For part 1 of the interview click here.
You’ll find the transcript further below.
Vocabulary List
Exchange program: an arrangement in which people from different countries visit each other’s country, perhaps to strengthen links between them or to improve foreign language skills.
An acceleration: increase in speed or rate. So that your language skills will improve faster.
TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language
SAT: Scholastic Aptitude Test, later: Scholastic Assessment Test
The ACT: originally an abbreviation of American College Testing, is a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States.
TOEFL: Test Of English as a Foreign Language
Jargon: special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand. “legal jargon”
At a certain point: some day, at some point.
Altruistic (/altruːˈɪstɪk/): showing a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others; unselfish.
CELTA: Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
A fee: a payment made to a professional person or to a professional or public body in exchange for advice or services.
To refund: to pay back (money)
In air quotes: also called finger quotes (see also “scare quotes”), are virtual quotation marks formed in the air with one’s fingers when speaking. (more information on Wikipedia)
In that sense: In this sentence “in that sense” means “because of what I just said, it’s true that…”
Down the road: in the future (informal, used especially in North America)
Hands-on: practical
To touch on something: deal briefly with a subject in written or spoken discussion.
Technologically savvy people: f you describe someone as having savvy, you think that they have a good understanding and practical knowledge of something. [informal] (see. Collinsdictionary)
Supervised: watched over by someone.
Deliverables: a product of a development process. The product that you produces you need to deliver to the school.
Graded: give a mark to (a student or a piece of work).
Just kind of a side note here: a marginal note in a text. (Eugeniu wanted to ass something that might not be as important that the other things he mentioned before)
An assessor: a person who evaluates the quality of a person or thing.
An accreditation body: An accreditation body is an organisation delegated to make decisions, on behalf of the higher education sector, about the status, legitimacy or appropriateness of an institution, or programme
This is a legitimate certificate: conforming to the law or to rules.
Dunno: = I don’t know (slang)
Associated with: (of a person or thing) connected with something else.
Messed up: to make a mistake / to do something incorrectly
An ESL teacher: English as a Second Language teacher. Teachers specialize in helping non-native speakers of all ages and levels learn the formal grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation of spoken and written English.
On point: relevant and appropriate to what is happening or being discussed.
Busy work: work that keeps a person busy but has little value in itself. (negative connotation)
Submit a lot of, forms: To send in a lot of documents.
Community feeling: better: Sense of community: a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together.”
Liaising: act as a link to assist communication between (people or groups).
The better way to put it: What a nice way to put it!: That’s a very pleasant way of saying it!
A transition: the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.
A backstory: a history or background created for a fictional character in a film or television programme. (Here: the history of the story)
Affordable: inexpensive; reasonably priced.
A hobbyist: a person who pursues a particular hobby.
You’re off the hook: no longer in difficulty or trouble.
Transcript
Eugeniu: You would think that after you’re done with the one year program, any exchange program at the end of it, at least in my head, I was thinking, okay, I’m going to be done with it. And I’m just going to be fluent, just like there’s this particular sort of a time frame type of thing where okay.
Done with the program → check mark! fluent or like near native → check mark! And it just doesn’t happen that way.
Eugeniu: I feel like I, for example, didn’t have much time to actually watch a lot of movies in English while I was in New Mexico while I was in the US studying. Just didn’t have the time to do it. Was too busy with other things.
So a lot of, I think, a lot of my fluency, acceleration or whatever you want to call it, happened actually after the program too, because I tried to keep staying immersed. I had this big goal, like I told you at the beginning to, get accepted to a college in the US so that just really, really pushed me to keep practicing.
Daniel: Yeah. I see. And to enter this university, you need a TOEFL certificate, or I don’t know exactly which certificate, but it’s pretty tough, I guess.
Eugeniu: Yeah, and you need a TEFL or IELTS scores. You also need, in my case, so you needed the SAT ACT scores, which is like doing math or other stuff in English, you know? So you have to know the specific jargon of like how they do math in the states, or how they, you know, call some of these even like English language things.
How do they call it in like a. American English cause SAT and ACT American test. That was another thing that was motivating me for sure. To stay on track. And this is like a pro tip. A lot of people, what they do is at the end of their exchange program, they take that standardized test in English. If their exchange program was in an English speaking country, they take the TOEFL rights at the end of the program because, because they think that they’re
like at the peak level, you know? Yeah. I think it worked for a lot of people.
Yeah.
Daniel: And may I ask you, when you watch a series or a movie, do you still have troubles in understanding some little bits?
