I´ve been thinking about what makes people succeed in life overall. Once I heard in an English class the following: ¨It´s said that the native Americans believed people know everything before they´re born; however, they forget everything once the come out of their mothers´ wombs. As a consequence, they have to start over and try to get back that knowledge throughout their entire lives.¨ It kinds of makes sense, though it may also seem to be improbable in reality. Anyhow, today I heard a motivational lecture in school. They were talking about how to motivate people as best as possible. For instance, in an experiment you test two children on how well they do at puzzles. After they both have finished and done well in the puzzle you praised them differently. You tell one that he must be very smart cause he got a good score; whereas you tell the other that he tried hard and therein lies the key to his success. After some time you keep testing the two participants. The one who had been told he was smart failed the second quiz; on the other hand, the one who was told he tried hard did great on it. It´s amazing how just a few words can change the entire outcome of a process. This aforesaid example is scientifically proven. Therefore, we realized how important it is to actually be motivated in what we want to achieve. Hard work and perseverance are in fact byproducts of motivation. What keeps you from throwing your hand in after a few setbacks? The answer is of course motivation. Nevertheless, the only way in which we can be encouraged to succeed in anything is to love what we do. It seems to be a cliché, but it´s indeed true.

Today, I´d like to talk about regrets. Every single one of us has regretted something that has caused a lot of pain at least once. Apart from the regrets we experience on a daily basis, the aforementioned ones are actually the ones that hurt us. Therefore, we have to look for ways to learn how to deal with them effectively. For instance, let me tell you a little a bit about my rough experience over the past few years. Right before I was finishing high school, I was bombarded with  a large number of college ads. Colleges that mainly profit with students indecision.

I innocently picked out one of those. Gosh did I hated to make that decision. I do know that it is also true that my family had put a lot of pressure into me to get into school ASAP. Though, I also know that I was right off the bat clueless about what else to do at that time. I got into business school. It didn´t take me long however, to realize that I had not chosen the right program for myself. I dropped out after one semester. By that time, I was about to immigrate to Canada. My brother had made that possible after doing a lot of documentation for several years.I spent the last few months before my trip learning how to drive. I knew that I had an intermediate level of English which was not going allow me to handle myself perfectly over there. Though I decided to go on just having a taking a two month ESL program that didn´t help much. When  I arrived in Toronto, On, I realized I was not ready to deal with rough situations over there.

I´m going to go off on a tangent for a little while. I come from a two children family, Nevertheless, my older brother is 17 years older than me. So that it´d been really hard to deal with him from the beginning, Besides, he is indeed a very manipulative person. It doesn´t mean I do think he does this all the time. Though he did it with myself almost all the time. He did not let me decide many times, and because of these I ended up messing up. Back to the my story, apart to having to stand my crazy brother while in Canada, I also had to struggle with all the difficulties that came along. I couldn´t find a single job, cause of the simple fact that I felt insecure. All I did was to study as Going from program after program. I withstood all these things one year. After that I realized the was nothing else to do but to go back to my home country. Back in Peru, I started from scratch, took a lot more ESL programs for another year. though this time it was different. This programs I was taking were a lot more advance and allowed me to teach as a trainee instructor in school and also to take the Michigan ECPE test. Of course I did passed this exam, after that I applied to a job in the same institution in which I had studied, I passed every single exam while going through the examination process. Until I saw that the person that was going to interview me was actually a Supervisor which I´d heard and seen before had a bad reputation and enjoyed maltreating new applicants.

I neglected to mention that I had previously got a temporary job at a hotel teaching English to the maintenance staff. I  really thought this was my time to finally get what I deserved. However, I was wrong, I couldn´t accept the fact that I had to answer questions to this SOB, but I did. He unfortunately gave me a low score in the interview, which mean that on average I was out. I got really depressed I though everything was lost. Luckily for me, I got another opportunity. The following year, I got accepted into a College program for ESL teachers. I was finally going to study what I wanted. I also met wonderful people. And even though I´m still grappling to find an answer not to get depressed, I feel much better now. I´ve been giving private classes and attending conferences regarding Education. I know that my chance to get a good job will get pretty. I´d done volunteering for over two years before school this year, So I know what it looks like to help others. That´s in my opinion going to open me many doors in the foreseeable future. To sum up I´d like to tell you that if I could pick myself up many times after failure, you can do it as well.

A few days ago, I came across an article talking about the effectiveness of antidepressants. I know I´m supposed to talk about education; though I figured this is related to it as well. So, lets go on...

According to this and several other articles I´ve read, antidepressants should only be prescribed to people who are suffering from extreme cases of depression. In fact, the placebo effect proves the aforesaid sentence. People who just on mild stages of this mental illness get a lot more benefit from exercising. Besides, the are a lot of different ways in which one can cheer up. The busier you are, the weaker your depression becomes. Moreover, we gotta take into consideration what I was saying earlier. Mental health is extremely important for success in every single aspect of life, including education of course. Instead of harking back to how things used to be in the past all the time, one can actually move on and experience new things. Setting up a new schedule every once in a while helps us out a lot too. To sum up, I´d say that it´s indeed essential to avoid any sort of depression/stress to do the following:

- Do as many activities as you can.

- Organize your time as more efficiently as possible.

- Do not overdo anything.

- Have plenty of rest.

- Relax every now and then.

- Have a healthy diet.

- Be social.

Alright, those were my thoughts on this issue. I could have talked a little more about it. Though I thought it wasn´t gonna be really necessary to do so. Hope you liked it!

Some time ago I happened to go to a conference in which they were talking about new trends for learning English in South America. For instance, I heard that in Uruguay, there´s been an ESL program implemented for children in some private schools. Basically, they were exposed to English spoken by a native Speaker once a week via video conference. This seems to be a great idea to start off learning a new language. The problem is that their actual teachers ain´t proficient in English; therefore, what they can do for them regarding their learning process is very little. However, this educators do as much as they can to keep up with their students. In my opinion, what really needs to be done to improve the overall level of English in South American children is the following:           

-Hire near native/native Speakers in most English centers.

-Set as a requirement that all the applicants hold a degree in education.

-Ask for at least three years of experience in the field of teaching.

-Make sure that this people really have commitment with their job. 

Well, those were some of my thoughts on this topic. I´m sure there are even more requirement and characteristics that schools should take into consideration as well. Though, the few ones I mentioned here are essential according to my way of seeing things nowadays.