Final Exam – Did I Pass?!?!?

So I gave myself a few extra days to the end of the year and program (you know, to finish out the week). So, the question, once again is… Did I graduate?

Well, I suppose you first must decide what kind of grade I need to graduate? I don’t need 100%, right? According to my calculations, I passed with a 96% – thanks to my overachieving in foreign languages making up for my slacking elsewhere. But does this defeat the purpose of the well-rounded program? Maybe.

The One-Year, Self-Directed, Alternative Graduate School Experience By Jenna C (Updated 2020)	Did I complete It?	Percent Completed
Subscribe to Economist Espresso app and read the 7 articles it gives 6 days a week. Subscribe to The Morning Brew for free and read daily.	Pretty Much	65%
Memorize the names of every country, world capital, currency, and current president/prime minister in the world.	NO	35%
Visit three new countries, on at least two separate continents, including one in Africa. (If unable to Travel due to current situations, try one or some of these alternatives: https://alternativegraduate.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/alternatives-to-travel/ The key is to learn about other peoples and ways of life.)	YES – Croatia, Malta, Morocco	100%
Read the basic texts of the major world religions: the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, and the teachings of Buddha. And one of the following books from Karen Armstrong: A History of God, The Battle for God, or the Great Transformation OR The Religions Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. Visit a church, a mosque, a synagogue, and a temple and talk to the priest, rabbi, iman, and monk.	Partially – Read some of Torah and Quran and some other religious books	30%
Complete the tree on DuoLingo for a language (or in my case, 3) and supplement it with a podcast at least twice a week. Spend 30 minutes to 1 hour each day on learning your target language (you can use free resources or pay for classes in-person/online).	YES – and then some!	300%
Loan money to an entrepreneur through Kiva.org and arrange to visit him or her while you’re abroad.	YES	100%
Acquire at least three one new skills during your year. Suggestions: Tango, Sailing, Computer Programming, Social Media Marketing, Data Analysis, Copywriting, Sign Language. The key is not to become an expert in any of them, but to become functionally proficient.	YES – Data Analysis and SQL	100%
Read at least 30 10 non-fiction books, 10 5 classic novels, and 10 5 modern literary works.	NO – I didn’t read enough Classics 21 NF / 1 CL / 6 ML	85%
Do Yoga at home at least twice a week and go dancing or hiking at least twice a month. (Became Less important in new program. You decide if you need it or not!)	N/A	–
Record and post yourself giving a speech. Use the critiques to improve it and record it again. Sign up for the “30 Day Speaking Challenge” to record yourself speaking in the language of your choice on various topics. Peer/Self-feedback.	YES	100%
Update my readers on this blog at least once a week with my progress. Post to my Travel blog at least once a month with new material.	YES – I created another daily blog	100%
Set your home page to http://wikipedia.org/random. Over the next year, every time you open your browser, you’ll see a different, random Wikipedia page. Read it. Watch/listen to at least 3 TED Talks a week.	I maybe did about 1 a week…	35%
Learn to write by listening to the Grammar Girl podcast and reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Dreyer’s English	YES	100%
Instead of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, read  The Know It All by A.J. Jacobs, a good summary.	YES – at the last minute!	100%
	Did I Graduate??	96%

What I really learned is what I do and don’t want to learn and do with my life.

Things I’m excited to learn about: Languages and Linguistics, Foreign Cultures and Traditions, Food!, Analyzing Numbers, How I can Help People, History (to some extent), Maritime Law, Comedy, Other Religions (despite not finishing reading any of it!)

Things that don’t interest meet: Art, Sports of pretty much any kind, rote memorization of anything, Biology, Classic Literature (while I like the idea of it, I can’t get into the prose – though I do still love Shakespeare!), Health

I also learned that I do better with actual classes or syllabi than free learning (where I get overwhelmed with To-Do lists and never actually do them.)

Next Steps: As fun as all this has been, I am currently in the process of doing a “Mini Masters” online from an actual University. In this modern age of online courses, it is quite possible to get actual degrees for lower costs and in shorter time than traditionally. I will also try to read many of the books I didn’t get around to last year, and try to complete this reading challenge! And I will of course continue in my language studies (adding in a bit of Arabic and Norwegian this year!)

I thank anyone who has followed me through this journey! I still have a few more posts to update my last few tasks!

