It's something that most people do, even if they don't want to. It's part of who we are. I believe almost, if not everybody, looks to other people and compares themselves to them. I came to the conclusion that it's not mentally a healthy thing to do. Every person is unique, some might have skills that you don't have. I think it's okay to be inspired by other people, but we need to stop trying to be someone else and accecpt that what matters is our effort to get where we want to be and not how close we are to being someone else. When we learn to compete with ourselves instead with other people, we will be happier.

Good job overall :)

No, we are not taught this grammar point. For the most part, it's simply a personal choice. However, the proceeding verb may effect the form of the one that follows. Also, parallelism is the preferred method of sequential verbs. That is to say that if you follow a verb with an infinitive, all of the following verbs should be in their infinitive form as well, same with the gerunds. I like to swim, (to) ride bikes, and (to) hike. OR I like swimming, riding bikes, and hiking. BUT NOT I like swimming, to ride bikes, and hiking. Notice how the third and fourth verbs do not require the preposition "to," but the second verb does.

Many people on iTalki share this goal. If you have any questions about the English language or American culture, please feel free to ask me.

What are you going to cook: breakfast, lunch, dinner/supper? You could say: "I will cook after I finish watching TV." Your problem is in two parts: 1.) the verb to finish + gerund and 2.) Finite and non finite temporal clauses (after + ing). 1.) When we follow the verb to finish with another verb, we ALWAYS use the gerund, not the infinitive (or stem). "I finished reading the article." "He finished washing the dishes." 2.)This is a question of temporal finite and non finite clauses. Essentially, English has the option of omitting a subject if it is repeated in sentence. Example: "I made dinner while I was watching TV." The subject "I" is used twice, and that's fine, but you don't have to repeat it if you don't want to. You can also say, "I made dinner while watching TV." See? There's no "I" in the second part. Certain prepositions and adverbs have the power to remove the subject in a subordinate clause (only related to time). So, your sentence could also be, "I will cook dinner after finishing watching TV." This sounds a little strange to have two gerunds together, but it's grammatically correct. To avoid this, you could use the present perfect, "I will cook dinner, after having finished watching TV." If you have any questions about this, you can ask me or you can look at this website. http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/8-12.html Ciao, Greg

My Language Learning Journey

I started learning English when I was a child, but the quality of the English education that was taught in my school was not good. As a result, I would often forget the material.  

I decided to start learning English again two years ago on my own. One year later, I started to learn Korean, and soon after that, Spanish. I love to discover a different worlds that aren't my own. I love to discover other cultures, other people, and other mindsets.

I love to learn languages, and I hope to become fluent in these languages and who knows how many others.

A couple of days ago, I asked my tutor the following question: Are people happier in England or in Brazil? She, who has lived both in Brazil and England, answered without hesitating that they are happier in Brazil. The other day I asked the same question to my half American half Swedish tutor, who has lived in the US, Brazil, Sweden and Thailand, and he said people in Brazil and Thailand are happier than in the US and Sweden. Also, he said in Sweden people are even sadder than in the US.
Why does this happen? Our guess was that it must be the sun. It seems the lack of sunshine in places like Sweden and England makes people depressed. My sister-in-law said the same about Switzerland, where she lived for three years. She said the people there sometimes look so sad because everything is so grey.
Surely there are other factors which influence their mood, but the sun is clearly important. Either way, it is interesting to think about how people can be happier in underdeveloped countries since, in many situations, we assume they would be happier in the developed ones.