On new beginnings
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
I place my teacup on the chair pushed close to the sofa, an improvised sturdy space for staking papers, devices and infinitely more cups I let cool down without touching. I am spending my precious few hours while my 2-year-old is at daycare to jumpstart my upcoming university semester. The media speaks about the incoming lockdown. The washing machine is tumbling masks. In the room next door, my husband is typing on his keyboard.
I glance over the study materials of my compulsory subjects: Advanced Natural Language Processing, Advanced Problem Solving Techniques, Foundations of Linguistics. I look at my optional courses for this semester moving along the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence lines but also courses like Phonological Cognition and Language and Development, both coming from the psycho and sociolinguistics side. It took me a while to process why I am so jittery – I feel excited. I feel joy. 2020 has been a hard year to practice these emotions.
The last time I was part of a university was summer 2011 when I had to defend my Bachelors' thesis. I have been extraordinarily lucky to work in different cross-discipline environments since then, first in civic-tech and then for the better part of these 10 years in music tech. And now, I am starting yet another one, this one coupling technology with language and linguistics.
I grew up bilingually, and before the age of 10, I was fluent in my third language. I am currently working towards getting an advanced certificate in my fourth, and passively learning my fifth. I am raising a trilingual child. I spent my childhood with my head buried in books, gulping words and marvelling about what they can do. I am spending my adulthood thankful for my resources and library access, letting myself casually fall in love with sentences on the regular. My personal history is deeply intervened with the political side of language, and it continues to be of vital importance to me as an immigrant.
I have spent countless hours researching all of this privately. Now, I get to integrate it into my profession - for now on forever negotiating between human and machine languages.
My cup is cold again. I raise to press the button on the kettle, and on the way, I pick up a toy ice-cream cone, a big smudged half-grape that rolled over from breakfast, a flash-card with the letter L, a lonely slipper, a pencil. I am holding all of them and my cup while trying to press the kettle button in a fragile, sloppy balance and I hope, I hope I can say the same about my life and my studies this challenging winter too.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