E-I-…O

One of the program tasks is very specific: Read The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs. I first started it a few years ago, and shared my favorite factoids through ‘D’. Now here are my favorites in E through O!

Ecstasy was originally patented by Merck as an appetite suppressant in the 1920s (wonder what their Covid vaccine will look like!) Ancient Etruscans were known to write in alternating directs on each line (left-to-right, right-to-left).

The ‘F’s are full of fun. Ever wonder why on Earth the Fahrenheit system seems so random? Well for one, Daniel Fahrenheit was inaccurate – and estimated the human body temperature at 90 degrees (when we now know it as 98.6), but more importantly he used the freezing point of a mixture of equal parts salt and water as his basis for ‘0’. WT….?! Why not just make it a frozen margarita?! Farnsworth, Philo successfully broadcast the first television image on American T.V. – a dollar sign $.

Did you know that a gal is a unit of measurement? It’s a measurement of acceleration equal to one centimeter per second per second, named after Galileo. And where might you find some of this acceleration? Perhaps in a gymnasium, for which the literal translation from Greek was “school for naked exercise”, and indeed is how it used to be. And you though getting changed in front of your classmates during gym class was embarassing!

Heroine was originally developed by Bayer as a pain killer. Another case of now illegal drugs coming from your major legal drug companies. Speaking of drugs, Hollywood was founded by a man named Horace Wilcox, “a prohibitionist who envisioned it a community based on his sober religious principles.” Bet he’s turning in his grave now!

That’s just one of the many cases of irony in the Britannica. Jacobs gives us a whole list in the ‘i’s‘ section. Also of interesting note, it was an old Balinese Indonesian custom to force boy-girl twins to marry, as it was assumed they had intercourse in the womb. Huh.

Jonson, Ben was an actor who got away with murder, literally. He invoked an immunity clause known as the “benefit of the clergy”, “clergy” at the time being legally defined as anyone who could read the Fifty-first Psalm in Latin. Guess I should have been studying Latin all these years! This is just one of many legal loopholes Jacobs also lists for us (though not in the ‘Ls“).

A kappa is not just the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet. It is also a “vampire-like lecherous creature” from Japanese folklore that is obsessed with cucumbers, looks like a scaley green monkey in old drawings, and a cute turtle in modern cartoons, and refuses to bow its head for fear of spilling the water it keeps on top. Maybe they were using some of the LSD from the “Ls”…..

In learning, the Britannica says that a high IQ is “strongly associated with the 35-yard dash and balancing on one foot”. Huh?!?!?! I have a high IQ, but zero balance and I got kicked out of gym class for “running like a girl”. It’s a paradox alright, but not as bad as the liar paradox, which states, “If the sentence, ‘This sentence is not true’ is true, then it is not true, and if it is not true, then it is true.” It is seen in one of my favorite movies, Labyrinth, which, coincidentally, also begins with an L. Rounding out the Ls is good old Louis XIV, who was known for many things. But one thing you may not have known is that he tried to ban biological warfare by paying off an Italian scientist who had invented a biological weapon to keep quiet and never use or share it.

Looking for some more useful information? Then this tidbit of mechanics, fluid is for you. You should buy gasoline on cold days, because the colder the gas is, the lower its volume, making it less expensive. So even cool gas is better than warm gas. Cool and warm, by the way, could be considered a meronymn, the word between two opposites. Opposite of the aforementioned whacky Fahrenheit scale, is the much more sensical metric system.

“I’m a convert to the metric system. I feel un-American even typing those words.”

– Jacobs, A.J.

The ‘Ms’ leave us with these fascinating tidbits: a mule is the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. This is not to be confused with a hinny, the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse. And, Mussolini, Benito started his career as a journalist. No wonder he was good at getting people to believe him! Christmas just passed and Three King’s Day is approaching, and most people have an idea what frankincense and gold are, but in case you are wondering, myrrh is a substance obtained from small trees and was used to relieve sore gums. Perhaps the Three Kings, or La Bufana, will bring me some myrrh next week!

Napoleon was known for being a rascal. So much so, that he purposely made sure there was no priest at his wedding to Josephine, so that he could leave her later without the need for divorce. Apparently the decision to give countries nautical jurisdiction over three nautical miles from their coast is because that was the distance a cannon could fire. The nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill” is actually an allegory about British taxes. I wonder if children 200 years from now will sing a nursery rhyme about Brexit?

