Mara's Study Log!

Welp, I’ve got a cold. :sneezing_face: So … what better time to update my study log?

First of all, the trip to Japan was great! And somehow I ended up only buying 10 books. :joy:

Some highlights
  • snowshoeing in Noboribetsu and then going to an amazing giant hot spring that allows tattoos! (so my partner could go in too), and then getting soft serve ice cream parfaits when we got back to Sapporo
  • Aoao aquarium in Sapporo, especially the zen aquarium area, and the Rockhopper penguin/cafe area (and the croissant with red beans and basically a stick of butter in it)
  • just the general winter wonderlandyness of Sapporo
  • letting ourselves get a little obsessed with Snow Miku at the Sapporo Snow festival
  • seeing friends and my tutor (she is so funny and also kind and supportive)
  • having roasted Japanese sweet potato for the first time! in a cute little counter restaurant where we were all crowded in with just a few other customers, too.
  • vegetarian soup curry! it was delicious!
  • learning the magic of haramaki

As expected, I got behind on kanji reviews and book clubs while traveling. I plan to start catching back up again after I get over both jet lag and this cold. But right now I haven’t even gotten all the way through unpacking or my laundry.

While I was traveling though, I kind of decided I should start doing “solo bookclubbing” in my study log … I need to (for a time) stop letting myself get distracted by all the new and exciting book clubs out there on the internet, and start focusing in on the books I’ve chosen for myself over the last few years. Maybe this is the perfect time to get serious about (reverse) bingo!

My new acquisitions from the trip:

アイヌ民族もんよう集 and 世界のかけら図鑑 are two of my favorites, because I found them very serendipitously.

アイヌ民族もんよう集

We used the underground roads/malls a fair amount while in Sapporo and one of the cool things we came across was an exhibition of Ainu tapestries. We spent ages looking and taking photographs (and being like “how did they do that!?”). Then another day we happened to notice a store devoted to Ainu crafts. They had a number of art books, but this was the only one that was also a how-to book! I can’t wait to try it out! :blush:

世界のかけら図鑑

When we were leaving Aoao aquarium we stopped (naturally) at the gift shop, which had a whole bookstore section. I browsed, not necessarily expecting to find anything, but then this jumped out at me. It’s a book of very brief essays (no more than a page) on different interesting things relating to science, math and philosophy. Opposite each essay is an illustration by one of a couple dozen illustrators. This is so up my alley, and the bite-size essays seem so approachable yet potentially full of delicious new vocabulary.

Also 魔女の宅急便 その2 キキと新しい魔法

Kinokuniya didn’t have it, but Maruzen did … An edition of the second Kiki’s Delivery Service that matches my edition of the first volume! For some reason it’s weirdly difficult to find this particular edition in softcover on the internet, so I was very pleased about this. Also, I love the idea of what that subtitle suggests!

Last trip I didn’t let myself choose anything that I didn’t think I could probably read right away, but this time I let go of that a little in getting 薬屋のひとりごと and 眠れないほど面白い枕草子 and I don’t regret it. :slight_smile:

Here’s hoping I can get into that blissful, focused study state sooner rather than later!

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I think I might start tracking my reading again … I stopped (long ago actually) because, hmm, it didn’t feel necessary I guess. But right now I’m feeling excited for reading but also like all my reading is going at an absolute snail’s pace. If I start tracking again then maybe I’ll also be able to catch the little improvements a bit better.

(I know I’m improving because when I started the Silent Witch club I only kept up through liberal use of the principles of extensive reading, but these days I mostly understand everything and only don’t know the readings of things and don’t look them up every once in a while.)

Now the question is just … how … Spreadsheet? Study log comment? On paper somewhere? I’d like to post it here so I’m leaning towards the second option, but then there’s still the question of formatting. List? Table? A table of lists? … We shall see.

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In addition to tracking my reading (pages/day) I’ve decided to come up with a tsundoku score for myself, to keep track of how I’m doing on that front. :slight_smile:

Here’s what I’ve got so far, but if anyone has any suggestions/ideas for additional rules or ways to score, please do share!

Tsundoku score rules

Worth 1 point:

  • read a new book in a series I already started

Worth 2 points:

  • finish a book that I gave up on before
  • decide to DNF a book that I’m just not enjoying
  • read a new book (not in a series) that I purchased in the last year (ish)

Worth 3 points

  • read a book I’ve had longer than a year: 3 points

Additional rules

  • buy a new book and read it: -1 point
  • combos are allowed
  • bonus points may be awarded on a subjective basis? (not sure yet)
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I learned something new!

