Funmi Oke: April 2026

Tuesday, April 21, 2026

My Personal Curriculum, Q2

Q2 Theme: Practice, Expression, and Life Outside the Desk

After a structured and academically focused Q1, Q2 is about a different kind of growth. This quarter centers on consistency, creativity, and real-life application.

Instead of focusing on new knowledge, I am focusing on maintaining and strengthening what I already know, while also creating space to step outside of my routine.

Makeup Practice

This quarter, I am treating makeup as a skill that requires regular use to stay sharp. While I already have a strong foundation, I recognize that consistency is what keeps the skill intuitive and fluid.

My approach is simple. I will practice when I have time, especially on weekends, without pressure or perfection. Some sessions will be about recreating looks I already love, while others will be about experimenting and trying something new.

Success this quarter looks like staying consistent, feeling more confident in my execution, and reconnecting with makeup as a creative outlet.

German Language Learning

In Q1, my learning was more structured. In Q2, I am shifting into immersion and real world engagement with the language.

I will continue learning German through a mix of listening, watching, and speaking. This includes watching YouTube vlogs with auto translated subtitles, listening to German language podcasts, and watching a German language movie.

I will also work with a language partner every two weeks. This is not a tutor, but a native or fluent speaker that I can speak with casually for an hour. The goal is to build comfort, improve listening, and speak more naturally.

Success this quarter is not perfection. It is about fluidity, confidence, and being able to engage with the language in a more natural way.

Extracurricular: Volunteering

This is the most intentional part of my Q2 curriculum.

Every curriculum should have an extracurricular, and for this quarter, mine will take place outside of my usual environment. I plan to find a volunteer opportunity for May and June, ideally something community based or outdoors.

This is important to me because it shifts my focus outward. It allows me to contribute my time, connect with others, and experience something beyond work and personal development.

Success here is simple. Showing up, being present, and being helpful.

Closing Reflection

Q2 is not about doing more. It is about doing things with more intention.

It is about maintaining skills, practicing consistently, engaging with learning in a more natural way, and making space for experiences outside of my usual routine.

This quarter feels lighter, but also more grounded.

Learning Outcomes from my Q1 Personal Curriculum

This year, I decided to engage in a Q1 personal curriculum. The personal curriculum is meant to be 12 weeks, thus its progress being measured by the 12 weeks of Q1.

The three main subject areas that comprised my personal curriculum was German learning, Global Mobility, and learning about Canada's immigration system.

I'll go ahead to share my progress and the learning materials that assisted me in my learning in each of the 3 buckets.

German Learning

This was a bucket I wanted to continue, as I had been practicing my German language skills on/off since the end of last year. Making it a part of my Q1 personal curriculum definitely helped with consistently practicing. To be honest, I didn't achieve penultimate consistency levels (in this case, practicing it daily), but I was more consistent than the previous year, so that is progress in my book.

I utilized a few things to help me this go- around, incorporating some medium from last year:

Novel: I read a German novel - das doppelete Loetchen - fun fact, the film the Parent Trap (1998) starring Lindsay Lohan originates from this 1949 German novel. Really cool for me, as Parent Trap was one of my favorite films growing up (and still a beloved comfort film for me for sure).

Vlogs: I watched German vlogs from a German lifestyle vlogger. I like watching vlogs regularly, mostly lifestyle vlogs, so it made sense to include this as part of the tools I use to engage in this bucket. Which brings me to my first pro tip: a low hanging fruit way to engage in your personal curriculum is to incorporate tools you already use in your learning or avenues to learn. If you already listen to podcasts for example and you want to learn about a certain historical period, seek out podcasts on that topic. If you watch Youtube videos regularly already, no need to switch up URL's for the sake of the personal curriculum - watch Youtube Videos. If you watch film regularly, find films related to the topic to watch etc. I could go on and on about so much medium - books, radio, X, Instagram - point is you can use all of these avenues to learn, especially if you were already using it for your entertainment in the first place.

screenshot of the Youtuber I mostly watched, Fabienne Bethmann

Still on YouTube, not only did I add closed caption German subtitles to the German vlogs I watched, I also added them to any video watched in English as well. Yes, YouTube provides the ability to auto-translate in your preferred language, captioning the video's dialogue in that specific preferred language. See the below photo for example.