Under occupational diseases, along with carpel tunnel syndrome, we learn that in the past, hatters used mercury salts to make felt for their hats, often leading to mercury poisoning and the term “mad as a hatter”. The ancient Egyptians used olive oil as lube to move large building materials. This does not mean it should be used to lubricate other things… and on that note, I leave you with one more practical piece of encylopaedia advice – cutting onions under running water will keep you from crying.

My Notes from “Notes From An Apocalypse”

So upon opening this blog’s home page, I realize that I only have 8 days until “graduation”! Eeek! Needless to say, my Goodreads account has already pointed out that I’m a bit too far behind in my goal of finishing 20 books by the end of the year. At this point, must.finish.The-know-It-All. This entire process has been about making concessions…

I did however, manage to finish Notes from and Apocalypse, by Mark O’Connell. I was expecting it to count as my “Science” book, but I think it only counts in so much as the common person’s sociology counts as a science.

What he was offering was, in this sense, not so much a prediction of the future as a deeply political interpretation of the present.

The book was indeed not quite what I expected. I expected more background and science about how the world might possibly end, but this book focuses more on how people might receive / are preparing for the Apocalypse (which is somewhat alluded as already happening all around us).

[I]f civilization did collapse these men would be entirely useless to themselves, and worse than useless to everyone else. What they didn’t understand, she said, was that the thing that would allow people to survive was the same thing that had always allowed people to survive: community. It was only in learning to help people, she said, in becoming indispensable to one’s fellow human beings, that you would survive the collapse of civilization.

It is an interesting anthropologic study, as half of it is this Irishman’s view of what appears to be a pretty distinctly American phenomenon.

I wondered how it was that so many Americans—educated, intelligent Americans—seemed to genuinely believe this stuff. The only thing that seemed to me to explain the conviction also fatally undermined it: the fact that from cradle to grave every American was subject to a relentless barrage of propaganda about the special freedom guaranteed them by their citizenship.

Moreover, he takes us on a trip to the places where pretty apocalyptical stuff is already happening. So in a way, it was actually another travelogue. At least I know my type!

The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck”—which seemed to me to encapsulate perfectly the extent to which technological progress embedded within itself the prospect of catastrophe.

There is no way of contemplating the catastrophe of our way of life from the outside. There is no outside. Here, too, I myself am the contaminant. I myself am the apocalypse of which I speak.

There are just too many good quotes from this short book, view my favorites here!

On the Noodle Road

This book was originally meant to be part of my ‘travel/history/food’ month of reading, and though I got a bit far behind in my reading, I still really wanted to finish it.

This book encompasses all three of those subjects – travel, history, food – with a bonus bit of socio-cultural anthropology thrown in. Taking us on a journey from Eastern China to Rome, Jenny, following in the footsteps of Marco Polo, introduces us to tasty dishes and warm characters across the Eurasian continent.

“A culinary Mason-Dixon Line runs across China; north of it, abundant wheat fields feed the population. The wheat-rice line also creates different flavors in the cuisines. Shanxi vinegar, made of wheat, has a unique sweet-sour balance quite different from the lighter southern vinegars, which are usually made of rice.”

While rice is often synonymous with China, we learn in the first chapter that rice is only a staple in the southern half of China, where as the northern parts rely much more on bread and noodles.

“It turned out that the secret to good honey was also the key to many distinctive dishes across the Silk Road: the more cross-pollination, the better.”

The culinary history lesson continues as we follow Jenny (sometimes accompanied by her husband, Craig) through the silk (and noodle) road. But while this book and it’s title lead you to believe that it is simply about food and history and facts, there is actually a deep underlying cultural study – of women. In every place and home she visits, our heroine asks the ladies of the house how they feel about their rights in their country and about being wives and mothers. It is definitely interesting to read if you are a young woman of a certain age, or someone who is curious how women in certain countries really feel, not what is shown to you on the nightly news.

“It occurred to me that the idea of the West was as much of a construct as the concept of the Silk Road, and it was only a lingering Orientalism that kept our ideas of Asia and Europe so divided in our heads.”

She teaches us that cooking is a metaphor for life.

Cooking provided a pathway for living: you started out “raw” and ended up “ripe” or “well-cooked.”

