Does Speaking Another Language Change How You Think? | Scott H Young
Language: The Gateway To Culture
The local language is the preferred route to understand the culture due to 2 reasons:
Most people don’t speak English very well, due to their learning it as a second or third language. These people do not represent the real sampling of the country's population, just being the better-educated cosmopolitans who speak a global language.
Most translations are poor substitutes for the real cultural essence, and a person needs to learn the original language to fully understand the context and culture.
When you land in a country, you usually don't feel confident speaking, so you might decide to start in your native language until you get your bearings.
But you might meet peers and other people speaking in your native language, and if this bubble sticks, you can end up living in a country for decades without ever learning the local language.
Should you try to boost your resume? While the answer appears simple that anyone would like to work on getting credentials and experiences that look good on paper, the larger question includes a bi...
An argument for not trying to please people: You should never work on something with the sole purpose of adding it to your resume.
The benefit of this outlook is it makes you highly independent. Satisfaction comes from within, not from other's opinions of you.
The downside is that you need to deal with people. Trying not to please people might isolate you and your ideas. You might need to get a degree if your dream job requires a degree, even if the degree itself is worthless.
The world is driven by marketing. When you interact with other people, you need to know how to sell yourself. This means that you would want to fill your resume with activities that look good.
Instead of being focused on yourself, you craft an authentic story around yourself that is driven by a strategy.
The downside is that its hard to separate your independence from what other people think of you, knowing that you need to market to them.
Many new graduates face the stress of figuring out what to do after they get their degree. The post-grad crisis represents a general problem all of us face - figuring out what to do once yo...
Getting caught on the infinite treadmill. It happens when goals are continually replaced by more ambitious goals.
Falling off the wagon. This happens when you set a goal that won't last, e.g. losing 25 lbs only to have it all come back three months later. An exit strategy would be helpful to maintain your weight.
The empty celebration. Reaching a big goal feels very exciting, but the effects are not lasting on your happiness. An exit strategy could solve this problem.