This post is part of my ongoing Journal on learning Burmese. You can read the whole Journal here.
June 21, 2015: Turning Point
This weekend I've been attending an event called Turning Point. It's run by Authentic Education and is all about re-focussing, considering your priorities and taking the steps needed to live your love. Prior to the conference I was having some thoughts about my Burmese Learning project, and have sorted through them a bit more over the last day.
The project is a large investment of time. I've been spending minimum 20 hours per day on this and have been making great progress, but the real question is, what is the opportunity cost of that time investment?
Recently my blog posts on other topics have waned through my focus on Burmese, and I've realised that I believe my time would be better invested in skills and content that are going to yield long term payoffs. My teaching placement in Myanmar is only going to be 2 weeks long, and I know that upon returning home it would be a large time commitment to try to maintain two languages, Mandarin and Burmese. And I'm still a long way away from my goal of being at work-level proficiency with my Mandarin!
As such, I've decided to really scale back my Burmese learning project. I'll spend a couple of hours in the next week or so activating the Anki cards (i.e., turning them from suspended to active) that contain the vocabulary items that I've already learned to date, so that I don't lose that valuable knowledge that I've already put so much time into, and I'll sporadically listen to BBE to try to keep some of the grammar and phrases fresh in my mind. But I'll basically put my Burmese on maintenance (simply via Anki) until a short time out from my visit when I'll punch through BBE a few times intensively and will go to Myanmar with those basics well mastered.
Sometimes the survey phase of learning includes re-prioritising, and surveying the options that are facing you at a given crossroads, and pivoting. That's what I'm doing at the moment with my Burmese, and I'm feeling really good about it. Those 20 minutes a day saved will now be focussed on more education content and making this blog a more valuable resources to learners and teachers. I'm excited!