Final learning theory paper

Yesterday I finished the last significant assignment of my first course—a paper describing my theory of learning. Well, that was what it was supposed to be, but it was more like describing how I thought the ideal teacher should act. It was only five pages double-spaced of text, and a lot of that was taken up by references, bible verses, and headers. I enjoyed the structure and content of the assignment, but I didn’t feel like I had space to do justice to any of the eight topics I was supposed to address. Still, I finished it in a not unreasonable amount of time, which I wouldn’t have been able to do had the length less restricted, so I’m happy with it (at least until I get my grade back).

I spent almost the whole day writing, though. I took some breaks for cooking, Japanese, and exercise, but these were about 30 minutes each and an hour for exercise. Other breaks were mostly for Rubik’s cube, and thus rarely exceeded 5 minutes. I had a similar schedule on Saturday. So I probably spent eight hours on the paper Saturday and Sunday each which, considering I had already written lots of notes and gathered all my sources, is a bit excessive.

The Rubik’s cube is really neat though. It gives me something to fiddle with when I’m trying to think but I can’t make any words come out. When I take a break it gives me something to do for a limited time, usually 2-3 minutes, and then I naturally return to the project at hand. If this function doesn’t wear out, I may have mostly solved my procrastination problem.

JAPANESE

I read Steins;Gate (the visual novel) for at least 20 minutes (I should have kept track). It was long enough to mine seven good words, and I enjoyed the scene. I’m thinking that, since my goal is to read the visual novel, I will do so in the evening when I don’t feel pressured and will be more likely to extend the reading time, and I will take my vocabulary words from that, instead of doing it in the morning. The only problem with this plan is that now I have nothing to read in the morning with my breakfast. Japanese news would be ideal, but with my new goal I am less motivated to make the effort there. I’ll try it and see if I have enough willpower.

5-MINUTE PLANK

I forgot to do this yesterday morning, and in the evening I felt weak and only managed two minutes.

DANCING

I didn’t really work specifically toward my choreography goal, but I learned three variations of one of my new favorite move, the pas de bouree. Two of these variations are spins, which means I can’t tell what I look like when I do them, but I feel like they’re pretty cool. I learned them easily and enjoyed doing them.

PROGRAMMING

No progress, but using scripturetyper has inspired me and possibly given me some ideas.

BIBLE MEMORY

I reviewed Psalms 11 and 12. I didn’t quite make 90%, but it was close, so that was encouraging.

RUBIK’S CUBE

I can now do all the PLL algorithms without any reference. I still have to think about the steps for some of them, so I’ll keep practicing of course. For the first time, I tried timing my whole solve using only CFOP (except for the OLL step, which I haven’t learned yet). My shortest time was something like 1:40, but my longest time was over 3 minutes. I feel pretty confident that I can eventually solve any F2L problem, but I definitely fumble a lot more than I should.