An Arise news video I watched with the captions auto translating to German

Podcast: I found a German language podcasts (these were learning based, so dialogue was a bit slower). I didn't listen to as much of these as I could have simply because the ones I found were a bit more elementary for the language proficiency I had already attained, but if you are a beginner, this is actually great.

All in all, I believe a bulk of my language learning came from watching the YouTube videos and reading the German book. To make the podcasting arm more effective, I will definitely seek out an advanced proficiency language podcast or podcast where German is fluently spoken.

Which brings me to my next announcement: *drum roll please* I'll be continuing German Language learning into Q2! yay! Continuing YouTube vlogs (& auto-translated subtitles) but also including two major tools: the advanced language podcast, and a language partner. This quarter, I want to find a personal language partner online that I'll pay and we just get online and chat about things, in German. It won't be tutoring or language lessons, but just personal, 1:1 practice. I look forward to adding this speaking component into my German Language Q2 personal curriculum.

Global Mobility Certification

I started the WERC Global Mobility Course last year but never completed it nor did I take the exam. It's a 7 module course and based on their schedule, it is meant to take about 6 months. Thus, at the start of the year it was important for me to complete it. I was on module 3 by the time I put a pin on this certification at the end of the year, right before I traveled. Thus, from February after my birthday I picked up where I left off.

By April 4, a few days after the end of Q1, I finished all seven courses (see the badges issued for completion below) and then April 14th, I completed the global mobility certification course.

Cheers all around! I feel happy about my accomplishment. I shared it on LinkedIn, printed the certificate, and plan to hang up the certificate in my home. Soon come, after I get back from my cheeky Dallas weekender (I think the April 28 will be the "official/unofficial start to my Q2 personal curriculum because of how it's the day I get back from Dallas and it marks the start to getting back serious again lol - with goals etc)

A job well done, indeed.

Canada Immigration

The final bucket was not started until literally a few days before the end of Q1, when I realized it was ending and I still had no understanding of how the Canadian Immigration process works. For what it's worth I just wanted a general overview. It's funny though, that even with all the cramming this is the lesson I remember the most, maybe because of how it is so similar to U.S. immigration and I consider myself a U.S. immigration specialist (basically, there are three different categories of Canadian immigration - work/school which provides express entry (mostly used), work permit after school and/or or points towards express entry/provincial entry, or sponsorship from an employer where the labor market is tested which is not as commonly used also nota bene that Quebec has its own provincial entry system and is not a party to the express entry system; there's the family/reunification stream; and there's the humanitarian stream interesting to note here that interest groups can sponsor your asylum even from you being outside Canada.

A very interesting learning curriculum to say the least and I learned essentially that Canada's system is oriented around attracting talent to various provinces and the more delicious your profile is (based on points) the more likely you are to be able to relocate to Canada even without a job offer in hand. Oh, also points are accumulated by different things such as ties to Canada, education level, having worked for a Canadian employer, gone to a Canadian school, age, and English proficiency, amongst other things. While the word "draw" is the choice-word used when describing their selection system, Express Entry draws are not a lottery - the process is strictly merit-based.

To put a nice and neat bow on this two-day crash course, I created a PDF booklet of Canada's Immigration System using Claude (for the content) and ChatGPT for the cover page here.

It's a nice to have because I can refer to it at any time.

To conclude my Q1 personal curriculum, I would say it was great motivator for me to finish up the global mobility course and to also continue my German learning (at best, in a structure way). I will definitely continue the German learning in the ways mentioned above. Learning about Canada's immigration also gives me foundational knowledge about concepts I see coming up on my LinkedIn (and other social media) feed relating to any updates to their program, etc. I can also provide foundational advice to clients regarding migrating to Canada if there's any inquiry.