Eugeniu: I do. I do. I certainly do. I still, for the most part, add subtitles to the movies. If it’s an option, yeah, sometimes there’s regional dialects that I don’t really don’t really have much experience hearing. For example, I’m lucky that I went to school to my college. It wasn’t Kentucky. And a lot of the people in, at my college, where, from kind of the Southern area of the United States from, you know, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, the Carolinas, you know, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and I got used to hearing that accent and it’s very different from how they speak in New Mexico, for example, or
Daniel: sure.
Eugeniu: or New York.
So, it’s really cool. And if you are somebody who just loves languages, who is. You know, passionate about it, then you, you really appreciate these kinds of things.
Daniel: yeah. Yeah.
Eugeniu: It’s fun.
Daniel: And, I don’t know, you became an English teacher at a certain point, but of course before that, I think you were a business analyst ? Is that
Eugeniu: Yes, yes.
Daniel: in America. Right. And how was it?
Eugeniu: Wow. Okay. It, so the job itself, was something that I really wanted to try, and do for a few years. I because, I ended up studying economics and business finance in, undergraduate. So in my, in the college that I went to in Kentucky, that’s what I studied. And I, you know, got really interested in the stock market.
I was really curious about how the economy works. You know, I was just so, I guess ignorant about it when I just began my studies in college, that once I took an economics class in college, I was hooked. That was just, that was just such a big point of interest for me. So, you know, fast forward a few years after I graduated from college, I worked for one year as a project manager for a startup in San Diego.
But then, I kind of kept my eye open for jobs and financial services. And, this job came up to work as a business analyst.
Daniel: Yeah,
Eugeniu: I was in New York at that time. So yeah, again, lots of places, lots of accents, lots of people.
Daniel: Okay. But then at a certain point, you decided to become an English teacher. And how so, what made you decide to change your career?
Eugeniu: Yeah. So I have this thing that I like to tell people. I’m not the one who came up with it, but people are like onions. They have a lot of layers to them, you know, basically, you know, how I told you that the business analyst job was something that I wanted to try out for a few years. I just didn’t know if I’m going to like it, if I’m going to enjoy it.
And after I got a little bit to the point where I just said, okay, I’ve had enough of it. I think, I don’t want to keep pursuing this for much longer and I want to do something that is fulfilling, makes a difference.And it’s something that I am a lot more passionate about because when you’re working in corporate America, you’re not doing it for the, you know, for the good of the public or anything like that.
You’re doing it. Let’s face it to earn money. And at the end of the day, you’re just making more money for the big corporations. And, and I just wanted to. I guess, give back through me teaching, that was kind of the idea. It was very altruistic in a way, you know, I want to just do good in the world.
And this was all like, I think 2019, 2020 is when those ideas were really brewing in my head.
Daniel: Yeah. And it’s beautiful because you became fluent in English and that was sort of not enough, right? You want to teach others and help them. And that’s where your idea came up to take the CELTA. Right?
Eugeniu: Yes.
Daniel: what is the CELTA.
Eugeniu: So, the CELTA is a type of teaching English as a foreign language certificate. It’s kind of a, I would say a brand name of its own, but at the end of the day, it’s just a TEFL certificate and TEFL stands for teaching English as a foreign language. And it’s basically a very common type of a certificate that anybody who wants to teach English typically, you know, non-English speaking country, let’s say in Japan, South Korea, or somewhere in Europe, let’s say in Spain, they need some sort of, a certificate to prove that they have some sort of a baseline knowledge of how to prepare lessons, how to conduct themselves during class and so on.
So it just, it’s a certificate, it’s a TEFL certificate that kind of proves that you have the basics, but just the basics.
Daniel: but that, that means you did not have any experience as a teacher, but you decided to get a CELTA certificate,
Eugeniu: Yeah. Yeah. I have no experience. And the CELTA doesn’t require you to have any experience before you join. I think I just checked right before our interview. I checked the requirements for your fluency level, I think it’s a C1 level or, or higher. So, they’re not even telling you that you must be near native fluent or anything like that.
So it’s totally fine. If you’re, I mean, in my point of view, actually, it’s actually better if you are not a native level a speaker, or if you’re, if you’re not a native speaker, if English is not your first language, because if you’ve learned English as a second language yourself, and you’re going to teach it, I feel like in a way you have this advantage, you understand what it’s like to struggle with English. know?
Daniel: That makes complete sense. And as a matter of fact, yes, you did like a diary, right? So it was six episodes long. And I found this quite interesting to watch just to get the idea or to see what you went through kind of. And I remember that I think it was episode two or so where you were very tired. It was about 3:00 AM in the morning. And you were explaining that you made an assignment.
