2 chapters (which we still haven’t finished), but even then I couldn’t bring myself to do the readings, and only completed the barebones assignments, and only then after much angst. I had so much success with Arabic I, and knew my preferred combination of studying the course material before and after the class, that when that didn’t happen for Arabic II, I just shut down. If I couldn’t do it “perfect,” I struggled to find the motivation to do it at all.

Well, friends, that’s changing. At least I hope it is, both for my Arabic course and my job. We’re about to enter our busiest season at work, so it will be quite helpful if I can take it easy on myself professionally, release that pressure, and kick it into the high gear without being so self-deprecating. As for Arabic, I’m halfway through the course, and only have one more week of classes left before I have to start sharing the language-learning center of my brain with the Intermediate Spanish Theater class I’m taking in May and June with Into This City (because foreign languages are too much fun to learn only one…). It’s not going to be easy, but it is going to be doable. As my textbook counsels, “These materials are designed to challenge you. (They are not meant to frustrate you, though).” So much truth in two short sentences, the same truth my colleague shared with me when she agreed that there is too much work, there’s not enough time, we’re all going to be a bit behind, and that’s okay. It’s going to be a challenge for sure, but we can’t let that overwhelm us.

Only time will tell with my job, but when it comes to my outlook on my Arabic course, so far, so good. On the train ride home last week, I started at the beginning and made all kinds of notes in the margins of my Arabic textbook, highlighting study strategies and ideas for vocab retention. Tangibly, I memorized three words/phrases that night alone, and I’m going to take that as a victory. Since I can’t seem to figure out how to type in Arabic script on my ancient laptop (if you know pleeeeeeeease help me! I’ve tried copy/paste from Google translate, but my laptop still has Office 2003 and it automatically rearranges the letters to read left to right agggggggggh), the best I can do is give you the transliteration, which kills me because – as I learned in my textbook introduction tonight – it’s actually counterproductive to my learning. But, here you go, the fruits of my labors and revelations of that day:

vocabulary: al mufradaat

Literature: al adab

house wife (literally, Goddess of home): rabat baiyt

Next week on Multilingual Mondays: Just how long with this studious kick last? What effects on my physique will toting around a 500-page book up and down all those stairs on the subway each week have? Will I take advantage of the Urban Outfitters sale to get some new skimmers so my feet can make friends with the cool kids on the L train? Is it a terrible idea to learn two languages at once during the most stressful time of the year at my job? Am I the worst planner and manager of time ever? Tune in next time to find out…on Multilingual Mondays.

bestrooftalkever:

I made myself this poster to inspire action.

Too. True. I should try making these for my entire to-do list. Thanks, BRTE

fuckyeahtheburgh:

Photo by Ziaur Rahman.

I know what you’re thinking. If I’m going to watch a downer movie on Easter Sunday, it should bePassion of the Christ or something. But guess what? That’s not what was next in my Netflix queue. Plus, I was already a day behind (BS arrived on Saturday, but without mail on Sunday I had the whole weekend anyway), and I couldn’t risk falling even further behind on my action plan to stick it to Netflix.

My mom warned me not to watchBlack Swan if I was feeling at all depressed, which was ultimately the argument that won me over for watching it on Easter. I had a pretty fun church experience (another story for another time), enjoyed beautiful weather, had a nice chat with my parents, and was generally in good spirits. What better conditions to watch a dark & depressing film, eh?

So, since I have Ides of March glaring up at me from it’s little red sleeve, ready to be viewed tonight, I’ll make this quick. I wasn’t too into Black Swan. Natalie and Mila were great, spot on, totally hot. The direction of the film was great - very stark, isolating, yet suffocating. I definitely was brought into Nina’s world. Is it a great film worthy of all those awards and nominations? Absolutely. Did I love it? No. I expected a “psychological thriller” along the lines of, “is she crazy or isn’t she?” For me, though, there was never really a question. The only time I doubted thatmaybe the poor girl wasn’t mentally derailed was when Lily yelled, “She wasn’t supposed to be here!” That was straight-up theonly time I thought that maybe, just maybe, Lily really was a crazy conniving bitch who was out to sabotage Nina. Lily just seemed way too normal, and in the end the question I think we were supposed to grapple with (or at least, what I expected to grapple with) was, which of these girls O_o? And it was Nina all along for me. Poor thing, from the scratching, her weird relationship with her mother…clearly she had issues she had dealt with at one point, but were resurfacing again and weren’t being dealt with in a healthy way. I will say, the ending of the film was absolutely beautiful, and really brought her decline full-circle, making it abundantly clear (if it wasn’t already) that all along her struggles were with perfectionism. A thriller about a girl whose perfectionism drives her to extreme and morbid ends? It wasn’t thrilling for me, just sad. I felt sad for Nina for her isolation. Not thrilled, just sad.

All in all, 3/5 stars. 3 movies down, 53 to go.

Next up:

1. Ides of March
2. Friends with Benefits
3. Blue Valentine
4. Inglorious Basterds
5. Atonement

Learning from personal experience is valuable (I learned that in my college Educational Psychology class), but so is learning from others’ experience (or so my Ed Psych classmates told me). Just this week, in fact, Jezebel’s Lindy West saved me from spending $15 to see Titanic in theaters again (guys, it’s so hard! I steel myself, but every time I watch this and that stupid Celine Dion song comes on, or read something like this, or see any photo of Leo from the 1990’s I get all weak again!) by sharing her experience re-watching Titanic.

