Shadowing Practice: 7 things to do instead of doomscrolling - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Hey everyone, it's Lin again and I am here to finally admit that I have a problem and that is my phone.

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Hey everyone, it's Lin again and I am here to finally admit that I have a problem and that is my phone.

My screen time on my phone is way more than I'd ever want it to be.

It might not sound that startling if you look at the daily average,

but then one day I calculated how much of my life I would spend on my phone if I kept at it.

So we are going to calculate how many hours I would spend on my phone for my adult life.

So this is not even including adolescents, okay?

So we're being really generous here.

I'm gonna assume that I live until 80.

Maybe it'll be more, maybe it'll be less.

But if we do 80 minus 18, that's 62.

And I spend approximately six hours a day on my phone.

So we're gonna do times seven,

and times four the month,

and times 12 for the year.

This number is already outrageous.

But now we can do times 62.

And then we're gonna divide by 8760.

So for my adult life,

I will spend 14 years.

14.25 years.

So if you divide that by 62,

that is nearly a quarter of my adult life.

Let's think about that.

Let's think of...

What?

While we're at it.

Why don't we just look at my screen time breakdown?

Okay, like what apps am I using the most?

12 hours and 22 minutes on a webtoon.

Okay, so I just started a new webtoon.

It's called After School Lessons for Unwrite Apples and it's really good, y'all.

9 hours and 22 minutes on Instagram last week.

Okay, so I was working a lot last week, so maybe that's fine.

I don't even create a lot of content for TikTok,

so I feel like this is just me endlessly consuming.

Evidence that I have a social life, I guess.

What that?

I overthink text messages I send to people.

I think it's easy to say like,

Lynn, you just gotta go touch grass, be one with nature.

I've done that.

immediately after, my screen time, still bad.

I mean, it's hard not to be on your phone

when every tool that we need to navigate the modern world is on this brick.

Your calendar, your camera, music,

communication, news, memories, games, movies.

Even when I've tried to disaggregate all my tools,

like I listen to music with my pretentious little headphones or I try bringing around a digital film camera to capture memories.

I was never even an e-reader person in the first place,

so I still like carrying around physical books.

I feel like I'm not getting to the root of the issue.

What excites me to create and go out and experience things?

Navigating life as a 20-something right now,

all my Gen Z people,

you understand this timeline is so crazy.

As everything on this channel is,

it's a work in progress.

But there are seven things I'd like to discuss that have helped me find excitement and experiencing life again.

The possibility of being bad or failing is exciting.

But it's also scary.

I've tried out a lot of new things in the past year.

One of them being rock climbing,

which I'm not gonna lie.

I'm still scared of doing that.

I'm not scared of heights.

I'm just scared of falling.

But another new thing that I learned was an offshoot of skills I already had,

and that's making 3D art.

Specifically on my iPad with Feather 3D.

Other programs like Blender still really intimidate me,

but the learning curve for Feather 3D as someone who enjoys digital illustration has been drawing my entire life.

It's steep enough to keep my interest

but once you do learn all the tools I feel like the world is literally your canvas.

You can do so many cool sick things in feather 3d.

This is my first illustration I made and this is my most recent one.

So while it can be fun and exhilarating to dip your toes into completely uncharted waters,

sometimes learning something that is tangential to something you're familiar with can help ease you in without scaring you off.

Or perhaps you don't want to invest into a new hobby quite yet,

so my suggestion is to return to something old,

revitalize an old hobby, and for me this time around it's learning my heritage language, Vietnamese.

There are so many meaningful experiences,

words, moments that cannot translate to any other language,

and it's such a special intimate thing.

You know, you just gotta know the language to understand the feeling and the weight of it,

And with Rosetta Stone, I've seen immense progress with my speaking, writing, reading skills.

In case you don't know,

Rosetta Stone is an immersive language learning app that uses pictures,

audio, and native pronunciation tools to focus on context-based learning rather than memorization.

As a heritage speaker, Rosetta Stone has given me the structure and the coursework,

you know, the guidelines to continue my language learning after college and outside of my family home.

I also want to build out the more technical parts of Vietnamese vocabulary

so I can talk about current events in the media.

Relevant things rather than just like hey what do you want for dinner?

So I've been working on the specialized units that Rosetta Stone has curated.

I'm currently on unit 12, places and events.

They combine multiple different learning styles to create dynamic immersion in their lesson plans

and it's the most intuitive way to learn a lesson.

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So if you'd like, you can check out the lifetime subscription,

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which gives you access to all 25 languages for life.

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And it's currently exclusively 60% off with my link below.

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Thank you Rosetta Stone for partnering with me for this video and for keeping me on track.

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I do feel a great sense of responsibility to preserve my language and my culture as I get older.

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For the future generations, I want to be able to pass that on.

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And I've also been inspired to do a little bit more archiving,

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specifically by documenting and preserving family photos and my own knickknacks.

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If you've been watching my channel for a while,

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or just honestly if you've watched one of my videos,

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you would know that I keep everything that I consider sentimental or aesthetic that comes my way.

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And I don't mean photo strips and postcards and nice things like that.