Eugeniu: Oh yeah. I remember that one.
Daniel: Was it difficult or first maybe you can explain, was it an online course or was it an in-person course?
Eugeniu: Yeah. Let me try to give as much background information so that the listeners on the viewers have an understanding. The idea for me initially was to take the CELTA course, in-person on a part-time basis, in New York and I did all the paperwork. I signed up for the course. I even paid, you know, all the fees for the course.
And then March 2020 COVID-19 has just hit like crazy. So most businesses in New York just stopped providing their services, apart from some essential businesses, obviously. And, this CELTA course provider just told us that they’re no longer doing the course. So they refunded me all the money and said, okay, maybe we’ll do an online version of this course.
But we don’t know. So I took my money back and I started looking for other ways to accomplish this. The thing about the CELTA is they’re really trying to position themselves as they say it themselves “gold standard” and again, gold standard was in air quotes for all of the people listening through audio, gold standard of the TEFL certificates.
And, in that sense they are for the longest time, they’ve never offered an all fully online CELTA course not until 2020. And the CELTA is different from other courses in that they, I don’t even know where to begin. And I definitely don’t want to sound like a salesperson for the CELTA.
but. CELTA just to give you an idea, for example, a lot of the courses money-wise for example, I have to pay for the course in New York about almost $3,000 for a 12 week part-time in-person CELTA course. I told you that all that money got refunded to me. I started looking for new courses.
I found one online given by an organization in London for, I think it was $1,800, so still quite expensive, but it was fully online and it was on a part-time basis for 12 weeks. Most other courses,
Daniel: Also CELTA, right?
Eugeniu: Also CELTA. Yeah. So I stuck with the gold standard, so to speak because I wanted to see, okay, what is it like?
What is it like, what’s the gold standard? Like, because I was thinking of this almost as like an investment in myself and investment in who knows maybe down the road, I was thinking of starting a language learning business or some sort of a language school or I was going to be a language teacher. So I want it to get the best education I can.
Right. Best subjective thing right? I mean, just because you’re taking the most expensive course, doesn’t make you automatically the best teacher. There’s so much more that you need to do so much more learning that you need to do on your own. So completely, I totally don’t want to sound like just because you take the CELTA, you know, you’re automatically great.
No,
Daniel: Yeah, but I think you mentioned something like the CELTA is more hands-on right. It’s more practical than other certificates. And also you made a great emphasis on the feedback culture on the CELTA.
Eugeniu: Yeah. And I can touch on that.
Daniel: I think it was quite a challenge to do it all online
Eugeniu: Yeah, it was, and it was at the time when people weren’t really used to doing everything on Zoom, it was really, I think, I think April or May, 2020. It wasn’t like now when we’ve gone a year and a half or so, with doing online classes in university or whatever. So yeah, it was , it was a little challenging from a technical point of view cause a lot of the people enrolled in the course with me weren’t the most, I guess, technologically savvy people. And, one of the requirements of the CELTA is to do six hours of supervised teaching practice. So what that means is, by the end of the course, you, in my case, it was eight lessons. I think they were like 4,500. 15 minutes long each. So if you do the math, somehow it comes out to eight lessons.
But that was one of the deliverables, you know, for you to get the CELTA certificate officially to be certified. There was other stuff like, you have to do weekly exercises, like weekly assignments. There were also four written assignments like essays, essay type things that you have to do, and they’re graded and, just kind of a side note here.
They’re great. Not only by your teacher, but there’s also some sort of an external assessor or some person from outside of the organization who really kind of makes sure that the teacher is greeting things properly. So there’s a lot of emphasis within the CELTAon quality assurance.
For this reason a lot of people when they hear, oh, CELTA, you know, that means quality in their head. The other big reason why, I guess CELTA has this reputation of being the gold standard is, no, I guess for all the TEFL certificates, there’s no one single unifying accreditation body that says, okay, this is a legitimate certificate.
Course for the TEFL and this one is not, there’s like, I dunno, five or probably more,different ones. And, the CELTA, , is associated with what’s called Cambridge English language assessment, which this in itself is a part of the Cambridge university or something like that. In a way it’s linked with Cambridge university and obviously Cambridge university.
There’s like, it’s one of the best in the world. So people again, think, okay, quality. But if you and I, for example, wanted to start a TEFL certificate, you know, Daniel and Eugeniu
Daniel: let’s
Eugeniu: Course you know, like we could, do that and what’s kind of messed up is you go to one accreditation body and if you don’t get accredited through
Daniel: I see.
