u/scubronco18

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share a story about how the Dead helped me get through a tough time today.

I’m a teacher at a school and a colleague of mine passed away yesterday. He was a huge deadhead and we connected quite a bit on it.

Played brokedown palace today in his memory at school and could not stop crying. But it made me feel a lot better knowing that he’s definitely still listening to the music!!

Fare you well, fare you well, we love you more than words can tell.

Hi everyone,

Just hit level 4 this morning and figured it'd be a great time to do my first update on this sub, especially with the progress I've been making recently.

First, background: I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and a year in college, but didn't keep up with it much after graduation.

I've been wanting to learn Spanish for quite some time, for a couple of reasons. First, I live in SoCal near the border, so there's obviously a ton of spanish speakers around. Second, I'm a teacher at a school where ~30% of my students cross the border from Tijuana. It's been an awesome way to connect with them and learn things about their culture and lives. They also appreciate the interest that I've taken.

I found DS in November of 2025 and dabbled a bit infrequently through the holidays. After the new year is when I really decided to commit with the journey and gave myself 20 hours based on what I remembered from my previous education.

Level 1: The first 50 or so hours were fairly rough. I'd hit 15 minutes a day and feel absolutely fried, mostly on super beginner videos. To be quite honest, I'd see people grinding out 3 hours a day and thought to myself that there's just no way that's possible and these people have got to be inflating their numbers. Nevertheless, I stuck with it and gradually was able to up my input to 30 minutes a day, and once I got close to level 2 it became easier to start churning out 45 minutes to an hour.

Level 2: This is where beginner podcasts like Cuentame and Chill Spanish started being really accessible and I found myself not needing to rely on visual cues as much anymore. Podcasts were a real game changer: I started listening on my commute to work, on the way to get groceries, on my daily walks. I could feel the input start to pile up and things felt like they were progressing fairly quickly. I also started listening to a lot of music in spanish (more on this later - it deserves its own section).

Level 3: In level 3, I got the "itch." I've become borderline obsessed with CI, and because I'm a teacher and it's summer, I've been able to average 2-2.5 hours a day. It's getting noticeably easier with every day, and I've come across so much more content that really interests me. During this time, I flew through Pablo's history of Spain series, the first season of Stardew Valley, and ventured out into other podcasts with content that I find much more interesting. Cuentame quickly became too slow for me and I'd find my mind drifting. Now, I'm on a steady rotation of Espanol Con Juan, Al Vuelo, Al Chile, How To Spanish Podcast, and the DS podcasts.

I also love reading and really found it hard to push it off - Read "Hola, Lola!" and thoroughly enjoyed it.

What I'm Looking Toward in Level 4: Currently feeling most comfortable with videos on DS around the 50s. Videos in the low 60s require a bit more direct concentration but are still comprehensible enough. I just hit 100 hours of podcasts, and I frequently go on walks, so I anticipate my usage of those to increase more.

I also ordered Un Hombre Fascinante and I'm excited to get started on reading that as well.

My Non Purist Tendencies: I definitely look up words somewhat frequently, especially if I've heard them a lot and have not been able to pick up on the context. I personally don't see this as a negative thing at all - words like "aprovechar" are fairly common but I wouldn't have known what the meaning was without looking it up.

Music: Here's my big one. Like I mentioned earlier, I've become obsessed with latin music. In fact, through 2026, about 95% of the music I listen to is all in Spanish. Gym, spanish. Walking, spanish. I genuinely LOVE the music and I really believe it's been a game changer, but this approach isn't for everyone. You simply cannot force yourself to like the music.

However, its helped tremendously with slang and comprehension. I look up the lyrics and follow along until I've memorized them, and I really feel like this has expanded my vocabulary so much. I frequently pick up on words or phrases that I've learned from music in DS videos or other content. Some of my favorite artists: Sebastian Yatra, Karol G, Peso Pluma, Luis Miguel, Rosalía (even got to see her in concert a couple of weeks ago!) I've probably gotten about 50 hours of input from music, but I haven't tracked any of it and don't plan to. I'm just going to let the music keep doing its thing.

I'm also feeling lucky that I've got so many Spanish speaking students, and I'm planning on having them do some crosstalk with me informally outside of class (e.g., if they need to ask me a question, ask me slowly in Spanish and I'll respond in english.)

Overall, I'm feeling extremely motivated and loving the process. My screen time has plummeted as I've committed to much more of my free time to input rather than scrolling on social media, and that has been a major improvement in my quality of life. I even went as far as to delete instagram, x, and pretty much every social media besides reddit. It's led to a lot less anxiety and a lot more happiness and feelings of contentment at the end of the day.

Here's to the next 300 hours and beyond!

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