OMG! I’m Going Back to School!

It’s true folks! After over 10 years of being away from school, I’m going back once again. I had a hard time in Taiwan during COMPUTEX. I was a Chinese Guy stuck with the mind of a White Guy! I spoke English with no Chinese accent, and couldn’t understand what the hell you were saying. People took pity on me and thought I was Japanese! Well enough is enough!

I’ve actually enrolled myself for two courses at Langara College . The first course is a progressive Mandarin course. The course has different levels of progression from newbie/beginner (me) to being able to read and write. Of course, I’m starting at the bottom. They did have courses for Cantonese speakers, but because I can’t write or read Chinese, I would have a horrible time in those classes, even if the prof let me in.

The second course is a Magazine Article Writing course where they take you through the industry and look at different writing styles and examples to improve your writing skills. At the end of the course, you will have produced two articles that could be published. They even take you through the steps of submitting the articles to magazines and newspapers. I’ll probably be the most overqualified student there. Afterall, I’m my own publisher and I’ve writtin for print media before like in Brian Jessel Magazine. Nonetheless, I think it’ll be a great opportunity to bring home some tips to improve my writing and to meet a whole pool of writers that might want me to publish their work. Building a business is all about networking!

I’ve encouraged my writers to take the course with me so we can learn together. I’ve even offered to buy their articles off them if they are relevant to the site. I have some very enthusiastic writers, but I just don’t have enough contact time with a lot of them to make them better writers. I think it is a skill that you cannot stop developing because the more you do it, the better at communication you become, and the better at communication you become, the easier it is to get what you want.

Langara also offers a Public Relations course that I’m quite interested in. Unfortunately, it is about $7000 dollars…prepaid. It looks really good, and even though it is expensive, I’m very interested in taking it. I guess we’ll take one step at a time here.