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I'll keep things that other people will consider trash.

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And my organization system for a while was it end up in the bottom of my bag or my purse,

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and then I clean it out,

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and I put it into Ziploc bags,

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Like so many Ziploc bags.

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And up until a few months ago,

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it was just sitting around collecting dust until I decided to finally hunker down and organize everything into scrapbooks and books.

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For instance, this one is a photo booklet I got while I was in Korea.

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It holds photo strips and four by six shots.

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And this sketchbook I turned into a junk journal.

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It's not in chronological order,

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but it starts from when I was in college,

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specifically around my gap year time and goes up into my travels now.

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It has all the things that I couldn't bear to throw away from traveling.

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And I also printed out photos using instant film printers or a regular printer.

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And it's very nice and beautiful to see all my mementos have a place to live and be preserved.

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And now today we are going to build on the same concept of archiving all your memories

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because I finally bought a scrapbook,

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a proper D-ring scrapbook that has the plastic seal pages got it on sale at Michael's for $10.

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Which I think that's a pretty good deal.

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And I just got back from visiting home and I knew

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that my parents had tons of photos from when we were kids.

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So I raided their bedroom drawers and took all of them.

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This envelope, it's dated January 9th, 2003.

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So I was two years old.

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And inside these envelopes are the original film strips from what

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I'm assuming are the disposable cameras they use to take photos of us.

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And I couldn't bear to let them sit unseen in these envelopes anymore so we're going to put them away today.

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Memories nowadays exist in our Instagram archives,

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virtual photo albums, and the cloud but nothing beats a printed photo especially the ones

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that predated the digital age something you can hold and cherish.

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There's this Vietnamese trend right now inspired by Ushun Voong where

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people explain the significance of a word over a sentimental cut of b-roll footage

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and even at the risk of being corny there's actually this word I want to talk about.

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We.

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It's a term you use when you're talking about a thing that is valuable and precious to you.

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And I don't mean things of great wealth or status or even people.

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Most folks, at the end of the day,

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hold objects close to their hearts because it reminds them of people they love or moments they want to remember forever.

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But because of displacement and war,

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it's much more difficult to trace back my family's archives

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and memories since much of it doesn't exist or it's scattered across random relatives,

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shoeboxes, and photo albums.

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Even though the material things we have in our lives are probably the first that we'll sacrifice,

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it doesn't mean you're exempt from the feeling of loss and grief when you don't have it with you anymore.

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I was hella nostalgic going through all the photos and seeing young Lin,

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baby Lin, but what really hit me was reading all the notes,

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the cards, and letters that were written to me throughout my life.

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From high school to graduation to college to many birthdays,

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just seeing my name iterated again and again in the handwriting of so many people that I love.

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I'm so happy I have evidence of these happy memories because we want to remember everything.

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But do we?

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Life would be so overwhelming if we didn't know how to let go and forget.

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In this plastic bag, I have everything that I don't want to keep,

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including artwork made by my ex and letters and postcards,

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photos of people that I had a falling out with and such.

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I did keep too many receipts and airplane tickets,

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so those are getting recycled too.

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And I held onto a ton of things that I would get in the mail or paint strips,

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paint strips, just random pieces of cardstock.

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But for every embarrassing, awkward memory that I would love to forget,

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there is a good one.

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So I don't mind.

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Oh, look, it's you.

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What's the difference?

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Yeah.

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I think it's easy to wrongfully pinpoint certain genres of media,

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such as video games, as meaningless uses of time.

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But genuinely, a video game that has changed so much of my perspective on life,

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relationships, the way I approach grief and love and caretaking is this wonderful game called Spiritfarer.

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Now, if you know me in real life,

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I've probably talked your ear off about it.

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Spiritfarer is a game about dying.

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You play as the main character,

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Stella, with her cat Daphne,

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as you help these passengers process their memories and their past lives,

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and eventually move through the Everdore.

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As I've gotten older, people in my life that are family that I care about have begun to pass away.

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In this past spring, I had to mourn a relative that I grew up hearing so many stories about from my mom,

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but I never got to meet because they lived in Norway.

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And it was a strange and tough experience for my body and mind and heart to process,

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performing funeral rites for someone I never got to hug,

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someone I had never gotten a chance to take a photo with.

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And playing through Spiritfarer showed me that there is not a one size fits all journey when it comes to processing grief.

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And part of living life is that you will have regret

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or shame or guilt over the things you did or could not do.

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And you might be thinking,

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Lin, based on the gameplay I'm seeing on your screen right now,

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it doesn't match up with what you're saying, which is pretty heavy.

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Spiritfarer does a wonderful job of balancing the character's beautiful emotional dialogue with really fun ways to mine resources,

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level up your ship, unlock new outfits, and explore the world.

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And as you progress in the story as Stella,

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you'll learn that managing a ship for the dead is no easy task.

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You have passengers literally making you go across the world because they have beef with their lover.

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But despite it all, you do it because you care and love them.

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And when it's their time to go,

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you learn how to say goodbye.

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Like Spiritfarer, there have been some books that I've read,

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I've gone back into reading,

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that have had me in a grip.

