Media arts internship January 16 - 19, 2015

Graphic creation and scheduling

I finished creating and scheduling our countdown graphics for our social media accounts. On the 17th and 19th I worked on our Top 30 prospect podcast special, which is a three hour episode special where we reveal our top 30 prospects as ranked by the TCB writing staff. We’ve doing this special since 2010 and was actually the genesis of the audio content produced on the site. I, believe or not, was not the one that produced our first audio. David Coleman, the managing editor of the site was. I was simply along for the ride and hoped we would do more. David was not able to get anything going with a regular podcast, because he was busy running the rest of the site.

Six months later, while mowing the lawn, I decided I would run the podcast myself. There was no reason not to and thus began our foray into the world of podcast content for the site. A lot of this week will be spent preparing for the podcast special which we will be broadcasting live January 24, 2015. I’ll get into the finer details as I work on this week, but I was working out a time frame to record the show Saturday with my co-hosts for the show. We’ll start around 5 p.m. ET and expect to wrap up around 9 p.m. ET. I also started putting the show notes for the co-hosts and I, which is essentially a map of the show and the order of the prospects we’ll be revealing from 30 to one.

Sunday, January 19, 2015, the Astros made a trade with the Chicago Cubs, acquiring two players for one of theirs. I produced three graphics for articles with quotes from the players and general manager for use on our social media accounts, pictured below.

Pasaba La Universidad español en uno semestre

I knew very little Spanish heading into Summer this past year. I knew the words that were ingrained into English speaking and the “fun” ones used in commercials, but outside of that I knew very little. In high school I took German and I took German because I had live in Germany for two and a half years as an Army brat. Had I taken German in college it would have been much easier for me. But I took Spanish because it would be much more useful to me.

My plan of attack was simple: get Rosetta Stone; study all Summer; listen to a ton of baseball broadcasts in Spanish; and with a little luck place out of the 100 Spanish. I was able to place out of two of three courses I needed. It wasn’t easy and I under estimated how much work I would need to put into the course, but I was prepared to do what I needed to to pass the course.

There are five parts to passing SPAN 122 at the University of South Carolina: Get a passing grade in the class. I got a B. Then pass four exit exams in reading, listening, writing and speaking. Reading and listening were the easiest parts for me. I think I got the hang of speaking pretty quickly and used my audio wizardry to help with that. The writing was an entirely different story. Over the Summer, I never once sat down and wrote anything in Spanish, which meant I was behind once the semester started. At the end of October realizing my writing needed some serious work I made a commitment to write at least 120 words in Spanish everyday in the form of a pen pal letter, which was the format for the exit exam. I wrote 35 letters in Spanish from the end of October to the beginning of December. I’ve never been a fan of my own writing in English, so trying to write in Spanish was quite stressful, but I managed to get through it.

Impressions

My overall impressions of Spanish are that it’s a simple yet complex language, which probably sounds a little cliche. I like that it’s efficient with it’s word count, but got frustrated with the slightly changing verbs based on intention, gender, count, and time. There are slightly different versions of each verb based on how many people there are, who the word is directed towards, and whether it’s in the past, present or future. There is a general pattern in place for all words, however, there are enough irregular verbs that memorization plays a big role in learning the language.

Resources

I lucked out, in that the women I married has a mother who is a retired high school Spanish teacher. I leaned on her pretty heavily, especially towards the end of the semester when I needed oral and writing practice. Sitting down with her was invaluable. Not everyone is going to have that kind of resources, however, universities should have tutoring services available and I would highly recommend those. Just sitting down with someone else helps a lot with the learning process. If you’re not in a university and trying to learn on your own, try talking to Spanish speaking friends and co-workers about it.

Rosetta Stone was worth the investment (full disclosure, I bought it when it was half-price), but it’s going to be tough learning the language just by going through the lessons. They have online resources available, but it’s on a trial basis and will require a paid subscription after a couple months. I complemented my Summer studies with a site called DuoLingo. It’s a really great site that will help with the reading, writing and listening part of Spanish. If you get on DuoLingo be sure to look me up

Username: deblock

Once I got into the semester I stopped using the Rosetta Stone (which I regret a little), but I kept up with the DuoLingo because they have a mobile app that allows me to continue my progress when I’m on the go. The other website I used pretty extensively was SpanishDict . It was my go to dictionary.