Eugeniu: problem. You can go to the next one and they’re probably gonna accredit you, you know? So there’s that sort of issue with these TEFL certificates, because all of them are 120 hours of coursework. All of them, have maybe like the same exact or similar material type. But you know, not all of them are accredited by an organization that’s linked to Cambridge university, right?
Not all of them have this teaching practice that’s supervised. A lot of them do have teaching components. You know, you must teach this many hours to get the certificate, but a lot of them, it’s not supervised teaching. And the teacher for the CELTA course, that is a person who has years, sometimes decades of experience being an ESL teacher.
So they give you feedback at the end of each lesson you teach and they tell you, okay, maybe your introduction wasn’t on point this time, maybe you needed to do a better job giving instructions. Maybe, I don’t know, you were too wordy in this explanation, maybe like all of that stuff. So they give you the feedback.
But then you, yourself also have to kind of, , I guess, analyze your own performance and send that to your teacher too. And they look at the things that you wrote about yourself and they kind of give you feedback. Okay? Okay. I think you picked up the right thing here. Like you yourself realize that you need to do a better job here in here, but maybe you also need to work on this.
So there’s a lot of this back and forth going, I think a video that I recorded, I said in one of them that a lot of people think of CELTA as busy work.
Daniel: Yeah.
Eugeniu: And I think I just told you all these different things that I had to write on the do. And yeah, it’s a lot, it’s a lot of papers to submit a lot of, forms deliverables.
But, in the end, there was a reason for it all. And if you kind of approach it from this point of view that, well, this is really me trying to learn from all the small things. Then, you know, you don’t look at it as busy work. You look at it as just a step towards getting better.
Daniel: And do you think that you missed out on something because you did the course online? I just give you an example. I imagine that if it is in person the course, then you have some sort of a community feeling with the other peers and so on. And I assume that there were no connection among the participants or maybe only loosely, I guess.
Eugeniu: Yeah. I mean, we try to have a kind of a zoom, Meet up in the middle of the course , just to kind of talk about things. At the end we have like a zoom party because I was in New York at the time. And most of the people who were enrolled in the course were from England or from Europe. So there was also the time difference for me.
I really feel like, yeah, there, I missed out on the community feeling like you’re saying, yeah, there was a lack of that. For some people it’s enough to just like work on a group project, for example. Cause there, I think there is one or two kind of a group activities that you have to plan with your colleagues and for some people that’s enough, right?
Some people just want to be done with it, close their computers and go, go on with their life. And I was also working full-time at the time of taking the course. So I might have been in that category of people who just want it to be done.
Daniel: Yeah, of course, I guess that this was also a real challenge to organize the staff, to go to work and to give lessons at the same time.
Eugeniu: To go to work, to manage the whole time difference thing, because the people
Daniel: Oh yeah.
Eugeniu: You know, the people you’re teaching to, they’re also in different time zones. Yeah. Time management is huge when it comes to the CELTA itself, even if you’re taking a full time. And that’s all you do, just the CELTA.
You still have to know how to manage your time. Because they actually spell it out on the website. It’s the certificate itself is 120 hours. But in addition to that, there’s about 80 hours or so of time that you need to allocate for, you know, preparing for a lessons for liaising with the other colleagues of yours, because this teaching practice, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
So to speak, you are actually allocated, I think call it, I don’t know, two hours or so. And in this two hour timeframe, there’s like three people teaching, one after another. And so you need to, when you’re planning your lesson, you need to not only plan your own section, but you need to understand what’s going to happen after you teach.
Because a lot of, some of the activities that are actually linked. they’re like a building block for the next person’s teaching part. So you really need to coordinate. And if you go over time in your parts, then that impacts the next person who is teaching. So yeah. You have to plan together.
Daniel: and then all of a sudden, a person drops out and then
Eugeniu: Oh
Daniel: to take over
Eugeniu: yes, exactly. Wow. You really watch my stuff. Thank you, Daniel. Daniel here is I’m alluding to the fact that in one of my videos, I mentioned that one person in my course had to drop out for a good reason, for a personal reason. And The decision that was made, that her slots that she was supposed to teach, were just distributed among the people who ended up staying on the course.
So it’s an extra, you know, it was an extra slot that I had to teach. Some people might think that, oh, that’s extra work and it was extra work, but I try to kind of go with a positive mindset. That’s well, extra experience, extra feedback,
Daniel: Were there any troubles or worries about taking the CELTA course?
