Opportunities inside Challenges

22 of Feb: initiative, happiness, patience

I love School of Gumption. I love Scape- Hubquaters. I love the working spirit of Scape people. . .

I am not alone though I am working alone today!

Amateur of "literal Design" and Adobe Indesign

As usual, I wrote 3 questions to start a new day. At the end of today, I know that all of those questions are too big to be anwered for now. :) I would keep them as my secret. Asking questions helps us to learn and grow but the point is what is the art of asking questions. Some of my reflections at the moment:

- I enjoy working alone and travel alone so much! I could the initiative to learn when there is no one besides who can motivate and teach me in case of being stuck. There is the absence of all SoG core team members today, a promising Friday before weekend coming. There is no joke and arousing discussion among these respected people. There is no attentive listening of mine to their interesting meetings at Scape. Opportunities inside challenges.

- How natural and beautiful a language can be through reading Hai Yen’s book and Song’s sharing. I am still dreaming of a day when my English could be mastered. So far I would prefer to focus into one thing to be good at that thing rather than divide myself into so many things that can come at the expense of distraction and low productivity. I am not worried as people are learning so much anymore as long as I am still trying on my own and in an appropriate approach. In my fresh year, I tried learning both Japanese and Korean, I also thought about the chances of studying abroad meanwhile my English was at a super low level, my soft skills almost valued nothing, and my academic performance was in the middle of nowhere. I tried learning those stuff partly because I am inspired by some talented people but also because I was scared of being left behind by numerous good young people. The fact is that if there is no daily exposure to “values” that can be languages, mindset, or habit, then we cannot reach the level of using them fluently, let alone consciously considering them as a way of being. Be focused and aware of the priority!

- A special moment was when I read the book called “Beneath behavior” by Hai Yen. I could feel the energy from that book and could feel how tough her life can be and how resilient Hai Yen is to have been through the childhood trauma and other crisis…

To be continued …

- Canvas is too weak to convert the book’s content into an ebook thus requires an alternative software called “Indesign”. I think I am capable of designing a professional book template by using Indesign after watching a cool instructing Youtube video. I feel happy as I could connect what I have learn little by little for the last 2 years to the designing process.

The fact is I am never involved in the task of making Powerpoint or designing marketing products for my project as I always had a fear for “creative performance”. The simple skill gained recently is to create a Table of Content that I had missed to practice in my group paper several times previously but thanks to the translation for Steven, I am used to setting a Table of contents now. Using Microsoft Word smoothly might sound stupid for a third-year student now but I am honest with my improvement.

Besides, that I was tasked to design the 6C Toolkit on Canvas last month helped me to be able to have a certain artistic-eye for details and colors. Back then, there was 1 week in Hanoi that I attended a free course of Adobe photoshop without further follow-up practice, which ended up my total forgetting of how to use the complicated Adobes’. I actually accessed to Indesign 2 years ago when I was still working for an English Center as a project content editor. It took me 1 month to edit audio and book and convert them into the “purest” products by using Audacity and a little access to Indesign. Now it is a perfect time to combine all of my experience into editing the beautiful book called “The gift of death” written by Hai Yen, my resilient mentor & sister.

Little by little pieces of trial and practice create a thousand-mile road :)