But also, what is really important in life, for people all over. She hits on what seems to be almost a Universal Truth, a Meaning of Life, even. And all of this because of some noodles…

I was reminded of what I’d learned across the Silk Road. I’d gone through a string of places where hospitality was more important than making money. Where people made good, honest food without having to market it or spin it into something bigger. Where people had invited me into their homes so warmly and treated me to so much without asking for anything in return. Where you could sit down for a two-hour lunch in the middle of a workday and feel good about it. That was what the trip was about—the importance of friends and family, of slowing down enough to enjoy life. Searching for the origin of noodles had allowed me to come to those realizations.

Reading Update

It’s only five weeks until I should finish the new and condensed alternative Graduate Program – eek! Looking back, I have found that while I have recently had plenty of time to work on the program, and reading, and languages, I have struggled to stay motivated. Most days I don’t even start working until after lunch. I usually reserve reading for before bed – but more often than not I fall asleep only a few pages in!

As such, I am condensing my last few weeks of reading into just one book per category. I originally intended for November to be about Science and December about business, but now at the end of November, a few days before Thanksgiving, I am still (appropriately) finishing one of my Travel and Food books from October. At this rate, I need to finish one book a week! So…

For the remainder of the year, I will focus on finishing up books I’ve previously started:

• On the Noodle Road – I am almost finished with this book, it it was well worth the read!
• The Know-It-All – The main pillar of the entire Alternative Graduate Program, I must finish this book before “graduation”. It should be doable since I am already halfway through it.
• Lingo – I started this book back during my Language Arts month, and intended to carry it over into my Travel month, but have not been as productive as I originally hoped. Still, I’d like to finish it!
• Outliers – I began this book years ago, and a few passages stuck with me, though at this point I will need to start form the beginning again.
• Notes From An Apocalypse – This. Just all of this. The most appropriate book I can think of to end 2020. A book filled with pandemics and monster storms, and perhaps a glimmer of hope.
• Protocol / Algorithms to Live By / Doughnut Economics – One of these, or the entire Trifecta, will carry me into the new year! Diplomacy and Decision Making are two areas I could really work on in my life. And I am curious to see what advice economists have for recovering from the current state of affairs. Bonus, I found a Dutch version of Doughnut Economics for extra credit.

Speaking of books in other languages, it seems I will not have time this year for reading some French classics as I had hoped. But, have no fear, next year I would like to finally read Le Compte de Monte Cristo – an undertaking that, looking at the chapter list, will likely take the entire year!

It’s good to set goals early. And perfectly fine to adjust them as you progress (as I have frequently done). Keeping my goals simple and reasonable and less overwhelming than lofty ambition (though I frequently suffer that as well!)

Foreign Language Update: Monthly Language Challenges

Task #5 of the Alternative Graduate Program involved dabbling in a Foreign Language. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve taken that task a bit to the extreme and dedicated at least an hour a day to at least one of four different languages. Obviously this is a passion of mine and not a requirement, however everyone should learn at least one foreign language because I truly believe it trains our brains to think differently.

The secret to learning a language, or anything really, is practice and consistency. It is far better to spend 20 minutes a day learning it than 2 hours once a week. If you’re like me, perhaps sometimes you need a little accountability to stay motivated, which is how I ended up participating in THREE language challenges this month.

1. The 30 Day Speaking Challenge – a monthly hosted challenge that gives people a chance to record themselves speaking on provided topics in any language and occasionally recieving feedback from other participants and native speakers (not guaranteed in all languages). Find my speaking on YouTube!
2. #LanguageDiaryChallenge: An loose online community where participants write daily in their target language(s) on their language progress or any other topics of their choosing (just like a diary!) Read my diary on my other blog!
3. Private group challenge: I’m participating in another private challenge via Slack, with more various prompts for all different language skills. Similar to this one that was popular a few years ago!

After 30 days, I have found that (1) the habit becomes ingrained in me, and (2) my speaking levels and confidence in different languages improves substantially. In the course of 4 months, I have raised my French level from an A2 to almost a B2!

If none of these challenges interest you or you prefer not to be held accountable in your language learning journey, check out my list of other language learning resources!

Economics Update: Theory vs Practice

I realized yesterday that Economics is one of the main pillars of the Alternative Graduate program, and that I have been wholly neglecting it.

However, while I have been neglecting it, my stocks have been working in the background to finally show an overall profit in my investments since I started investing (albeit, that profit already fell in one day…)

• 

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Start your own free portfolio here, and even get a free stock!