Eugeniu: Yeah. Let me think about this worry. Um, well, I don’t know. I Everybody who’s taking the CELTA really understands that it’s an investment. It’s a big chunk of money that you have to pay for it because you could have easily taken a course somewhere else for probably a thousand or even more dollars less. And, a lot of those people are working professionals, or they are teachers who just want like more professional development or they just want to have another qualification.
In my case, it was just like a weird time in my life. I don’t know if weird is a good word. Maybe, uncertain is the better way to put it. I really wanted to quit my job, but I still didn’t have an English teaching job lined up yet. So. I was just in this transition and it was very, I guess, worrisome to be in that position, uh, which is why I took the part-time course.
I didn’t, um, you know, just, just jump into it and quit the job and then enrolled in this full-time core.
Daniel: I think you’ll set your own goals very high, right?
Eugeniu: I try.
Daniel: I get the impression that you want to reach a lot at the same time.
Eugeniu: Yeah.
Daniel: can see that also with your YouTube channels or projects, because there are so many and you are making videos about playing the guitar. You, you are making interviews. I feel like you are everywhere and, learning French.
Yeah. English and.
Eugeniu: I try, I try. And the thing with that is some times, I guess you just have to stay more focused on fewer things than everything, you know, it’s just like hard. It depends on the person. Some people are better at managing multiple things at the same time compared to just one. I’m learning that. I think I like having multiple things laid out, but I need to know what is the priority. And for me, I decided about six months ago or so I really wanted to focus on my YouTube channel, which I, renamed lingo junkie and I’m focused on making videos about languages and my own experience with, with English, with Russian, with, making oatmeal sometimes in a funny way, sometimes in a more serious way.
But yeah, I’m trying to also help other people get into college in the US. I have other hobbies too. I play the guitar. I try to make music. You know, all at a very hobby type level, but, yeah, I guess I like doing things. I like learning about things.
Daniel: You want to add something to the CELTA?
Maybe, what is your takeaway? What did you learn the most? Maybe
Eugeniu: let me see, let me look at my notes real quick. Cause I also prepared and I took some notes, have my sheet here. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would just add to conclude with a CELTA. I would just say that, ,if you want to teach English in a country where English is not the main language, getting TEFL certified is probably the number one thing that you need to do.
There are many different certificates that you can take, you can take and CELTA to just one of them. It’s an expensive one. So, you know, we have to kind of watch your budget. There are plenty of other certifications that are, I think great. And probably just as good. I would say that at the end of the day, the CELTA is another business, you know, they’re in it to make money at the end of the day.
And of course they’re going to brand themselves. And say all kinds of great things about themselves to get more clients, get more customers and that’s okay. That’s fine. Cause they do deliver on it. They do have things that other certifications don’t have. But I would say if you are in this English language world for a short period of time, if you’re going to do it only for a year or two, maybe a CELTA , is not going to make that big of a difference for you.
If you’re going to be in an English teacher for the long-term, then probably it’s worth investing in a CELTA.
Daniel: I wanted to add that in Switzerland. I looked it up. It is $3,500, the CELTA, and as always in Switzerland, everything is more expensive than in other countries.
Eugeniu: Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say that.
A lot of the European countries, if you want to teach there, then it’s going to be CELTA or the Trinity TESOL. Those are going to be very much sought after in places like South Korea, for example, it doesn’t make that much of a difference.
Some employers don’t even know the difference between the CELTA or the TOFL. So you really need to know, I guess the market that you’re going into, and you know, the CELTA, on their website, they do make claims like, two out of three employers are requiring the CELTA or something like that.
Daniel: I read that too.
Eugeniu: Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t know, in my job search, I haven’t seen that much of a need for the CELTA. In jobs that are somehow related to the CELTA organization, then yeah, of course they’re going to require their own certificate, but like I said, it’s all just, it depends.
Don’t just look at the statements that they themselves are making is kind of the lesson.
Daniel: Of course I will put the link to the CELTA diaries, so you can watch and learn about Eugene’s experience when he was taking the CELTA it’s really interesting.
And, and also he made a blog post about the CELTA and it is also very interesting. So let’s move on to lingo Junkie , right? Your, your flagship on YouTube. Can I say that or is it not true?
Eugeniu: It’s definitely something that I’m going to do for a very long time, probably until I die, you know, languages, I don’t know the name might change in the future, who knows, but this is what I’m really putting a lot of energy into. And, yeah, I guess my flagship project. Sure. We can call it that.
