A Firefly's Prose

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Mine was very quiet and low-key, as suits a rainy day. Had some tea, did some chores, worked on my "class" schedule, etc. The "etc" obviously did not include remembering to updates yesterday's post but I'll get to it.

This past week has been a bit of a jumble as far as my personal curriculum goes but I might as well keep these posts going! This is one I'm gonna have to come back and edit, though. I'm gonna be staying up late to finish some stuff and I already know I'm gonna wanna go right to bed after that, lol.

Clarinet: First quarter of clarinet is officially passed! I played a short and somewhat choppy program for my sister and niblings today. I thought I'd found a clever workaround to the lack of a music stand but it turns out clipping sheet music to a lap tray and propping that on a chair is not an adequate substitute. Who knew? So, yeah, it could've gone better but I did the thing and that's what matters. As far as "Clarinet II" goes, I had a lax first week because it was short and I'll be going full-throttle starting next week. I'm still tossing around ideas for essay topics, so if anyone has suggestions, I'm open, lol.

Korean:
Coding:
Algebra:

Neighbors have been yelling at each other for like an hour. I freaked out a bit a bit ago, too, because I thought they were getting physical. Then I realized someone was just stomping and something got knocked over.

I could make out the lady of the house scream, "liar," and, "is it a woman," earlier so. Easy guess as to what the argument is, I suppose.

Guys, Idk. All the racket is making me nervous but I don't think anyone has laid hands on anyone. They're finally quieting down as I type this too... I don't like the idea that it could get dangerous for someone up there and I blew it off but I don't like the idea of calling the cops and potentially getting someone shot over a shouting match either. I almost wish that one cop still lived here, I might've considered asking him to go check on them.

So many websites are deciding they aren't on speaking terms with my VPN. Very annoying. Like, I wasted so much time tonight thinking that my Korean course was down, only to realize all I'd had to do the whole time was disconnect. Which I shouldn't have to do, imho. Bleugh.

Alright, first day of the second quarter of my personal curriculum journey. I'm still dealing with the spillover from last quarter, as I said, but I'm excited to get started with something new. Well, kinda. I realized this really isn't going to be that interesting of a post because I won't be changing much. Just the same, I would like to lay out my plans for going forwards.

Like last time, I'll be doing four classes. I had hopes of expanding to five, since I do prefer nickel numbers, but seeing as I've had to give myself a "summer school" period to finish, probably not the best idea just yet, lol. Maybe next time! For now, I'm mostly going to be building off my work in the previous quarter.

I debated whether to keep "clarinet" as a class. Or, I guess, whether to go on to "Clarinet II" or something. All I'd really be doing, I figured, was continuing practice. At what point is a "class" just a hobby? Ngl, most of the reason I decided to keep it is because I realize if I didn't, it would be the only subject I wasn't advancing for the second quarter. I do want it to be a proper advancement, though, if it's staying. So! I'll be going back to what I felt was the best schedule, forty-five minutes in the morning on weekdays. This time will be mostly dedicated to actual practice of the instrument but I also want to lock in on getting the different key signatures and such memorized. I'll also be taking a slightly more serious approach in that I'll have a goal for how many exercises to get through in a week. Lastly, something I'm weirdly looking forward to is giving myself homework. Nothing major, mind you. All I have to do is transpose one piece of music every week and do two short essays per month, topics to be decided. Since I ended up only poking through that one clarinet book I got, I'm also assigning it to myself as course reading. Might assign more reading later-- one book per month, maybe-- but I haven't decided on that yet. And, of course, my "final project" will be another family recital. Possibly with a program made up (in part?) of the transposed music assignments, still rolling that idea around. I'm looking forward to pushing myself a bit with this one! I'll give myself grace on late work but no skips. Passing this class will require all assignments to be completed as well as doing the recital.