This is a momentous occasion as when I was a traditional student of business and economics, I always always always lost money (luckily fake money) in the stock market game. Robinhood makes it easy to manage my stocks and even to buy fractional shares (the only way I can actually afford Amazon stock!)

To read up on more Economic News and Theory, you can still subscribe to the Economist, or check out the Morning Brew free newsletter to have up to date financial and world news delivered right to your inbox!

Economics and Investment Pillars:

• Subscribe to The Economist or The Morning Brew and read it regularly
• Get a free stock on Robinhood and try your hand at the market (US only)
• Invest in entrepreneurs in developing countries through kiva.org

I’ve completed the first two tasks, only one more to go before the end of the year!

P.S. Sorry for the shameful number of referral links, but I get a bonus and so do you, so why not help out my cause, sharing is caring! 🙂

October Reading Update: Travel, History & Food

I am a few days behind on my October reading update post, due to travelling to visit family. Alas, I am even more than a few days behind in my October reading due to same travelling to visit family (Travel, coincidentally, being the topic of this month’s readings!)

I have managed to only finish 2.5 books this month, which is sad considering how this month’s subjects of Travel, Food, and History are my favorites. As such, I have made the executive decision to carry on with this topic for November as well, especially since I already have many of the books downloaded on my Kindle.

What I did finish:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – I had been wanting to read this for years, and was very pleased with the way it was written and the topic was presented. It may be a ‘Young Adult’ novel, but I recommend it to any older adults as well.
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer – I found this book in a local book exchange, and then saw it on a list of recommended books featuring LGBTQ subjects. I found the book highly relatable and enjoyable. Essentially, about travelling the world to escape something at home, only to find that it will follow you anywhere you go until you accept it.

I am also halfway through this book, also about running away into the world to find oneself, which I have been meaning to read for many years now as well. I find this book incredibly relatable, and quotable.

• The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World by Kim Dinan

Next on Deck:

• On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu
• The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner (sequel to my favorite book!)
• Lingo: A Language Spotter’s Guide to Europe (carried over from the Language Arts Month)
• The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson (a nice segue into Science)

Many other books are in my list, but I try to be reasonable with my expectations, especially given last month’s performance!

For more ideas on your travel reading resources, check out these pages:

• My Lists of Travel Reading from my Travel Blog
• My Full List of Non-Fiction Books for this Program
• The Annual “Travel Reading Challenge” List (a very real alternative to travel these days)

Studies-by-the-Numbers

Since I restarted this Alternative Graduate project, I have found that despite having all the free time in the world (courtesy of COVID-19), I actually have very little free time.

I have spent 8 of the past 10 months without work. Three of those months I spent helping my father through chemotherapy and radiation treatments for throat cancer. Another two of those months I spent babysitting my niece and assisting my pregnant sister, who was still working throughout the pandemic and her pregnancy. I’ve spent an average of two hours a day preparing meals for my family and at least another hour or so a day in various of their activities (be it radiation therapy, vet appointments, or cheerleading practice). However, none of this shows on my CV.

In the time I have had in between, I’ve been studying various languages, new technological programs and skills, applying for jobs all over the place, maintaining three blogs, and reading as many books as I can before I fall asleep each night. All this, in hopes of finding a job within an industry that is still operating effectively through the pandemic and eventually finding my way back overseas – which has been my dream since childhood.

So how can I show these endeavours to prospective job recruiters?

To do just that, I have created a spreadsheet in which I log my hours of study and “work”, and then created automatically updating charts to display the data.

Since June, I have logged:

• 250 hours studying four languages (French, Dutch, Italian, and Greek)
• 71 hours in online / MOOC courses on Human Resources, Data Analytics, Digital Communication, Supply Chain Management, and Applied Linguistics & TESOL (earning a total of 12 certificates)
• 34 hours blogging across three different blogs (this learning blog, my Travel blog, and my new Language Diary blog), not counting the numerous posts I’ve made in various social media groups
• 70 hours reading over 20 Non-Fiction and Fiction books on various subjects, as well as religious texts in order to better understand people of other backgrounds
• 72 hours searching for and applying to 36 jobs, of which only 2 asked me to interview, and none of which hired me (yet!)

Somehow, this still only accounts for 20% of my time. The rest has been spent taking care of others, and assisting them to better their lives as well.

I guess all of this is just to prove that perhaps not all knowledge and skills can be found on a CV. I also like to think it shows off a bit of my data writing skills 😉