Daniel: And what exactly means lingo mean? Could you explain to us
Eugeniu: Yeah, I think it’s just a funny way of saying slang or jargon. I think in English at this point, this is a legitimate word. I could be wrong, but, I’m pretty sure, people, at least in conversation, they use the word lingo, to mean like, oh, that’s like that type of a language, you know, that’s oh, that’s lawyer lingo, you know, like, oh, that’s somebody something that a lawyer lawyers would say jargon. Exactly, exactly. So I like to keep things pretty lighthearted on my channel, you know, just. Making educational videos, but at the same time, kind of presenting them in a, in a happy mood and kind of, sometimes, unorthodox way, like explaining different, expressions from Russian, by cooking oatmeal and showing you something, that’s part of my oatmeal or my breakfast routine.
Yeah. That’s just, you know, in a way I like to think of this YouTube channel as me, teaching languages, or sharing something about my culture. On the one hand educational things, but on the other hand, just fun, you know, just having a good time and being very welcoming to everybody who wants to learn and, or just wants to check some of those things out.
Daniel: Yeah. And the tagline is actually keep calm and study languages. And first I thought it was just a language channel. Right. But Then I learned that it’s way more than that. As I mentioned before, there is a VLOG diary VLOG and it’s way more than only language learning.
I mean, we can see a little bit into your life. Right. It’s like, you are sharing your experience with us and, and also giving, some explanations in tutorials and reviews also about, it’s like, uh, I don’t know which word we can use, like a.
In German there is a word which is pretty cool. I know “eine Wundertüte” there are sweets in it. You, you, you buy it right. And you don’t, you don’t know what is in it. And,
Eugeniu: oh, that’s cool. Wow. I’m going to have to look that up. “Wundertüte” I guess there is a backstory to the channel on everything. When I started the channel, it was a simply a vlog that I wanted to do about the things that are happening, that I’m learning in my journey. Really. So if you look at my first video that I published, I think it was just a video about how I got my first job out of college.
I think that’s, probably the first or second video that I published and a few videos after that are, me just talking about, you know, my life in New York or, how I was learning about a few things to make, travel more affordable. I mean, it was kind of all over the place. I like making videos.
That’s just something that from an early age, I think since I was 14 or 15, I kind of just loved, the process of shooting video and then editing it, especially editing. I really enjoy that. And I was experimenting with a lot of different things like vlogging, and I was trying to document my whole like search for a job in South Korea process, which I ended up getting a job.
I never mentioned that. But I ended up declining a lot of those because I ended up going to graduate school, long story. But last summer I essentially said, okay, I don’t know if I love doing just the vlog. Let me focus on languages. And, this is what. Language junkie is now it’s, , it’s language stuff, but with a little bit of a twist to it with a little bit of a “Wundertüte” , or I don’t know, that’s that word,
Daniel: I noted down also, this comes from vlog number 18. In this episode, you mentioned that you also made a daily blog as a personal challenge back in the day with the help of your mobile phone. And then, you mentioned that this was quite hard.
It was a challenge, I think you did it every day. And then I don’t know if you continued with it, I asked myself if you did it also to become a better English speaker, right. In the sense that you re-recorded yourself and then you’ll listen to it, to.
Eugeniu: Yeah.
Daniel: To improve.
Eugeniu: Yeah. I do think that that was part of the reason, in a way I think listening to yourself the way you speak, helps you with your fluency in English or whatever other language you are studying. Definitely the case with me, you pick up certain things that you don’t really notice when you, just speak the language without recording yourself.
So yeah, it really helps with your pronunciation. Sometimes it helps you with your grammar or other things you realize. Wow. I really made that mistake. We really shouldn’t do it.
Daniel: and another episode that stuck with me, was about happy Friday.
Eugeniu: oh yeah.
Daniel: Maybe you could tell more about it because I find this pretty lovely.
Eugeniu: Oh, thank you, Daniel. So the phrase that I learned once I started working in, you know, working full time after college is a happy Friday on Fridays people, when they come to work,usually they say that to their colleagues and I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s actually kind of a positive thing to say to your peers, right?
But I was always kind of looking at it from a different point of view. I was thinking, well, I hear happy Friday on Fridays, but then people are so grumpy on Mondays or people are so like, oh, it’s only Monday, you know, they have this thing in the US they say, that Wednesday is hump day. It’s like, oh, we got to Wednesday.
It’s like, we’re halfway there where we’re almost there. So it just sounded like I don’t like, yeah, it’s sad. It’s sad. I don’t like that sort of an approach to life. I want to enjoy every single day of my life. Not just a Friday is happy to me. I want my Mondays to be happy. I want my Tuesday, my Wednesdays, every single day.