Korea, of course, will just be moving on to the second level of the online course I'm doing. Full disclosure, I did not end up capping things off as intended last night. Much like with the coding course, I misunderstood how much was left. There isn't a lot, don't get me wrong, just more than expected. I'll still have it done by the end of the week. And I'll be tricking my brain into not quitting this one by remembering that I started out the last quarter by spending three days on the wrong course path, so I technically have three days to make up. Makes sense to me, anyway! Anyhow, this'll remain my only daily class. Something I didn't really pay attention to before is that the course paths give an estimate of how long each section will take to complete. Going forward, I'll take those estimates into account and plan accordingly for one week at a time. Passing this class will require completing the course level, natch.

Coding class for this quarter will be focused on JavaScript and Python. I've got those Udemy courses I paid for but I'll be doing the courses on the site I've been using for HTML/CSS, too, since they offer a certification for each. Weekdays worked out better than weekends for the last quarter-- if only I'd figured that out sooner, lol-- so I'll be continuing that. No set schedule beyond that yet, since I want to get an idea of how much time is required for the courses before trying to work anything out. Passing this class will require completing both certifications on freeCodeCamp and earning both Udemy certificates of completion.

And, finally, algebra will be replaced by algebra 2. I quite liked my weekend schedule for this one, even if I did flub it in the last few weeks. I'm hoping to start strong with this refresh! I'm going to really hold myself this time to completing at least one homework assignment per week. There are so many free worksheets out there, there's really no good reason not to. As before, I'll do the lessons/take notes on Sunday, review/grade homework on Friday and find a quiz on my focus topic of the week on Saturday. Passing this class will require passing a final exam.

Really hoping I can put what I learned from last quarter's successes and failures to good use :D

So, today officially ends the first quarter of my personal curriculum. And this is gonna be a bit of a lackluster post because I'm ending the quarter with almost nothing completed to my satisfaction :,)

For one thing, miscommunication and forgetfulness led to my clarinet recital for my sister and niblings not happening. We're still going to do it but it'll have to wait for this coming Saturday instead. Since that was literally my only "win condition" for this class, I'm technically not done.

My Korean course is getting finished after I post this but you guys already know I'm not happy about the way this one went.

I also was not able to finish my coding course as expected. Partly due to connectivity issues, mostly due to me misreading the sections and not realizing how much was actually left.

Aaand finding an algebra exam to suit my needs turned out not to be as easy as I anticipated and so that's another "win condition" as yet left unfulfilled.

Why do I say "as yet"? Because this is fake school that I'm doing for fun and personal enrichment. It's also my first attempt. Flexibility is the name of the game, babes! Especially since there are another four full or six-sevenths-full weeks of April after this first one, I'm making the executive decision to allow myself to make up my work. I am officially giving myself until Saturday, so I can start cleaner on the following Sunday. I mean, hey, I was still getting stuff figured out during the first short week of this quarter, right? Might as well!

I will still technically be kicking off my second quarter starting tomorrow, to be clear. The new "classes"/courses will just be running alongside my makeup work. Which sounds like a lot, I know, but I genuinely don't have that much left to do to finalize this first quarter. T'is both a relief and a frustration-- I was so close! So much of it came down to timing. Not only in the sense that I never fully recovered my stride after my vacation but in the way I scheduled things. I severely underestimated how much material there was in the coding course and didn't really dedicate the right amount of time to Korean practice either, looking back. The algebra was probably the second best-scheduled but I fell out of the habit of giving myself homework or going over my notes during the week. That's something I'll need to keep in mind going forward, depending on the subjects. Clarinet was the best scheduled until I got to the one-hour practice schedule and turned it into something I was dreading. Tbf, I think it could've worked if my weekdays were a little more uniform and I could more easily fix my sleep cycle. That's a thought I'll have to put a pin in for when I've got my license and have more control over my schedule, though, because it's not something I can do much about just now. Suffice to say, I'll not be keeping that practice schedule going forward.

As for my second quarter, I'll talk a little more in-depth about that tomorrow!