If you’re also wanting to get rid of some books (that you’ve read and don’t plan on going back to, or DNF and didn’t like) (and thus have more space for more books!) maybe 1 point per book you donate/sell/give out?

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This is such a fun idea :grin: do you have a target number of points you’re reaching for?

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Ooh, nice idea @monace! That’s a good one.

@bungakushoujo Thanks! I’m not sure yet what a realistic goal would be … for now I’ll just aim for a high score and compete with myself, but if others also wanted to we could have tsundoku score races or competitions. That would be pretty fun too. :grin:

I thought up another couple rules that could help me with my reading goals:

  • read a new book (not in a series) without an active/current bookclub: 1 extra point
  • finish a book in pursuit of catching up to an active bookclub: 1 extra point
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Welp, this was a mildly embarrassing humbling week to start tracking my reading … I had a couple good days, but mostly very uninspiring days. (dumb life getting in the way ぶつぶつ) :sweat_smile:

day to day numbers

April 13

  • 木曜日にはココアを 5 pages
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 9 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 5 pages

April 14

  • 木曜日にはココアを 6 pages
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 14 pages

April 15

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 2 pages

April 16

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 3 pages
  • とんがりぼっちの○○生活 とんがり帽子のアトリエ 4 pages
  • ひとり帽子の○○生活 2 pages

April 17

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 3 pages
  • しろくまカフェ 4 pages

April 18

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 3 pages
  • 時間割男子 3 pages + 11 pages
  • しろくまカフェ 4 pages

April 19

  • 木曜日にはココアを 1 page
  • わたしの幸せな結婚 2 pages
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 23 pages

Totals

Prose: 39 pages
Manga: 67 pages

On the plus side, hopefully this means that it’s pretty easy to improve! I’m not sure what my goal is exactly, but I’d definitely like to increase my volume. Right now I’m pretty much only reading book club books. I used to do book club reading at the beginning of the week, then do my own reading at the end of the week, but lately I only barely make it through the book club reading by the end of the week. I’ve been okay with that because Silent Witch has caused a ton of growth for me! But now I want to reclaim my personal reading time. greedy :innocent:

tsundoku score

According to current tsundoku score rules, my score for the year so far is … 12!

P.S. Also, reading only 39 pages of prose on a bad week is actually kind of a huge deal! Me of a couple years ago could only dream of such a thing!

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This week was much better on two counts! 1) overall numbers 2) personal reading

day to day

April 20

  • 木曜日にはココアを 1 page
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • ハルタ 18 pages + 22 pages :sparkles: (ふくふく万福帳)
  • 気になってる人が男じゃなかった 8 pages
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 25 pages

April 21

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 5 pages
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 15 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 8 pages

April 22

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 8 pages

April 23

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • ハルタ … 0 pages
  • 時間割男子 13 pages
  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 1 page

April 24

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages

April 25

  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 8 pages
  • ハルタ 6 pages
  • 時間割男子 6 pages

April 26

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 1 page + 2 pages

Totals

Prose: 49 pages
Manga: 110 pages
Non-book club: 55 pages

I had a good first couple days of the week, reading-wise, and I think that made me feel like I could slack off a little during the middle of the week lol. The 24th was a major fatigue day, though, and it definitely shows in my reading stats.

I got back into Harta a little this week, which I really enjoyed and hope to continue!

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I started reading 徒然日和 1 | L19 (sent to me by the lovely @暁のルナ !) this week, which has been great! It’s good to have a balance between difficult books that force me to grow and reading to just enjoy the fact that I can actually read now! 徒然日和 is super chill and adorable, and one evening I started reading and before I knew it I had reached the end of the chapter. Pretty sure that was the first time that happened to me in Japanese. :blush:

With regards to book clubs, I made a conscious decision to focus on keeping up with 木曜日にはココアを and let myself fall behind on サイレント·ウィッチ. At this point I’m definitely going to finish it, so it’s a little less important to me to keep up with the book club. Since I’m pushing myself with Cocoa-san, I’ll just take Silent Witch at a pace that feels comfortable.

day to day

April 27

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 1 page
  • 時間割男子 2 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 8 pages