Of course in a real world sure , you have ups and downs. No problem. But, In my head, I just felt like man, like, I don’t want to be part of that. I want to at least try to make every single day, you know, a happy one. So that’s the reason for the, for that vblog? Um, I’m sure some people might disagree with me or might find some of that stuff kind of cringy.
In my first job out of school, I was kind of, not enjoying what I do as much in my job, so I shot that vlog and yeah, I still, I still agree with everything I said in that vblog and I’m actually, I actually recorded a song or I’m going to record a song on the same topic.
I came up with it a little later, so I’m going to record a music video, and it’s going to be great.
So
Daniel: If this is okay with you, I will put it as background music.
Eugeniu: Well, it’s gonna take some time for the song to come out. It’s probably going to be another, I don’t know, month probably or so, so, you know, if, um, I might not have it soon enough for you.
Daniel: Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. Yeah. But, but you have many songs, right? I think about 10 or so
Eugeniu: yeah. I can, I can share whatever other songs you want with you and we can put that.
Yeah,
Daniel: And you also have other projects, maybe you can quickly mention them and what they are.
Eugeniu: Yeah. So I have a project that I created right after I graduated from a university called path to College USA. So this project is my way of helping other international students who want to come to the west to study. And, right now, it’s very, I guess, at the beginning stages of the project, I have helped a lot of people just through one-on-one conversations, you know, through Skype conversations, through emails.
But then I realized what if I, you know, recorded the interviews like these about people’s journey to come to study in the United States or maybe some of the advice that they can give about passing the TOEFL or the act or writing their essay, you know? Cause it’s one thing when it’s just me telling people what’s best to do.
Completely different when there’s all kinds of people from all kinds of all walks of life from so many countries, sharing their experiences. So, so I created a YouTube channel, for that, with the idea to in the future, make it a website, you know, with a blog, with, maybe a forum, we’ll see, still kind of figuring out what’s the core aspect of it.
But that’s kind of a secondary priority for me right now. because lingo junkie is, is the main thing. I also make music in my spare time, very I’m a hobbyist, when it comes to these things, I played guitar. I played a little bit of drums, very, very little piano. And, with a basic software like garage band or fruity loops these days, you can really do a lot of things and that’s what I’m doing, so,
Daniel: And what about the website? thoughts on sticky notes.
Eugeniu: oh, well that one used to be the name of my blog which I still kept the name. Cause I really like it. Now I’ve kind of transposed it to, just my name, your genuine predom.com, the same website just housed under my that’s simply a, I guess, a professional diary of the things I’m learning on my journey.
So anything from. You know, career to, business, to just the books that I found very helpful. So yeah, that one also, I’m not very consistent with, with posting blogs on that one because, you know, lingo junkie takes time and I’m totally fine with, with that, you know, I used to be very crazy about making, you know, making it all happen all at the same time, but the reality is we only have so much time in the day.
Time is limited. And if you really want to make an impact, I feel like you really need to know, like, what’s your one focus., doesn’t mean you have to say no to the other things. You can still continue doing them, but maybe you allocate a little less
Daniel: True. True. So, okay. Let’s move on to the last section. I wanted to ask you, do you have any favorite expressions or idioms or a saying or something like that in English?
Eugeniu: Oh, wow. There’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of ’em and I’m gonna say a quick anecdote. During that exchange year in New Mexico, I used to have a notebook with different slang words, different things that I would learn. Yeah. And, what I would do is whenever I would hear something funny or something cool that I wanted to keep using.
And you know, it was a person right next to me who just taught me that thing. I would write it down in my notebook. And then I would tell that person, can you please, write your name and sign it. And,, next time I use this phrase, I’m gonna think about you. So it was just like a cute thing that I did at the time.
And I’m just thinking about some of those expressions. I remember my theater teacher because I took a theater class and I was doing theater in, in that year and New Mexico. He taught me the phrase, you’re off the hook, meaning you don’t have to do this. You know, you don’t have to come to this meeting.
You maybe let’s say,
Daniel: You are free to go.
Eugeniu: Yeah, you’re free to go. Like maybe I told you Daniel that like, oh, can you please come after we record this thing? Can you please, I don’t know, hop on another call with me and go, we’ll discuss. And then now I’m telling you, oh, you know what? I actually figured that thing out.
You’re off the hook. Like you. Yeah. So this,
Daniel: I like that one. Yeah, this is great.
Eugeniu: yeah, a lot of those phrases just because it was high school and we were teenagers were kind of dirty and probably not good to mention on this podcast. Some of them were just funny,
Daniel: and I just wanted to ask you, if you could give some explanations for two or three words that you mentioned in your videos.
