march month review

29 Mar, 2026

i was gonna write a week review, but i didn't do that for weeks cuz i didn't know where to start. same for reviewing what i learnt at school. same for writing a day review on my diary, but i now do have a base format and the times i don't do it it's laziness.

also people should use the word 'gwichanism'.

things i consumed

fiction

everything here was free online, the internet is a public library!

oh btw if you're not me, pls note that there might be a bit of spoilers

babel by r.f. kuang

i was like 'i should write a book report on it' and i didn't.

the first part (before the main characters join hermes) is centered around colonialism, specifically in language research. though there is generally colonialism reflected everywhere, the book is basically about people in britain collecting different languages and using them for magic to benefit themselves (and not the speakers of languages), which is a part of a bigger colonizing movement.

elaborating more on the 'language research' part, the worldbuilding is this: britain finds out that you can do magic with silver bars by putting two words with similar meanings called a 'match pair' (they mention translation, so i think the words are supposed to be in different langs. but then there's one pair that's in the same language?). the way this works is (disclaimer: ava did not understand this) by putting those two words on each side of a silver bar, you are translating one word to the other. but as they say there is no perfect translation and every pair of words has some difference in meaning. the difference in meaning is what causes the magic. and these bars that can now do magic are used everywhere, well at least in europe because who cares about everyone else. to use these bars you have to know the languages the match pair is in, though considering not everyone in britain speaks 5 romance languages and german, and considering the scene where oxford university scholars go around town to renew the power of silver bars, i'm assuming a non-speaker of the langs can use the bars for a certain time. there are certain places called 'translation centers' where these silver bars are made, and oxford university¹ is the biggest one. as well as making silver bars, oxford university also trains students to make silver bars and has grammars of languages. there are also places for translating literature and legal papers.

at first translation centers use match pairs from indo-european languages, notably germanic/romance languages and 'classics' like latin, greek, and hebrew. but they realize 1. there are already too many of those match pairs yet they need to make new match pairs 2. people are not speaking latin or greek fluently anymore. and here's where colonialism comes in. the translation centers, at least oxford university (they don't mention other translation centers a lot), decide to use languages from other regions they just "discovered". and to get people who are fluent in those languages on britain's side, oxford university recruits children from outside europe to study in britain. they would be immersed into european culture and study some languages (latin and greek are the basics, plus whatever their native language was)² before going into oxford university to get more formal training. (i think they mentioned the characters were in their teens when they went to uni, like did people actually go to uni at thirteen back then?)³

the main character, robin, is one of those non-europeans, specifically from canton, who gets yanked out of their homeland and into britain. but not just in any way, he gets yanked out by a guy called professor lovell who saves robin with a silver bar during a plague. but there's the first sign of professor lovell being racist, which is that he doesn't care to save robin's mother even though he could, because "gosh she was just a chink". what??? but robin is saved by this mystical guy with an even more mystical silver bar, and he agrees to be raised in london with professor lovell as his guardian.

at first everything is great, robin loves getting the education he otherwise wouldn't have gotten in canton.

[ava should continue this]

butterfly soup by brianna lei

a visual novel about gay (and bi) girls. my fav character is min-seo. "VIOLENCE SOLVES EVERYTHING!!!!"

also diya can't remember how to count to five in korean.

nonfiction books

careless people by sarah wynn-williams

i hated meta for getting every other thing on instagram, now i have a clearer reason to hate meta. i'm gonna reccommend this book to my teacher who hates meta so she has a solid reason to hate meta.

blogs/blogposts

• using AI to inflate your ego by ava a reminder for me that hating on AI (or basically anything) and bragging about it is not doing any good to society. reminds me of allyship is not about oneself. (looking up that post i now want to read the importance of philosophy)

• 류모찌의 상용로그 a blog about math! he⁴ has courses that he calls "동영상 없는 인강" (online lecture without videos) on high school and university level math. i was looking up hilbert's axioms when i first found this blog, and i think i will visit his course later when i go on to high school math.

