on not feeling guilty

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This past week was, as expected, by far my worst week for my Luganda studies. I reached 32 points total, well below my weekly goal. I knew that it would be a tough week for me, but I hadn't expected it to be quite so bad. A couple of factors contributed to this outcome: 1) Day in Africa prep definitely took over my life and took up most of my waking hours, as expected; 2) Simon had to cancel one of our meetings last-minute and we were unable to reschedule; and 3) post-Day in Africa I was emotionally pretty tired.

Despite this - a week which could definitely be categorized as a Failure with a capital F - I don't feel guilty. I know I did the best I could under the circumstances. I know that this poor showing doesn't represent my commitment to learning the language. And I know that this was just one week of the 52 that make up my year as an independent learner. So: I'm not spending any of my emotional energy on guilt. I'm noting the week for what it was and moving on.

One little fun thing about Day in Africa was that I got to use my position as the person with the microphone to teach a simple Luganda greeting to the couple hundred students during the welcome. It felt awesome to hear the crowd of students speaking a little bit of Luganda! I was so excited to tell Simon about it and he was tickled. :)

Here are the details on what went down:
Monday: read 1 Bukedde article, 100 Quizlet words
Tuesday: 30 minutes lesson work, 100 Quizlet words
Wednesday: 1.5 hours listening to the radio
Thursday: Teach students Luganda greeting
Friday: Lesson with Simon
Saturday: read 1 Bukedde article
Sunday: 100 Quizlet words

Having a bad week tends to give me a lot of motivation to attack the coming week with more energy, so I am hoping to see that play out in the week ahead. Simon has sent me a lot of homework, and I really want to get back into some of the more intensive grammar studying that I'd been doing prior to the last few weeks. This week has already been an improvement on last since I started this morning with my regularly-scheduled lesson with Simon.

It's crazy that this semester is almost over. I'm looking forward to squeezing as much as I can out of what remains!

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