April's media recommendations & the skills that schools forget
Hi all!
I’d like to apologise for being a bit silent on here recently - the truth is life has been very one-dimensional as of late - even more so than usual! I am one week out from Quarterfinals, the next stage in the qualification process for competitive CrossFit. Workouts are released on Wednesday and will be completed virtually from Thursday through to Sunday, so I’ve been spending most of my time and energy on training and recovery recently, and very little time on anything else.
My second excuse is, because I’ve been so focused on all this, I have been lacking inspiration, and often find that writing for the sake of writing can feel very forced. So let’s see what updates I can give you that might be of some interest!
I’ve started reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus which I’m thoroughly enjoying. My mother has a long-standing theory that whenever she recommends a book to me I simply reject it on principle, so I’d like to make a point of saying that I am loving a book that she recommended to me, therefore discrediting her claim.
If you haven’t heard of this masterpiece, it’s about an intelligent woman pursuing a career as a chemist in the 1950s. It is set at the height of misogyny in America, where a woman is expected to be married, either happily or unhappily, and play the role of a house wife who’s main concern is to keep the husband content. Elizabeth Zott, the protagonist, experiences the struggle of being an ‘outspoken’, independent and extremely driven female who challenges the social norms at the time. Despite being a more advanced scientist than her colleagues, her recognition and meagre paycheck do not reflect this. It is both a frustrating and compelling read and I’d wholeheartedly recommend it!
I can also offer you a new TV series recommendation. We’ve started watching Fallout on Amazon Prime - it’s based on a video game and we’re only a few episodes in but so far so good. The show follows the lives of a few different characters with very different backgrounds whose stories become intertwined. It’s set in a dystopian future, post-nuclear apocalypse and is pretty gory at times. The violence is however offset by lighter comedic tones, but I’m also a wuss and wouldn’t watch it on my own. Still it’s nice to branch out from Friends every now and then.
So now you know what I’ve been spending my downtime doing!
Other than that it’s just been managing the ongoing struggle of being self-employed. I completed my self-assessment for the tax year, which is a frustrating hour where I Google what government words mean and whether I want to tick yes or no because I refuse to pay someone else to do it for me. I’d like to say it’s because I’m independent, but the phone calls and text messages I send to my self-employed mother during the whole ordeal suggest otherwise.
I wonder why my school chose to teach me Latin and not how to do my own taxes. Should say that I have absolutely nothing against Latin being taught - it was probably my favourite and strongest subject at school, I absolutely loved learning it and still occasionally check-in with it on Duolingo when I need a break from French. But you get the point I’m making.
I met 19-year olds at uni who didn’t know how to boil an egg and wonder if sometimes schools are too focused on churning out prodigies when they’d be better off teaching them how to manage their finances or how to cook a nutritious meal. Or at least find some middle ground and produce individuals like Elizabeth Zott; an accomplished chemist with a cooking show. But I digress.
That’s it from me!
Let me know if you have any recommendations for books or TV shows that you’re enjoying at the moment - as long as they don’t belong in the Horror genre then I might check them out!
Loz x