April 28

  • 徒然日和 42 pages
  • 気になってる人が男じゃなかった 8 pages
  • とんがり帽子のアトリエ 3 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 4 pages

April 29

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • 時間割男子 18 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages

April 30

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 4 pages

May 1

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • 徒然日和 25 pages

May 2

  • 木曜日にはココアを 7 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 2 pages
  • 徒然日和 6 pages

May 3

  • 気になってる人が男じゃなかった 8 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 1 page

Prose: 41 pages
Manga: 110 pages
Non-bookclub: 73 pages

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I did some soul-searching last week (after being summoned to the Light Novel reading club by the mention of “chaos” and tie-breaking), and realized that I get really, really motivated by book clubs. I still feel a little torn about joining more bookclubs, because there’s a lot that I want to read on my own, but I decided for the moment to embrace the motivation that it gives me and just go for it. In conclusion, a copy of クラスで2番目に可愛い女の子と友だちになった | L27 is now on its way to me.

And my secondary conclusion is that maybe I need to look into more ways to harness that motivation … For example, what if I did online tutoring lessons with a reading schedule? Or hosted a “let’s read Japanese” meetup with no particular agenda, just “read what you want”?

I don’t know … somehow even though I’m making progress I’m managing to feel stagnant at the same time and I’m just kind of searching for something that will change that feeling.

Anyway, this was the first week that I kept a running tally of my total! That was pretty fun. :slight_smile:

day to day

May 4

  • 木曜日にはココアを 1 page
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 12 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 8 pages

May 5

  • ハルタ 27 pages (FOOLPROOF) :sparkles:
  • 木曜日にはココアを 3 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 11 pages

May 6

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • 徒然日和 39 pages

May 7

  • 徒然日和 20 pages
  • 気になってる人が男じゃなかった 4 pages
  • 時間割男子 5 pages

May 8

  • 木曜日にはココアを 4 pages
  • 気になってる人が男じゃなかった 4 pages
  • 時間割男子 10 pages

May 9

  • 木曜日にはココアを 4 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 10 pages

May 10

  • 木曜日にはココアを 4 pages
  • 時間割男子 3 pages
  • 徒然日和 24 pages

Prose: 52
Manga: 147
Non-bookclub: 110

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Sorry not sorry.

I’ve also had this realization and I think, for me at least, it makes sense to harness the social aspect of book clubs to get me through more books. And maybe append that sentence with a “for now”. I’m still at the point where it takes 10-12 hours to read a trashy light novel and I just don’t have the patience for that. But if you get someone to draft a schedule and pop some emoji on the title and suddenly it’s the most important thing to do this week.

As a corollary though, I’ve also let myself drop book clubs for pretty much whatever reason, as long as I’ve given it about 3 weeks.

So far I think book clubs are a net benefit to my reading, but I also just have so much I want to read. But that’s no different than my reading in English (which is so, so neglected), so I think this is more of an avid reader problem than it is a foreign language problem…

Have you tried challenging your level lately? Or, conversely, finding something that you really really want to read at a level that has zero struggle? Those are my two ways so far I’ve found for getting out of a rut. Adding a new kind of media type could also work, but it doesn’t sound like you’re hurting for things to do already :joy:

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Truer words have never been spoken. :\ I feel like this gets worse as you get more skilled, too. When you’re a baby learner it’s easy to think, “oh, there’s some stuff I want to read, but when I can read faster I’ll get thought it in no time!”, but then you’re exposed to so much other good stuff while learning that you almost end up sabotaging yourself.

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Same on all counts. :sweat_smile:

I’m a firm believer in finding what works for you in the moment, even if it goes against all your plans. (Me earlier this year: this is gonna be the year that I finally make real progress on my backlist!) … But it does sometimes feel counter-intuitive or even counter-productive and I tend to struggle with that a lot …

Actually, I’ve been doing all these things. :joy: Silent Witch challenged my level, Cocoa on Thursdays continues to challenge my level, 徒然日和 (“Wonderful Days”) was zero struggle, 時間割男子 is mostly effortless, I started watching a workplace romance anime without subtitles, and I’ve started reading a romance novel in Spanish (if you count a different language as a different media type) … Maybe I’m trying too hard? :joy:

Hehehe :innocent:

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May 19

In the last week I finished two manga volumes (yay!), one of which (the righthand one) I had stalled on long ago.

