I was a speaker at this event, but unfortunately, they couldn't record my speech properly due to technical problems.

That's just my story and you can follow the slides I used during that evening through this link

I recorded it with my phone, so the quality is questionable, but I wanted to have something from this evening.

This is originally a TikTok video - what you find here is only the mp3 version. Hope it helps!

Check the full explanation + video here

To retain the new information we have, we need to anchor them to something already well "enrooted" in our mind, otherwise, they fly away. Examples in Persian and Dutch follow.

Read the full text

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Have you ever noticed that when you make a language mistake that is particularly embarrassing or funny then you never forget about it?

That’s because a strong emotion is linked to that moment.

NEWSLETTER

Why all my teachers didn't help me at learning smarter? I want something more back in return for my time and money. So, I try to fix this issue.

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/09/28/experiencing-the-great-resignation-firsthand-5-march-2021/

I don't really remember what I felt when all the flights got canceled.
I think that's a sort of way of coping with trauma and to me, it feels like Covid never happened. I forgot all the feelings. Like a huge black hole.
I talked about it and other people share the same. Anyway, let's go back once again to April 2020.

I had a salary that for my life standards and expectations at that time was pretty good. I was making around 1800€-1900€ net. I rarely drank alcohol, I've never smoked, I rarely ate out, I barely did anything besides working, no gym subscriptions… nothing (but Persian classes). Even before the lockdown.

When the lockdown came, my life got even more "Calvinist". I was looking at my bank account regularly and seeing with pleasure that there was plenty of money I had no way to spend. After all, yes, I went to Law School, but it was actually a branch of a business school and along with the family environment I was raised in, the idea of using money meaningfully was luckily quite natural.

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/09/02/how-covid-changed-my-life-but-in-a-good-way/

As I said previously, everything was OK, but not great. I was happy to have a job, a good salary, to have kept my Brussels life, to have nice colleagues… but I was not enthusiastic.

I thought that this feeling of unease was due to the weirdness of realizing that you don't need to fight for a job anymore, at least for a while.

Over the weeks I was also better understanding my job. I understood that some admin/database reorganization was needed, but it was slowly seeming like it was a never-ending job. I will not add further details.

Around September I was starting to realize also that the real reason why I was sort of happy to go to the office was because of the people I could find there and not for the job itself actually.

That's a problem.

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/08/13/a-taste-of-employee-life/

I honestly enjoyed my internship period, especially the first six months. However, already back at the end of 2018, I started to like the idea of having my own business.

For the first time in my life, I seriously thought I could do something good. What gave me this confidence? Well, there was a good amount of disorganization, seeing people very well paid with skills I considered even lower than mine, people making gross mistakes without basically any consequence.

Getting decent pay was crucial and very empowering.