Finalizing the New Years Resolutions
And the results of my one-man debate about what my third resolution should be are in. And in a stunning come-from-behind victory, the spot goes to: LEARNING JAPANESE which just narrowly beat out Be More Social. Cure Cancer comes in a distant third place. Good luck in future endeavors to all resolutions who gave it their best shot. We invite you to try again next year.
And now for the formal award ceremony: I hereby resolve to be comfortable with conversational Japanese by the end of the year. Several factors went into what could otherwise be a foolish decision. I wanted it to be difficult, difficult enough that I wasn’t likely to succeed before the end of the year. The problem with my other resolutions is that they will be completed within the next few months whether I succeed or not. If my internship isn’t in place by the end of March, it’s probably not happening. And there is nothing in my athletic goals after Bloomsday in early May.
I also needed the resolution to be achievable (Cure Cancer beat out Be More Social in this category by the way). It also needed to be measurable. What would the measurement on Be More Social be? “I resolve to have 5 friends that I see in person on a regular basis by the end of the year?” Is that a good definition of social? I’m not sure. Good Grades and Jazz Piano were disqualified early on for not being enough of a stretch. I already work harder than I need to for my grades and my classes this year include jazz piano lessons that I will be working on resolution or not.
What really propelled Japanese to the top of the list, however, was my successful attempt to do the first lessons of some various Japanese programs that I have come across. First, I have Rosetta Stone software which I found useful but would be next to impossible to learn without some outside help because they do very little outside of show pictures along with words and sounds to help you deduce how the language might work. I took a trip to the library and picked up lessons on CD’s as well as Japanese For Dummies. I did the first lesson on the CD’s and found it really, really useful. I already feel like I have a decent grasp on sentence structure and some verb conjugation rules. Between my three sources (as well as maybe trying to talk to Kosuke, my graduate advisor, if I get the courage), I might have a shot of actually doing this. For the sake of feeling like I have a chance, I have removed learning to read Kanji from the resolution. I figure that’s a more natural progression anyway. We learn to talk before we learn to read, right?
So that’s it! Run Bloomsday, Get Internship in Seattle, Learn Japanese. Next step will be to set smaller goals like weekly and monthly milestones. I’ll have to think about that some more.
In related news, I tried running earlier today and was able to do a 10 minute mile before collapsing. Good, but really difficult. I definitely lost a lot of ability over Christmas break.
And now for the formal award ceremony: I hereby resolve to be comfortable with conversational Japanese by the end of the year. Several factors went into what could otherwise be a foolish decision. I wanted it to be difficult, difficult enough that I wasn’t likely to succeed before the end of the year. The problem with my other resolutions is that they will be completed within the next few months whether I succeed or not. If my internship isn’t in place by the end of March, it’s probably not happening. And there is nothing in my athletic goals after Bloomsday in early May.
I also needed the resolution to be achievable (Cure Cancer beat out Be More Social in this category by the way). It also needed to be measurable. What would the measurement on Be More Social be? “I resolve to have 5 friends that I see in person on a regular basis by the end of the year?” Is that a good definition of social? I’m not sure. Good Grades and Jazz Piano were disqualified early on for not being enough of a stretch. I already work harder than I need to for my grades and my classes this year include jazz piano lessons that I will be working on resolution or not.
What really propelled Japanese to the top of the list, however, was my successful attempt to do the first lessons of some various Japanese programs that I have come across. First, I have Rosetta Stone software which I found useful but would be next to impossible to learn without some outside help because they do very little outside of show pictures along with words and sounds to help you deduce how the language might work. I took a trip to the library and picked up lessons on CD’s as well as Japanese For Dummies. I did the first lesson on the CD’s and found it really, really useful. I already feel like I have a decent grasp on sentence structure and some verb conjugation rules. Between my three sources (as well as maybe trying to talk to Kosuke, my graduate advisor, if I get the courage), I might have a shot of actually doing this. For the sake of feeling like I have a chance, I have removed learning to read Kanji from the resolution. I figure that’s a more natural progression anyway. We learn to talk before we learn to read, right?
So that’s it! Run Bloomsday, Get Internship in Seattle, Learn Japanese. Next step will be to set smaller goals like weekly and monthly milestones. I’ll have to think about that some more.
In related news, I tried running earlier today and was able to do a 10 minute mile before collapsing. Good, but really difficult. I definitely lost a lot of ability over Christmas break.