Finally, I found a fantastic podcast that really helped me towards the end of the semester to prepare for the listening and oral part of the exam. Coffee Break Spanish has been around since 2008 and has 168 episodes of Spanish learning to go through, starting with a beginner series. They’re short too so you can easily go through two or three and still have time to eat and surf the internet during lunch.

Final Thoughts

Learning a language is challenging and I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t place out of Spanish. I’ve learned a lot, particularly on the grammar side of things and how all that works. I plan on continuing to learn Spanish because I think it’s a very useful tool to have and opens up opportunities that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

When you're having a bad day: Just Shake It Off

Quick post for today. I spent all last night working on my last final project for the semester. I love this song:

This song has powerful positive message that I'm drawn to, but it appears that not everyone is as enamored with the song as I am. A lot of that has to do with Taylor Swift herself, but I don't follow the music industry nor do I listen to the radio, let alone pop music on the radio. The only connection I have to Taylor Swift is that there is an infosec parody Twitter account on her that is absolutely brilliant.

Remember, when you're having a rough day just shake it off.

Out of office

With the semester winding down and my stress levels rising, I have decided to take a break from putting content on the site temporarily. My Spanish 122 course is the biggest reason why. I was able to place into the third Spanish class I needed to graduate. While that is a huge accomplishment for me when taking into consideration that I took German in high school and knew close to zero Spanish before the Summer, I have realized I have a lot of work to do to pass this class.

To get the time in while still maintaining my sanity I have decided to drop a few items I've been working on. This site being one of them. The reading, listening and writing portion of my exit takes place before Thanksgiving and the oral part of my exit exam takes place after Thanksgiving. Which means the month of November will be void of little if any content. I will get back to posting content in early December. Until then I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Tim

Studying for Spanish Quiz 1

Spanish is turning out to be one of the tougher classes I've taken at USC. At this point I would rank it second behind the histology course (500 level biology) I decided to take several semesters back. The good news is that I got through histology and I think I can get through Spanish, but it's going to take a lot of hard work.

One of the things I would like to do is blog about and in Spanish to help me better understand the language. If you speak español I would love your feedback on anything I put up on the site. For this post, I will be going through some of the material that will be on the quiz tomorrow. Hopefully this can be a reference point for others as well as give me an opportunity to better understand and learn the material.

La ropa habla - The clothes speak

Me visto para el trabajo - I dress for work

Me gusta llevar ropa profesional - I like to wear professional clothing

Me gusta usar camisas azules - I like to wear blue shirts

de cuadros - is a pattern that uses a lot of perpendicular lines

con lunares - is a dotted pattern

de rayas - is a pattern that uses a slanted lines with alternating colores

estampado - is a pattern with many different shapes

Los Astros llevar jerseys blancos, pantalones blancos y gorras de béisbol naranjas - The Astros wear white jerseys, white pants and orange baseball caps.

In Spanish the color of something goes after the object. While we say white pants in Spanish it's pantalones blancos.

Los numeros ordinales - The ordinal numbers

Primero - first

Segundo - second

Tercero - third

Los adjectivos demostrativos - The demonstrative adjectives

Este/esta - this

Estos/estas - these

Ese/esa - that

Esos/esas - those

The first word there is the masculine version and the second word is the feminine version. In Spanish words can have the same meaning but depending on the word and gender it can be spelled slightly different. As a general rule (a) is considered feminine, (o) and (e) are masculine.

Palabras difícil - Difficult words

For some reason I'm struggling a little bit to remember words such as encantar or to love and parecer or to seem/appear. Quedar is also another tricking one but it means to stay or remain or even to fit. If it's to fit then words like bien (well) or mal (poorly) will follow it. Both parecer (to seem) and quedar (to fit) can have the subject placed in front of them instead of at the end of a sentence.

That's about all I've got for now. I'll try to update on how the quiz went and hopefully I'll have something more constructive next time.