Here's to a productive Q1, stay tuned for my Q2 personal curriculum.

Funmi

Thursday, April 16, 2026

Angela Davis: Women, Culture , and Politics

March 2026, I read Angela Davis' Women Culture and Politics. It was really good. There were quite a few concepts & issues discussed that I want to note (I pretty much summarized them in my Notes app as I was reading and then fed to Claude to flesh out based on my already placed thoughts).

Without further ado, here goes. Enjoy!

The Socialism-Feminism Connection

Davis argues that feminism divorced from economic analysis is incomplete; you cannot liberate women without dismantling the material conditions that oppress them. She presents socialism not as a foreign ideology but as a practical framework for addressing the specific wounds of Black communities: chronic unemployment, healthcare gaps, income inequality, housing instability, and reproductive coercion. Davis is unambiguous about where she stands politically. Capitalism, in her view, is not a neutral backdrop to women's oppression; it is one of its root causes. The same system that extracts labor from workers extracts reproductive labor from women and extracts both from Black people simultaneously. At the intersection of race and gender, capitalism does double and triple damage. Socialism, for Davis, is not an abstract ideal but a concrete political answer to the compounding crises that Black women face precisely because no single-issue movement, whether feminist or civil rights, can dismantle a system that operates on multiple axes of exploitation at once
The personal is not just political; it's also economic

Global Solidarity vs. Mismatched Priorities

Davis exposes a fundamental tension in the international women's movement: whose issues get to define "women's issues"? The White Woman's Burden dynamic plays out on a global stage. Western/white feminists tend to center issues like FGM, refugees, and "saving" women in the Global South. Black and Third World women's movements counter: what about unemployment, homelessness, mass incarceration, and infant mortality at home? This plays out concretely in two case studies:
UN Decade for Women: U.S. feminist priorities often reflected white middle-class concerns, leaving Black and poor women's crises sidelined
- Egypt: Davis unpacks the contention over what Egyptian women themselves identify as their primary struggles vs. what Western feminists project onto them. The disconnect isn't just cultural; it's political and patronizing

South Africa & Apartheid as a Women's Issue

Davis connects apartheid directly to feminist struggle. Racial capitalism doesn't just oppress Black men; it devastates Black women, families, and reproductive life. She challenges the American women's movement to see South Africa not as a foreign cause but as an extension of the same fight against racial and economic domination

Military Spending vs. Human Welfare: Then and Now

Writing during the Vietnam War era, Davis makes a pointed argument: every dollar spent on military aggression is a dollar stolen from welfare, healthcare, education, and housing
She essentially asks: what does "national security" mean to a Black mother who can't afford childcare or medical treatment? This argument hits differently in 2026. Watching the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" funnel historic sums into defense while gutting social safety nets, Davis's critique reads less like history and more like prophecy. She would not be surprised. She would be furious, and she'd be right.

Art as Resistance: Music, Photography & Rupert Garcia

The final chapter pivots to culture as a political weapon.Davis argues that art isn't decoration; it's documentation, preservation, and mobilization. Rupert Garcia becomes the anchor example: his life's work is defined by a singular mission to create human images that preserve awareness of racial and national heritages and honor collective struggles for freedom and dignity
Garcia's photography refuses to let communities be erased, sanitized, or spectacularized; he insists on dignity. Music functions similarly in Davis's framework. Spirituals, blues, and protest songs serve as vessels of collective memory and survival

The Through-Line: Cohesion vs. Fracture

The book's quiet tragedy is the lack of solidarity, not because women don't share struggles, but because the movement keeps allowing racial and class hierarchies to reproduce themselves internally. Davis's call to action: genuine coalition requires centering the most marginalized, not the most comfortable. Until Black women's specific material conditions are treated as the feminist issue rather than a niche sub-issue, the movement remains fractured and therefore weakened.