analogue doomscrolls

• 똑똑한 사람은 어떻게 생각하고 질문하는가: 스피커 기법과 깔때기 기법, 5 whys

things i learned

• the existence of hilbert's axioms. it's looks it up because i don't know how to explain this in english, korean either, but nobody knew what it was anyways talking to irl ppl so i could explain this poorly and nobody would notice a set of assumptions about euclidean geometry, which i have understood as 'the basics of euclidean geometry but cooler than euclid's postulates'. and i have been learning it from 류모찌.
• school has so many social rules that go against my personality and learning. and sometimes compromising with the social rules is helpful, but sometimes screw them. for example i should be allowed to ask questions in class even though everyone hates it when i do that. i have limited my questions to the most relevant ones (the others i ask after class), such as when the teacher was breaking up a verb into morphemes but said that -어지다 was one morpheme, 'but isn't -어지다 two morphemes like -어지- for passive voice and -다 for sentence ending? you can end a verb with -어지지 like they did in this page of the textbook and -어지- means passive voice here as well.' and everyone groaned, even the ambitious students.
• sometimes a niche and useless activity will attract more people than a general and useful one. that's why the linguistics olympiad club i made at school succeeded and the english webzine club didn't, despite writing in english being more useful than linguistics olympiads.
• getting help does not mean relying 100% on that thing.
• some types of constituency tests that work for some constituents in english. replacement test, movement test, cleft test (it was ... that ...), question-answer test.
• you can have a really long speech when running for a class election. i left out a lot of things for it cuz my friends warned me i will write my speech too long and nobody will listen to it. but the candidate with the longest speech won the election.
• renting a meeting room for six people on sunday as minors is hard.
• a big gap in my english vocab comes from not knowing how to convert words to other parts of speech. most new words i learn in korean are nouns, and to verb them i simply put -하다, and to adjective them i simply put -한. that and toki pona has eased my ability to convert nouns or adjectives into verbs in english. but i'm not very good at verb -> noun or adjective -> noun or adjective -> verb.
• studying during breaktime is mostly good, at least for now.
• when i don't want to do something, it's mostly because i don't know how to do it. there are two ways to deal with this: 1. make a template (and allow it to be broken later on) and 2. bullshit it. for notetaking, way 2 is the most effective and it is how i prevent doomscrolling youtube videos and lingustics textbooks.

things i achieved

• i made a linguistics olympiad club at my school and already did two meetings! i hesistated a bit making this club, because i thought nobody would join. everyone told me nobody would join for six months straight. and guess what!
• i convinced my mom to join a math club outside school with a really cool friend of mine. on the way i told my mom about how i have really been feeling about studying math, and the fact that i'm not totally opposed to private education, just large cram schools. i was always worried if i said that wrong thing about my studies my mom would simply send me back to a large, cram-schooly hagwon without my approval, and i wouldn't be able to oppose it. or my mom would yell at me and i would need a month to recover. but the convo went well. my mom is one of the greatest ones i've ever met, she does not fall into traps that other ambitious moms do that i sometimes see as borderline abusive.
• i sometimes really feel like studying math, by sometimes i mean every day at 10pm. finally!!!
• i have been practicing identifying constituents on my english textbook. the teacher talks about grammar anyways, but i did not understand what the main point of her grammar explanations were, until she told me it was for learning how to speak english and that i am obviously way above the assumed level. so i repurposed english class for me to practice whatever linguistics thing i learned.

things i tried (and failed)

• focusing on my studies by changing my thoughts instead of the system. that includes not waiting for the end of school because i can stop studying because i will study at home anyways and i will like it⁵, and not hoping study time ends soon because i will have to study anyways and if time goes faster i will just be more behind the next day. this has failed after three days and i will try to do this with systematic changes.
• i read one of my old chinese textbooks⁶. i tried to make this a weekly routine but i ran out of time for the last 3 weeks.

things i am looking up to

• the linguistics olympiad club!!! at the end of this we will host one at my school.
• learning syntax.

things that held me back

• self hate and approval seeking (which comes from self hate) as always. reflecting on my actions to do them better in the future is good. but exaggerating my actions to gain others' attention is bad and i should work on actually getting better at something instead of boasting about it.
• low focus, as always again. everytime i try to solve it i fail because i think i will never be focused, which strengthens the idea that i can never fix my focus problem. how do you fix the cycle? i'm thinking a mix of brainwashing and changing the system.
• hesitation on trying new things. some days i will be very adventurous (like making posters for my class election or clubs before anyone else did, or talking to random people to convince them to join my club⁷.), but somedays i just don't want to do anything.
• not wanting to do anything and give up life. another reason i can't make positive changes.

looking at the list, a lot of things are mental.

other things

• i made three friends at school this month. unfortunately none of them were in my grade though. but still three is a lot!
• i also got comfortable with speaking to the school's foreign teacher.
• how do i keep all of this in my brain and consider these for my future?

#english #month review