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I mean, I'm glued to the page.

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I wake up and the first thing I want to do is go.

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And even after I finished a book,

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I'm on the Reddit threads.

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I'm looking up people's dissertations and essays about characters or subplots or the themes of this book.

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And if you are curious about the books that had me so engrossed that I was doing these deep dives on Reddit,

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here they are.

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East of Eden, my opinion,

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the contender for the great American novel by John Steinbeck is considered his magnum opus.

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The themes about choice, individualism,

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choosing between good and evil will forever be something that resonates with readers.

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But my biggest takeaway from this book were the woman characters.

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And I actually found a great essay about Kathy.

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If you'd like to read it,

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I'll link it in the description.

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Hijab Butch Blues by Lamia H.

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The memoir is about the author growing up as an immigrant,

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as queer and Muslim, and the growing pains of those awkward teenage years when you're figuring out your sexuality.

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And that doesn't end.

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It blooms all the way into college and adulthood

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and she tells these really relatable stories about navigating dating and the city while balancing the expectations of your community and career.

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And the author challenges her internal need to be of service to be indispensable to everyone in her life,

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and they offer up this reimagining of what it means to put down roots,

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of what relationships can look like to other people and yourself.

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And lastly, I recently re-read excerpts from Care Work.

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If you're one of those people who thinks,

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oh everyone wants a village,

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but nobody wants to be a villager,

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you should read this book.

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The book advocates for social infrastructure that promotes interdependence

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and care webs all from the perspective of critical disability studies

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and after a year of living in new york i am finally going to get my library card

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let's go hello we're at the shoresman library

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which is more famously known as the banana fish library i've actually never been inside

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so we're gonna go took the long commute all the way to the banana fish library

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because they actually have a special exhibit of baldwin's work

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and i read Giovanni's room for the first time in the spring

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and there was an original draft manuscript of the book

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and including epic nuggets of history the libraries in New York have so many resources for you to use.

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I mean I grew up being a public library kid.

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Hi, I'm here to get my library card but I already got it online.

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There was actually a book that I was looking for

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and it was super fun to search it up in the catalog and find it by myself.

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And I can't wait to read more books from the library.

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If you're like me, there's probably a gazillion things that you've put off on doing,

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such as getting your library card and having access to all these things for free.

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You know, you pay your taxes.

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So like this is your taxpayer money.

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Another thing I've been putting off that I've been meaning to do is altering my clothes.

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I have this pile in my bedroom.

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So we are going to take some things that I already own and give it a little bit more life.

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I recently cleaned out my closet and a more in-depth video documenting this will come in the future.

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But it made me confront my relationship to fashion and gender presentation.

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Because let's admit it, I have a uniform.

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I wear the same clothes,

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same silhouettes, and colors on a daily basis.

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And any other articles that I'm holding on to out of sentiment,

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out of hope it fits me again one day,

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or out of hypothetical scenarios I might need it for,

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I mean, I just don't wear them.

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And clothes should be something you wear and they should fit you,

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not the other way around.

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I like things that are comfortable.

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I mean, everything new I buy now is likely just some variation of something I already own.

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And you should wear the clothes you want to wear now, every day.

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One thing that limited my existing wardrobe's full potential was cropping all these thrifted shirts.

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And because I was finally able to kick my doom scrolling habits,

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I can now proudly don my cropped button-ups.

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And last but not least,

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we're taking inspiration for middle school, high school win.

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If you're unaware, I'm well known for my childhood bedroom and for my decorating.

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And as a kid, I would impulsively rearrange my room all the dang time.

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I mean, I would be pushing furniture around my room at 2 a.m in the morning,

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and my parents would be like, what is going on?

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You can't be doing this.

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Revamping and maintaining my environment has kept my mind fresh for ideas.

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The most adult things about me now is,

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one, I make my bed every single morning,

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and two, I never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink.

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Having a messy environment has an effect on how you rest or how you work and play.

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You know, if my office is messy,

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I'm not going to want to go in there and paint or film something or draw or write.

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And if the only place in my house that is somewhat clean is my bedroom,

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of course, I'm going to have horizontal scrolling time.

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So doing all the small tasks to keep your environment lively,

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to keep it clean and organized,

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can do a lot for your well-being and creative spirit in the long run.

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Thank you so much for watching.

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I did choose to talk about seven things because of BTS.

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So my one year anniversary of moving to New York was a few weeks ago.

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And I can't believe that time flies so fast.

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It's been a year of growing pains,

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fruitful experiences, crazy life events,

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just all of it packed into one.

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I mean, I wouldn't have it any other way.

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I wouldn't have it any other way.

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And I hope that my reflections and my experiences help you get off your phone.

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And thank you to Rosetta Stone for partnering with me throughout this year and for this video.

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A reminder that you can get 60% off of the lifetime subscription by using the link in my description.

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Because I am an optimist,

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please let me know what is exciting you about experiencing life right now in the comments.

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But yeah, I'll see you in the next video.

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Toodaloo.

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Bye.

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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Shadowing Practice: 7 things to do instead of doomscrolling - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: 7 things to do instead of doomscrolling - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?