As you guys probalby already know it has been snowing. It's freezing outside and it's slippery so good bye cycling, Hello walking! Well, at least it only takes 15-20 minutes for me to walk to university, but I prefer going by bike since it is faster and a lot more comfortable. However, the weather forcast says it might be a bit risky to cycle this week due to the minus degrees :(

It at least looks like it will be sunny part of the time this week and not snowing. This forecast is from smhi.se and hopefully they are wrong! I'm not ready to have Winter yet I need to have Autumn first and ease into the cold weather.

The famous quote from Game of Thrones, the words of House Stark, "Winter is coming". It really suits the weather we have had the last coupple of days. Last weekend we hade wonderful sunny Autumn weather and now its snowing and cold and the snow actually sticks to the ground.

At the same time as the weather is slowly changeing the mood of people changes. You feel tired, a bit cold and really don't want to leave your bed for the day, or is it just me? I hate winter, its cold, wet, snowy and cold. The only positive thing about winter is Christmas since then I get to spend time with my family.

Well, even though the motivation maybe isn't at the top there are still work to do, papers to write and texts to read. At the moment I'm not quite sure about what I'm studying it has something to do with teaching reading, speaking, writing and vocabulary but also something about research didactics. Yeah, it's really confusing with university at times. You don't always get the clearest instructions so you just go with the flow and hope that you end up at the right place at the end.

I talked a bit about planning earlier today and I though why don't I show you guys an example of how I plan my weeks with studies, work, and other stuff that I have going on. I try to plan during the weekend before since I usually have things to to until Monday since the first seminar of the week is usually on Monday morgning.

This is just an example of how one of my weeks can look like. I only have two mandatory seminars/ week but there are a lot of work going into these seminars and it is not as chill as many think studies are. Other than studies I have some meetings about me going abroad for one semester and I have two larger work assignments and there is a planned party this weekend which I have gotten a ticket for.

As I already mentioned, this is a rough outline for one week, usually I squeeze in some gaming towards the weekend or in the middle of the week depending on when I have time.

In schools teachers often talk about planning your time. But how do you do this? How do you plan your time effectively? Planning is difficult and you need to practice it but what is even more difficult is to do what you have planned. Planning is only the first part the second part so to execute the plan.

You can use different tools for planning, a calendar in your phone, computer, on paper it doesn't matter where you do your plan as long as you do it. At the moment I use google calendar but I will change into a paper calender as soon as the one I have is valid, which will be in the end of November.

In you weekly plan you first have to think about what days during the week am I booked? It can be practice, lectures, meetings, work anything that is set, that you cannot move. All the time that is left you need to figure out when to do what. You need to include studies in your plan, be sure to pinpoint what you are going to study not just that you are going to study but what. Then you also have to include time for meeting friends or doing other things such as, shopping, going to the cinema and so forth. To make it easier to get started with making your weekly plan choose a specific day of the week when you are going to do the planning. For example, Sundays, it's the last day of the week and you have the whole next week before you and your week start on the Monday and maybe you have to start studying for that test.

Want some more ideas about planning check out this short youtube clip: 

I have decided I want to study abroad. First I wanted to go to England but that is not really possible for me as a teacker trainee since it is very difficult to find courses that suit my studies at my home univeristy. Instead I'm going to the US after one of my preofessors told me that there are three universities where it is easy to find courses that are suitable and where other students have gone and been really happy with it. 

I decided to look further into San Francisco and Duluth. I kind of think that I'm leaning more against Duluth than San Francisco and the reason why is because of the courses that are available. In Duluth there where a lot more courses and I found many that would be interesting and hopefully I will get to study some of them, keep your fingers crossed guys. The sexond reason is kind of lame but Duluth university's webpage was a lot easier to navigate and find the courses than San Francisco, which I think is really bad since I think it should be easy to find what you can study at a university. 

Since I'm probably going to the US I will get housing through the university and don't have to find an appartement on my own which I believe is a really nice benefit. Knowing beforehand that you will have somewhere to live when you get there is really calming in one way, on the other hand it is also a bit scary since you probably will share rooms with other students. But more about that when we get that far.

It is anot always the motivation is on top when you have to study. I once heard someone say don't feel so much just do it. At times I can find it difficult to study, when I think the assignment is unclear, or it is a lot to read, or you are just not in the mood for actually spending time studying when you can do something else that is a lot more fun.

Like today, I started to bake bread instead of picking up The Good Research Guide and read the chapter about Ethnography. Knowing that if I don't do it today I have to do it tomorrow since the seminar is on Monday. And I also know that I have to read a 30 page article tomorrow for the same seminar, so in my study plan I divided the reading so that I wouldn't need to read everything on the same day.

At the moment we are reading about speaking in class. Students need to practice speaking but how do you de this in a fun and not intimidating way? Well, according to The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer students often feel anxious when they are supposed to speak, and this is because students are often asked to speak without giving them time to prepare what they are going to say or that they have to speak in front of the entire class. Dividing the students into smaller groups and giving them some time to think about how they would say something I belive would be a valuable way of getting students to speak. I also believe that you as a teacher shouldn't interupt your students to correct them when they speak but encurage them to use the language. 

As you may know it is very common for students to work at the same time as they study. How do you make the time for it? What do you need to think about?

Planning is the most important thing inorder of havign time to both work and study. Many students need to work at the same time since they don't have enough money otherwise. I believe it is important to have a workplace where you can say no to working sometimes since you will have exams, papers to write and lectures and at least at my university you can have exams on weekends. It could be a good idea to find a workplace that is related to what you study, gaining practice is always a good idea and it will look good on your CV if you have worked with similar things. Another thing that look nice to have on your CV is volunteer work.

I actually work as a translator at the moment and I can decide if I want to take the jobs I'm offered and can plan my hours, when it suits me to work and when it doesn't as long as I hand in the work on time. Working as a translator is not a secure income since you never know how much work you will get or how much you will get paid each month. At the company I work at they pay in Euro and I can myself decide if I want to take out my pay or not. I can take out October pay in December if I feel it works better for me, which I think is really nice.

There are a lot of things happening right now in my life, there is studies, obviously, work and something a bit more exciting if everything works out. I might go to the US to study in the Spring of 2018. Yes, it seems far away but apparently you have to apply before the 1st of December so I still have one month to get everything together. I will try to explain the process of applying and things I have been thinking of and will think of during this whole process.

First, you have to decide where you want to go. This is not as easy as it sounds since you have to pick a place where you can take courses that are similar to those you are going to take at your home university at that semester in order to be able to transfer the credits. Otherwise you will have to study one term extra to make up for the term you missed. 

Second, you have to find courses and get them approved by the examinor at your university. This part would have been a lot easier if anybody knew who the hell is examinating the courses I will take but apparently nothing is every going to be easy right? So here came my first bump in the road. It was superhard to find someone who actually could answer my question "Who should I talk to?". At my university the teacher programme is not part of a faculty, which means I don't belong to a certain faculty which means that I don't have anyone who really works with students who want to go abroad and can help them. My second difficulty at this stage was also that during the semester on which I might go I'm studying history. Hurray for that I got accepted but the thing is history isn't really part of any faculty either and is kind of an inbetweener. Fourtunalty I have an amazing professor at the English faculty who is really that kind of person who takes time to find you an answer and it doesn't matter what you are asking. 

Right now in my plans I'm at the part where I look for possible courses at mainly two universities, San Francisco state university and Duluth univeristy in Minnesota. On Monday I have a meeting with the examinor of the course and hopefully I have managed to find some suitable courses.