New Year's Episode: my personal resolution

This
is the 3rd part of the New Year’s episode and in part 3 I will tell you about my personal resolutions for 2021. First I want to give context of what happened in 2020 because my resolution comes from some of my difficulties from this last year.

In
March of 2020 I lost my job in Africa. I was living in Benin when the coronavirus became a pandemic so my organization cancelled my contract due to safety and security. When I returned to the US I believe I caught coronavirus so I was sick for about a week
and a half and 1 of the symptoms of coronavirus is a loss or a reduction of focus and memory. Since March I have had difficulties in focusing on my work. I haven’t finished a book since March when I came home on the plane. I was reading 2 or 3 books a month
while in Benin. I have plateaued in my French studies. That means I have reached a plateau, or I feel like I am no longer learning in French. I am now working at a school in the US but because of these difficulties I think my resolution should be about self
improvement and learning, because I have always liked to participate in daily learning. Learning something new everyday, and since I lost my job in Africa I have not been able to do this.

My
resolution for 2021 has two parts. My first resolution is to start learning Spanish. I believe I have learned French for a long enough time that I can begin a new language without too much difficulty, and I will use three tools. An application called Mosalingua,
this is the first time I will try Mosalingua and the first time I will pay for a language application because I learnedFrench for free. I will use Mosalingua to study vocabulary everyday for 10 to 15 minutes and when I am comfortable, I will start listening
to podcasts or audio in Spanish.

The
second part of my resolution is more professional because I loved my time in Benin but my contract is finished and I cannot return to my village and work the same job. So if I want to return to a similar work, I must better educate myself so that I can apply
to another organization and be hired. The problem I have right now is I don’t know exactly what I should be studying, so my resolution is to find people I know, resources that I can talk to, to ask what skills would be most useful for something looking to
work the work that I like to do. I am not sure if I should study education, international development, or management, or data collection and analyses. I don’t know if I should be studying more French or literacy or language acquisition strategies. I have many
ideas but I would like to talk to an expert to ask their opinion of what I should be studying. When I identify a new area of study I would like to read at least 1 book per month to begin educating myself in that area. So that is my resolution for 2021. I am
going to be learning Spanish and I am going to working towards another job, maybe living in Africa, so I can continue doing the work that I love to do and feel like I am an expert at my job.

I
hope that you all are thinking about your New Year’s resolutions and your plan to create a new habit on a daily basis so that you can make your resolution a truth of year 2021. That’s it for year 2020. Let’s say goodbye to it and I will see you in the next
podcast.