Luana.me

Still a Student, After All (I Will Never Stop)

Hello! 😀 Guess what? I’ve almost completely recovered. Such a good feeling!

I have completed an article for a client today and done some social media work for them, so I feel good and accomplished. Now, time to update my personal blog and have some fun with my Character Blogs, too. Yup!

So, today’s post is about studying. Oh, I know some of you will make a face and say, “nooo, studying is awful! All that yucky homework to get done, bleh!”.

Well, I know there are teachers out there who make it really hard to enjoy a subject (been there, done that), but that’s not the ‘studying’ I’m referring to.

I used to be a university student until 2012. Computer Science undergraduate. I was really slow to progress on exams, though, because in addition to my health issues I had almost no background in Mathematics and computer architecture, so everything was new to me and I had to absorb it bit by bit.

Never mind, I told myself, I love it so much that it doesn’t matter how long I take to graduate, as long as I DO graduate, right?

Some people around me had different thoughts about the matter, though. Long story short, there was this strong idea that paying several years of tuition (albeit I paid half of it with my own money) for a student with health issues who doesn’t make steady progress wasn’t a good idea, so I was strongly pressured to quit.

[NOTE: I know I shouldn’t have cared about that idea, but not being financially independent and the excess stress and pressure added to my ‘malfunctioning’ and made studying almost impossible.]

I didn’t quit, though— I just put my studies on hold. I don’t pay tuition anymore, but my university ID is still active, so while I can’t take exams, I can still use the library and the CS lab.

I keep in touch with my old classmates, I attend to student reunions (in semi-incognito, as I can’t participate actively) and I give and get advice on subjects.

I still study. I attend lectures every time I can drop by the faculty, I study lecture materials that professors put online and I email professors who know my story and agreed to keep an open channel with me. (They also hope I’ll be back as a full- or part-time student, some day!)

So you see, I’m still a student, after all. And I will never stop being one.

It’s not just my university. I keep studying thanks to free materials from MIT’s Open Courseware and public course pages, and websites like Coursera and Udacity that let you enroll to university-grade courses for free.

Some people now know they can’t do anything to stop me.

Besides, I’m a freelancer thanks to my multi-area studies. I tend to use what I learn, so it’s thanks to the notions of Linguistics if I can write a better English and do better text translations for clients; and it’s thanks to Automata Theory if I learned to recognize patterns behind a language (natural or artificial) and understand programming better.

And if I’m starting to get a name in the freelance marketing field, it’s because I studied Marketing and SEO on my own.

So this is really it: I can be taken out of university but, in a way, university can’t be taken out of me.

This is who I am, and I love it.

From Cold to Bronchitis… And I’m Sick Once Again

It started as a cold, I swear.

That was a tad more than a week ago, can’t remember exactly, but it looked like nothing serious. I kept on working, doing my stuff, going out and so on.

Bad joke, right? Over a week later, I’m home, working through the sickness while dreaming to spend a whole day in bed, resting as my body demands. And work is crap, because when you’re sick you’re not exactly in the mental shape to do things as they should be done. I feel kind of disconnected, my brain goes ways I don’t want it to go— and I don’t need a high fever to have that. A bit less than 100°F suffices.

I can barely sleep at night, always sneezing and coughing. I only slept 4 hours last night, and believe me, it can mess up my brain even worse. Not sure this blog post will make sense after I publish it, but well… I can say I tried, at least. (And my daughter Mandi Pope is an angel! She proofread the post for me. I love you, sweetie!)

So, I have a mild bronchitis now. My chest hurts and some other stuff I don’t want to write in detail (bleh!). I’m taking the whole weekend off to rest and recover, and I hope my freelance clients will understand that I need rest (oh, they do! But of course they need my blog posts, so I’m doing my best to heal quickly).

This is my to-do list for Monday 27:

• Finish up a blog post for my client Jerry + the PDF checklist I’ve been working on (I’m proud of this bit of work, heheh)
• Finish up 3 blog posts for my Indian client— shouldn’t take too long, since these posts are half written and all the subheads are in place (plus, they’re short articles that only require a little research, no big effort)
• Catch up on email replies, both work and personal emails
• Setup a new calendar for the week, to also include work for my client (and friend) Brandon and for my new niche blogs, Sponsored Circle and Biz Character Blogging

That’s it, I guess. I don’t want to fill that up too much, because the stuff I listed doesn’t take ten minutes to get done, but I look forward to push it a little more next week, so I can get my backlog cleared.

