This past year Covid-19 has brought forth the fact that I have a not-so-interesting life. Covid closures did not help to hide this fact. 

First I did what everyone else did, after having to deal with people and fake a personality for almost 8 hours straight for the past 16 years, I caught up on some sleep and messed up my sleeping schedule while the process of catching up on that sleep.

 I know that’s not healthy at all in any shape or form, but my best ideas do come when I am sleep-deprived. I think of so many projects that I could do with a fiery passion. I just know I would fall in love with each of these projects while I’m in this state of mind. 

Just when I decide that I would like to do whatever project, I fall asleep and forget all about it. I ignore what I just thought of before closing my eyes and continue to lay in my bed until it’s feeding time (dinner time obviously). 

Finally one day, or night, during quarantine, honestly, I forgot what part of the day it was, I was scrolling through TikTok like I had nothing better to do. I saw a video of a girl singing one of my favorite French songs that I first heard before I even had TikTok.  

I was like, “Hey, I know this song, and thank God she put the song titles on there.”

 I was so happy I found the song that I had been obsessed with a few years ago back before TikTok got so big (I was there at the end of Musically and the beginning of TikTok). 

Naturally, I looked in the comments to see if some random beautiful soul had commented on the YouTube video with the song’s translated lyrics. There were some lyrics. The translated lyrics in the comments however were different than the YouTube video with translation. I was confused. 

That was my moment when an amazing idea struck me in my sleep-deprived brain- what if I just learn French, which this singer is making so beautiful for me? 

 I downloaded the app Babbel.  I really only recommend the app for people who have already been studying the language and just want to revisit the language. Anyways, after downloading the app, I got up from my bed that I had been I glued to, got my Vans notebook, and went to where I do my makeup in front of my beauty mirror. 

For a few hours straight, I was on Babbel learning and taking notes as I learned. The majority of the time I was getting frustrated because I couldn’t say, “Je m’appelle Tom” for an exercise. 

I was getting tired of Babbel after that incident, so I went over to YouTube to find a reliable YouTuber and I found the first YouTuber who seemed French. Learn French With Alexa, is a YouTuber who is the best I’ve encountered so far. She goes over the basics like the alphabet, numbers, and greetings.  Mostly, I’ve learned the numbers and the alphabet, and the only thing I’ve remembered consistently is the number nine. Am I really surprised about this? No.

I am surprised how long I studied French because I cannot focus on a project even if my own personal life depends on it. If I’m being honest, it was three days that I studied French for three hours straight for each day. Don’t get me wrong, I loved studying the language, but at the same time, I was not in the right state of mind to be taking on that much information.

If friends were to ask how they should prepare to learn a new language, I would tell them. 

 They should be well-rested and be mentally prepared for the stress that they’ll face. If they’re going to try and study by themselves without any help as I did, get apps that are for beginners. YouTube is best for hearing someone speak the language. They should also find anything with any form of media like music and tv shows to get in-depth as to how the people speak the language with feeling. 

At least I learned the number 9 in French, so I won’t say it was a total waste of my time.