I’ve also been thinking about my vague “stagnation” complaint of last week (thanks for your thoughts @shitsurei and @eefara!) and come up with a few potential “helper” activities for it.

  1. Ask myself what I want to read more frequently, rather than just automatically reaching for bookclub books.
  2. Let myself fall behind on bookclubs (something I have always done) but also let myself read ahead!
  3. Extensive reading festival! Pick books from my backlog that I feel like otherwise I wouldn’t go for and read them with zero look-ups!
Re: Extensive reading festival

I get excited about this idea because it feels like 1) otherwise the books would just go to waste 2) the previous fact will free me to feel like any amount of understanding is a win, and any lack of understanding is acceptable, which is something I usually struggle with 3) I may be able to make more rapid progress through books I have owned for a long time, which will feel really good!

And now for last week’s stats …

day to day

May 11 (Sunday)

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 5 pages + 2 pages
  • ハルタ 6 pages
  • ゆびさきと恋々 23 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 4 pages

May 12

  • ハルタ 18 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • 木曜日にはココアを 1 page
  • 時間割男子 7 pages

May 13

  • ハルタ 7 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • ゆびさきと恋々 20 pages

May 14

  • ゆびさきと恋々 23 pages

May 15

  • ゆびさきと恋々 40 pages
  • 徒然日和 4 pages
  • 舞妓さんちのまかないさん 10 pages

May 16

  • 木曜日にはココアを 3 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • 時間割男子 10 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 18 pages

May 17

  • サイレント·ウィッチ 1 page
  • 舞子さんちわのまかないさん 27 pages

Yesterday (Sunday, May 18) I ready 10 pages of 舞子さんちわのまかないさん. I think I’ll start counting the weeks Monday-Sunday instead of Sunday-Saturday from now on.

Totals

Prose: 35
Manga: 200

Til next time, またね!

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May 26

last week's day to day

May 19 (Monday)

  • 木曜日にはココアを 3 pages
  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 13 pages
  • 舞子さんちのまかないさん 12 pages

May 20

  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 14 pages
  • 徒然日和 14 pages
  • 舞子さんちのまかないさん 6 pages

May 21

  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 2 pages

May 22

  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 2 pages (I can’t quite tell if this just got harder, or my brain got more tired)
  • 時間割男子 11 pages
  • 徒然日和 2 pages
  • ゆびさきと恋々 40 pages
  • 舞子さんちのまかないさん 7 pages

May 23

  • 時間割男子 8 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 2 pages
  • 徒然日和 8 pages

May 24

  • 時間割男子 20 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 3 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 10 pages

May 25

  • 時間割男子 4 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 3 pages

The previous week I focused on manga and read 200 pages! This last week I focused much more on prose and here are the results …

Prose: 82 pages
Manga: 102 pages

I didn’t finish any books this week, but hopefully by next week I’ll have one or two additions to my finished book shelf.

みんなさんまたね!

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June 2

day to day tracking + notes

May 26

  • 時間割男子 6 pages
  • サイレント·ウィッチ 6 pages (finished!)
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 5 pages

May 27

  • 時間割男子 6 pages
  • 舞子さんちのまかないさん 10 pages

May 28

  • 時間割男子 8 pages + 20 pages (finished!)
  • 徒然日和 16 pages

May 29

  • ゆびさきと恋々 14 pages
  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 8 pages
  • 徒然日和 24 pages

May 30

May 31

June 1

  • 木曜日にはココアを 2 pages (@mitrac’s persistence inspired me!)
  • 霧島くんは普通じゃない 15 pages + 11 pages + 2 pages (read after I realized that I had read 99 pages of prose this week)
  • ゆるキャン△ 8 pages
  • フライングうぃっち 6 pages
  • ひとりぼっちの○○生活 3 pages

Totals

Prose: 101
Manga: 152

I’m super happy with how this week went! Not only did I finish two prose books, but I also got my highest ever prose score (read: total pages read) and my second highest ever manga score. :slight_smile: In addition to all that, I worked my way out from under a pile of kanji reviews that I amassed during a recent high fatigue week and got back into 木曜日にはココアを | L27.

Oh, and also, I read past the furthest point I had reached in 霧島くんは普通じゃない ~転校生はヴァンパイア!?~ | L22 when I was first reading it, so from here on out everything will be new! I’m excited to learn more about the adorable black mink named Amoru!