Well, loyal readers, over the past few weeks since I’ve started taking Arabic II courses with FluentCity (formerly FluentBrooklyn), I have beenyour sacrificial lamb, making all of the mistakes foryour benefit so I could teach you how NOT to effectively learn a new language. If you’ve been forced by an employer or family member to take a language course, or even if you’ve willingly shelled out hundreds of dollars of your own hard-earned cash to take a language course for some sort of noble, intrinsic benefit (like preparing for upcoming travels to a country that speaks the language), but still don’t actually want to learn anything, then sit up, pay attention, and follow my 5 step program for guaranteed time (and money) wasting success:

1. Keep forgetting to buy the textbook. Look, I get it. You have other stuff going on. You signed up for this class hoping that commitment would follow (“If I have his baby, surely he’ll propose!” failproof). Plus, you totally have like 5 Barnes & Noble gift cards hidden somewhere in your godforsaken mess of a bedroom. But, why waste your money buying the book at all? Once you buy the textbook, it’s a slippery slope that will only lead to the pitfalls of doing your homework, studying, andlearning a new language, which we’ve already established is NOT what you want to do.
2. Don’t do your homework. You’ll just go over it in class anyway, you can improvise. Plus, repeated exposure to vocabulary words is important to language learning, and thus works completely against your goals. Don’t believe me? Read any language learning study — priming yourself for class with independent study, coupled with consistent exposure to the material has huge impacts for what you absorb and retain in class. Do you really want all of the information to actuallystay with you? Not to mention the fact that the whole concept of doing homework operates on the pretty hefty assumption that you have the textbook,and if you’ve been adhering to my program, you’ll have already avoided that can of worms.
3. For the love of God, do NOT practice your vocabulary. Helloo?! Why do you want to spend time learning outside of the classroom? That is so not the point! Plus, it takes so much time to make flashcards; you have to color code them by figure of speech and unit, decide which language goes on the blank and which on the lined side of the index cards, and contemplate whether writing out the pronunciation is a cop-out or not. Who would want to submit themselves to such torture? You’re not a masochist, are you? Are you??
4. Ignore Your Classmates. Yeah, sure, you could share in small talk, practice basic vocabulary like “hi,” “bye,” and “thank you,” and commiserate over the challenges of learning a new language if you wanted to, but you and I both know that you’re just not that kind of person, thank God. If you’ve been following my rules so far, you shouldn’t even remember how to say “hello,” and you shouldn’t even dream of trying to practice it with What’s-Her-Name (I hope you’re far enough along in the program to know that it goes without saying that you don’t want to learn your classmates names, and you definitely don’t want to practice transliterating them into your foreign language of study). Having others to share the experience with will only hurt you — they’ll hold you accountable, motivate you to practice & improve, help you when you’re confused, and give you a huge ego boost when they seek help from you — and who would want that?
5. Do not seek to find relevance in what you learn.So you just learned how to say “my sister” in another language, big freaking deal. You probably want to go write some sentences aboutyour sister, don’t you? Resist the urge, Weakling! Relating the material to your life and giving vocabulary personal meaning — these are all ways to learn a language, and we’ve already established that you don’t want to do that. Stay strong!

Well, there you have it. 5 surefire ways to NOT learn a new language. 100% success guaranteed or your money back! (You did pay before reading this, right?)

Next time on #MultilingualMondays…Could I actually possess the capacity to string together a sentence in Arabic on my own? Which culinary treat will I indulge in on the 2-block walk from Graham Ave to the FluentCity classrooms? Will I ever purchase my textbook??? Tune in next week to find out more…on #MultilingualMondays

So far, my Netflix timeline is working out right on track. I totally forgot that I was receiving Crazy, Stupid, Love today and stayed at the office until 10 pm (ugh, I know). But, if ever there is a time to be committed to a Heister feature, it’s in the first few weeks that I introduce it (heh).

So, here I am, writing to you as CSL is still hot in its little return sleeve. I’m not going to waste time with long paragraphs this time around. I think I was probably supposed to get some grandiose message from this movie, like, true love does exist just not how you expected or something, but I was too distracted by Ryan Gosling’s abs.

I’m sure it’s a completely different movie for people who are or have been married, but for me it was one PG-13 rating shy of straight-up Ryan Gosling porn. I don’t just mean, oh look, Ryan Gosling’s naked porn, but single girl porn, like, you actually can have the womanizing stud, and better yet, you can change him, but we’re gonna give it a little feminist twist because you’re not actually trying to change him, he just does on his own because you’re so amazing, and all you have to do is go to his house and intend to sleep with him, but then actually don’t. This might just work for me…

Rating: 4/5 stars (honestly, it’s a 3/5 star movie, but Ryan Gosling (90%), Emma Stone (5%) and the 8th grade son (5%) propelled it to 4)

2 movies down, 54 to go. 6 more months

Up next:

1. Black Swan
2. Ides of March
3. Friends with Benefits
4. Blue Valentine
5. Inglorious Basterds

8 Ways Women Undermine Themselves with Their Words

ladypreneurs:

Congratulations to my friend Tara Sophia Mohr for being on New Day, sharing her gospel about Playing Big! 

I definitely do #3 way too often, making a disclaimer for what I’m about to say. I’ve been working on it! Which ones could you use to work on?

Ahh! I’m guilty of all of them!

Hope for adult language learners

To make up for the lack of Multilingual Mondays post yesterday, here’s an interesting article about how adults can actually learn how to process a foreign language like a native speaker. After my first Arabic 2 class last week, I need all the help — and hope — I can get. Wish me luck tonight!