And I hope to see my Simone again, too, because I miss him badly. I haven’t seen him in almost two weeks now. Not cool. 🙁

Oh well. Lunch is almost ready, and then off to bed I go.

You take care, too, and careful that you don’t catch a bronchitis. I don’t want to know you’re going through the same crap as I do.

Love you all.

Blogging Characters On The Go!

This post comprises of two old posts from Eternity Creative, a website that is no more that I ran from 2009 to 2011. Character blog URLs updated as of February 2018.

Since it’s a time of creativity burst for yours truly, I thought it was better to list the last sweethearts who have a new online presence rather than starting with a Character Spotlight.

This listing contains 6 characters and a short profile of each of them.

** Thanks to all of the wonderful people who hosted my Characters in the past! Love you girls and guys! :love:

Alysha @ alysha.berter.robotronia.net
Alysha is a special 15 years old robot shapeshifter girl from Electronia. 🙂 She lives at the Delea City Orphanage, but she is special because Jack Par and Luana (myself LOL ) adopted her and a few other orphans from the same institution on October 27th, 2010. Alysha is a sweetheart, she loves cats and pink kawaii stuff, reading novels and watching TV. She can get quite sensitive at times, and she often cries out of loneliness; but when she feels better, she’ll work hard to make you feel better. See why she’s a sweetheart?

Aquagear @ aquagear.berter.robotronia.net
A little Explorabot who’s an orphan living at the Delea City Orphanage, on Electronia. He was 10 years old in 2010, when Jack Par and Luana adopted him. He used to live at the institute because he lost his parents during a terrorist attack. He’s a good boy, a bit of a joker at times, but very sensitive and considerate of others and their feelings. He’s also a loyal friend to both offline and online buddies.

Phelian @ phelian.berter.robotronia.net
A much recent character, who fully belongs to the Berter family. Phelian is the only daughter of Redder Max, adopted son of Advancer One Berter, the legendary leader of the Explorabots. Phelian is 8 years old, and a smart little girl. Her lively personality allows her to make many friends anywhere she goes, but sometimes that cannot hide the great pain she carries in her heart, as she had a chance to meet her father before her 8th year of life. She grew up with a ‘father-complex’, so now that her dad is back in her life, she feels very much attached to him, and strongly jealous if anyone approaches her father too closely.

Ranth @ ranth.berter.robotronia.net
Ranth is a special kid in the Berter family, because… he’s a Selsenian! Luana and Jack Par found him on Electronia, at a refugee center; he was abandoned by his corrupted clan when he was only 1 year old and had lived at the center all his life. Ranth was 8 years old in 2009, and he integrated well with his new adoptive family. He’s sweet, caring, protective of his siblings and parents, and very loyal to all of his friends. A true little Selsenian. Now his parents found a way for him not to turn to stone during the day, so he can better enjoy his family life.

Kylia @ kylia.berter.robotronia.net
Kylia was a little Explorabot orphan who was adopted by the Berter family in 2010. She used to live at the Delea City Orphanage, on Electronia, together with Alysha, Spindle and Oran Slate. She was 13 years old in 2010, when she started blogging. Kylia suffers from a metabolic illness that doesn’t let allow her to process Nuhonio, the primary food on Electronia, so she’s always been disadvantaged in the choice of food. Kylia is sweet, sensitive, considerate and introverse. She also has a crush on Ironbreaker but in 2011 she hasn’t told him yet.

Talla @ talla.rolamaton.net
Now, it’s time to introduce a new Rolamaton, The Robocity character. Talla was 14 years old in 2010, a bit loud girl but very sweet nonetheless. She came to live in Rolamaton because her creators decided to stop all their All Life projects and abandon AI experiments undefinitely, so they sent her to the Robocity to let her build a new life for herself rather than abandoning her. Though she was hurt by this, she understood that they were still caring about her, and was grateful for their last decision. Talla took a while to integrate herself well in her new environment, but her cheerful character soon caught many Robocitans’ hearts, to the extent that they voted her to Leadership election in 2014. Talla is the first robot woman to become a Leader in Rolamaton.