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I just spammed your log with a bunch of likes catching up :yum:

how is your tundoku scoring going? Your extensive reading festival sounds like a category to add for bonus points :slight_smile: I really like that idea (that said, I realise you’ve kind of moved on to focusing more on what you actually do want to read at the moment)

I know what you mean, it feels like there is some additional magic that could be got out of book clubs for intermediate learners. At the beginning stage, it’s hard to understand and there is so much to discuss regardless of how fast/slow you read. But I feel like the clubs get a bit lonelier the further in I get, maybe because everyone is at massively different paces, and there are few people? Not sure.

Another idea I would add (to your great “let’s read Japanese”) might be a club around short stories or short story collections, so that it’s easy to dip in and out of.

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:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I think I need a better way to keep track … I had figured it out, but didn’t write it down, and now I’m not sure what my recent reading brings me to …

Hmm, and now that I’m trying to score myself I’m spotting some rules that don’t feel quite right. Like, buying and reading a new book should probably count for zero, since you’re neither adding to nor removing from, whereas buying a new book and not reading it is a definite -1. I’m going to call starting a new series a -3 I think …

Okay, I have calculated and my score for the year is currently … ZERO! :joy: :joy: :joy:

So, to answer your question … fabulously! :stuck_out_tongue: I have canceled out all my point scores from reading books in series (9, I believe) with starting new series. I do hope to score a few more points soon, though! Haha, we’ll see how long they last.

Definitely! I’m hoping someday Natively’s book club scene can be as strong as Wk’s … (Not to get too much into internet forum politics, but I just think that in terms of promoting reading Natively is probably the best forever home for book clubs…)

Actually, I recently read something interesting over there, saying essentially that one of the higher level readers was maintaining a vocabulary list to help the lower level readers be able to keep up at the same pace as everyone else. Might the same thing be helpful in the 木曜日にはココアを club?

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love this, so the goal can become not to get a negative score :joy:

all jokes aside, I agree it’s tough to balance the 積読 pile with all the new stuff and clubs that come along

That is so wholesome!

I think for me at least, the sweet spot for vocab sheets and lists (and I’m extremely thankful for them) was in the very beginning stages of my first mangas, when even looking up a word was quite a mission because I couldn’t tell the difference between a word and grammar and slang. And just at the beginning of reading my first children’s books as well, when the style was quite different than manga. But after I got going, now it takes longer to use a vocab sheet than to just do any lookups immediately (that said, for a paper book at this level, a vocab sheet or JPDB would be indispensable, but I’ve dropped back to digital for adult novels for a while). There are a few things that are still a bit out there, and I really appreciate the clubs for that when it comes up in the chat, so you don’t have to go down every single rabbit hole, e.g., to work out what the “something 4” was at the opening of the Blue chapter in the Cocoa book club.

I was thinking after I commented on your log that I think the Harta book club is about as ideal as it gets. Everyone reads at their own pace (and even focuses on different series), and yet it’s still fun for everyone. The faster readers can enjoy reading comments from people who read something that they read a long time ago, the slower / newer readers can enjoy and benefit from notes that are already there.

I also like peaking into the notes of things I skipped and seeing if I should have FOMO or not :innocent::joy:

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When I started out with Japanese I read a lot of old book club picks and followed the past threads while reading. It is amazing how much more lively everything was during the pandemic years… Even on wk! I think it’s just hard to keep the engagement up. I feel a bit weird being active on wk because I don’t use wk as a tool at all :sweat_smile: But I also think that’s why the Readathon threads (also on wk) are so lively, because it’s a self imposed lockdown in which people read as much as possible. Can that be combined into a book club? :thinking:

I also love the Harta book club because there is definitely something to talk about. I find it way harder to comment on prose / a manga series (regardless of if it’s for children or adults) than to just go through tons of different chapters in Harta and comment the things that got the most emotions out of me. It’s also fun because you can always comment on things you liked/disliked and not ruin the fun for everyone. Like when I write in a book club that I dislike the book we read then I just feel like sucking the fun out of the club. But with Harta since there’s so much in there, there’s really no hard feelings when something doesn’t land for someone else, because there is a big chance we have another series that we both enjoyed. And it actually is very interesting to see why some things landed for someone while they didn’t for others!

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