In the spring of 2022, in the midst of packing up my life in Portland & moving to Chicago, I downloaded the Duolingo app to my phone. It started mostly as an attempt to procrastinate, but by that fall it was a daily habit.
I started with German. I couldn’t tell you why, other than I often drove by a German language school and thought lessons would be fun. After I lost interest in German, I challenged myself to go back to Spanish. After taking 4 years of high school Spanish, 6 semesters of college Spanish, and studying abroad in Madrid for 5 months, I was not surprised to learn that I barely remembered anything!
But I stuck with it, hitting milestones and rising up the ranks.
Eventually Spanish got hard & I needed a brain break, so I switched it up again. Did you know Duolingo offers math lessons? They’re clearly designed for children, and are reminiscent of my math homework in the 90s and playing Around the World with multiplication tables in second grade1, but they were delightfully nostalgic.
I also tried music lessons and even chess; I didn’t stick with any of them nearly as long as I stuck with Spanish, but I did at least one lesson a day (with a few freezes thrown in there) and two weeks ago I celebrated my 1,000 day milestone.
I’m very proud of committing for that long, and I’m also a bit burnt out. By day 950, I knew I was ready to transition from I must do this every day!!! to I haven’t done a Duolingo lesson recently, but that sounds fun today.
I pushed through to get to 1,000 days — you never know when you’ll need a Fun Fact About Yourself for a corporate icebreaker — and then I let it end.
I’ll go back to it one day, but only for the enjoyment of it & not in pursuit of a streak, which I’m very much looking forward to.
After more than 3 years of it, I highly recommend it if you want a break from doomscrolling or to give your brain some exercise.
ICYMI: Recent Posts to Catch Up On
From the Archives: An Older Post I Still Stand By
I dominated this game, and I’m still chasing that high 30 years later.
I just started it last month, because we're planning a wee trip to Montreal and I want to be able to say at least a little bit in French. I kinda love it, but am definitely in the new toy phase. I hope I stick with it though and I am looking forward to trying some other languages/courses post trip. I did do some Spanish lessons (which I took in high school and college) as a little "brain break" and was proud of how much I still knew, although I think it was probably just in comparison to French ...
I just joined this week on a family plan with Mike and having fun!