Eugeniu: Yeah. of course,
For someone who has a channel named lingo junkie, that’s like what I do you know, that’s that’s the reason why I started the channel.
Daniel: So it would be cool if you could explain the expression “and all of that jazz”.
Eugeniu: Yeah. Sure. So this one, I also heard in New Mexico during that exchange year. And it’s, whenever you say something, maybe you don’t know how to end that sentence and you just want to say. And stuff like that, you know, it’s very informal by the way. So instead of saying and all that stuff and all that, and that you say and all that jazz. So if, to give you an example, maybe, you know how we were talking about the CELTA. And so I would tell them, yeah, CELTA really helps you learn how to become a better teacher, but it also helps you manage your time. It helps you do all kinds of things and all that jazz you know, or, or maybe instead of all kinds of things, I would just replace it with an, all that jazz. and Stuff, et cetera.
Daniel: Yeah. I like that. Pretty much to be honest and this sort of expression would also come into your notebooks
Eugeniu: Oh, yeah, Yeah. I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere there. I actually found my notebook.
I still have it. yeah. I still have it. I’m visiting my family right now and I have a box of my stuff from back in Moldova, from my college
Daniel: Um,
Eugeniu: And this is definitely something that I have to bring with me.
I’m pretty sure I have it here actually.
It’s right here. So it’ll be easy for me to do that. It’s oh
Daniel: yeah.
Eugeniu: I don’t know if you can see very well. So I’d like these in red, these are
signatures.
Daniel: Oh yeah. I see.
it so cool
Eugeniu: And especially, you can tell that these are teachers because they have red ink. They have a.
Daniel: I imagine these days we would just record with our mobile
Eugeniu: Probably
Daniel: to, to ask the person to repeat and then
Eugeniu: yeah. probably.
Daniel: forever with you because it becomes something personnel. Right. So it sticks definitely better, or, I’m sure you have, for every expression you have some sort of a story behind it, right?
Eugeniu: Definitely
Yeah,
yeah, exactly. And also just with learning anything for me, the process of writing it down just does something to my brain that
Daniel: Um,
Eugeniu: sticks better. It just some there’s something going on in that brain. And it’s not just language. related. My accounting teacher in college used to have these weekly assignments for us, where he would ask us questions.
We could find answers easily
and he would, just tell us, okay, write it down. Like, explain that
to me, explain how this
sort of a financial statement works. Explain it in your words. And You would understand things much better, having done that written And you don’t think of accounting as like a writing intensive thing.
Right.
But you know, it really applied even to accounting.
Daniel: Yeah, Sure. And that’s also why I like it to make the second podcast that Vocab Man , because I write down the expression, I try to find examples from movies and then I put them together and then I have three or four minutes with the focus of one expression. So it will stick better and I can teach others as well through podcasting.
Eugeniu: Yeah. Yeah. That’s
Daniel: So, and the second one is to take it with a pinch of salt.
Eugeniu: Yeah. So I really don’t like making general statements that are sort of universal, because there will always be an exception to everything in life.
Right.
No matter what I say, again, going back to the CELTA thing, you know how I told people that yeah, it’s a great course. Or let me actually think about it in a different way. You know how I said that the CELTA or organization or the people who sell that course, they say that it’s the gold standard. I would say that you should take that with a pinch of salt or with a grain of salt, because, don’t just believe a word for word, what people tell you. that. Maybe think a little more critically about it, think about it. Maybe analyze it a little more and filter it out. You know, maybe it’s not 100% true.
Maybe, maybe you need to kind of
Daniel: Y you need to make your own research, right?
Eugeniu: Yeah. Make your own research and don’t take it at face value.
Just Think that there’s always going to be probably an exception to it. So kind of look at it maybe with like eyebrow going up, like Hm. but really.
Is it so, so take it with a grain of salt,
take every advice, kind of with a grain of salt,
filter it through your own experience and make your own decision. It might apply to your sure, but it might not. And, if it doesn’t, then that’s totally fine.
That’s why we’re human.
We’re all different. Sometimes we, you know, something works, something doesn’t.
Daniel: Thank you so much.
Thank
Eugeniu: course, And thank you too for everything. I really appreciate you,
somehow I guess, through the algorithm of Instagram we found each other. Thank you for subscribing to the YouTube
channel. I really appreciate it. it.
All right.
Daniel: Ciao.
Eugeniu: Take care. Ciao Daniel.
I’ll see you. Cheers. Thank you.
