Starting out - ALMS group meetings

Thu 12. 09.2013

So here we are, yesterday we had our first ALMS group meeting and I was positively surprised, the idea sounded better than I had expected. During the meeting we did already some exercises and self evaluation tests, which I found nice and I felt myself motivated and eager to get started with this course. Especially the reflection part was interesting; I have never actually done anything like that so I was happy to try it out. The best tool for that apparently is Kaleidoscope on internet so I'll start out with it.

Filling in the ALMS contract and ALMS plans was helpful as well. Although at this point it was almost impossible to know for sure if the hourly amount of work is going to be exactly as I planned but I don't think it'll be a problem to switch some hours e.g. from reading to grammar if necessary.

Thu 19.09.2013

We had our second group meeting yesterday. Before that I returned my Kaleidoscope self reflection sheet. It took surprisingly lot of timeto think and write it all down but it was very useful. I had never before used such a tool, creating a whole picture of something was so simple but still never occurred on my mind. I was a little worried if I had written too much. It seems it's one of my weaknesses: writing too much, talking too much, thinking too much. I wish I could do things shorter and more efficient. It's like I wouldn't be focusing enough. I have been thinking that lately a lot. Is there something wrong with my brains?

During the class we continues with our exercises and it was nice to be there. Me and three other students decided to do two D.I.Y. study clubs: a movie club and a book club. For the book we went to Akateeminen and picked "Life of Pi". One of us had seen the movie and recommended the story. At home I was less excited about the book. It seemed to be hard to get a grip of the story at the beginning and I was frustrated. But I'll write about the book more later on.