Revision Complete

Okay, so I've been talking for a while about revising my flash cards. This weekend, I did it. I had a date (I think?) on Saturday, and because I'm anal retentive about everything, which includes both time management and appearances, I did some work on revising some of my problem cards yesterday morning at the coffee house before she arrived - not only did I get work done, but I appeared to be productive when she showed up, and we got to briefly discuss the whole thing. I finished up this afternoon. Here's what I did:

I yanked all of the cards that represented redundant words, contained any mistake, or that had phrases instead of words or terms.

I corrected the cards that had mistakes - some of which involved making new cards, and some of which involved fixing existing cards.

I turned all of the phrase/sentence cards into free-standing individual cards - some of these were already like that, while some shared a card with other individual words. I usually put two entries on each flash card, but I only did one entry per phrase card unless the phrases were short and related to one another.

I gave the phrase cards their own numbering system: P1, P2, P3, vice 001, 002, and 003 for the regular word cards.

I combined the extraneous words that were pulled off of the phrase cards to make new flash cards.

I used words from the DLI Iraqi Basic Survival Guide, the Arabic textbook, and titles of several of the early suras of the Quran to fill in the missing numbered cards that were swapped out.

I still need to make more flash cards - I always need to make more flash cards - but the big revision is, I think, done. I'm a bit worried that I added words that I already had on cards, which will require another revision if true. However, I can now work primarily on words, and read particular phrases once I get a little bit more familiar with the grammar and syntax. So, this revision having been completed, I can hopefully pick up the habit of doing fifty to one hundred flash card repetitions per day starting tomorrow morning. As far as the weekend goes, I'll count this one as complete with respect to studying Arabic. With any luck, that will mean that Chops won't verbally assault me for a few more days.