Why do people choose to go to college?

I’ll start by answering the question myself. I went to college because I wanted to learn how to create better websites. I’ve had a background in web development since elementary school, but I used to believe that going to university was the best (and only way?) to become a qualified professional in the field. I at least thought you needed some kind of degree in web development if you wanted to get a job in the field.
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As always, this tip applies to all kinds of projects and tasks. I’m merely using web development as a personal example.

I’ve been working as a full-time web developer for the past four months. This means that I have to deal with project management all the time. I’ll often be working on a project alone, and have to design a rough plan for what I need to do in order to create the final product. The list usually starts to snowball as I progress and keep jotting down additional tasks.

These general to-do lists are important for coordinating your work and reminding you to complete tasks at appropriate times. But what I’ve noticed is that when I have a big project on my desk that includes dozens of different tasks and features that need to be implemented, I often lose track of where I have to go the next day—especially if it’s a Monday morning. So every time I go to work, I have to reorient myself to pick up from where I left off the previous workday.
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Learning a language takes time. Depending on how much time you have at your disposal, learning how to communicate in a foreign language can take anywhere from a month to several years. From what I’ve noticed, one year of consistent effort (daily practice) is usually enough to have a casual conversation in a new language.

Today we’re not gonna be talking about how often you should study a language (we’ll leave that for another time), although I’d like to point out that in a lot of cases daily practice is counter-productive because you can easily burn yourself out.

So today, I’d like to deal with an important practice that many people seem to dismiss. That is, keeping a record of language-related questions.
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Chinese Textbooks

A language textbook is a handy source of study material, which is why nearly every language course on the planet uses textbooks for maintaining structure throughout the lessons.

But it’s damn hard to find a textbook that lets you learn the language with maximum efficiency. Moreover, if you’re learning a rare language that doesn’t have a wide selection of textbooks to choose from, it’s even less likely that you will find optimized books.
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