Meh...
It seems I NEVER update here anymore... well in fact I don't really update anywhere. Life is keeping me going a thousand miles a minute and it barely slows down.
And yet my academic life is getting so lazy. Its my last semester at CSU and I'm juggling a hundred things, and quite frankly school is not what I want to be my top priority. Hell there's one class that I've barely cracked the book open for, granted I've covered the material in three different classes so that helps a TON, but still, Senioritis much?
Japanese is really the class that is giving me the most trouble. As many can attest to, the Beecken has gone off the deep end. The expectations are raised so high I sometimes feel I'm drowning, and at the same time, the things we are doing in fourth year (well assignment wise) I really don't find stimulating or interesting nor do I feel that they are preparing me for the way I want to use my Japanese in the future. After being in Japan, it was obvious that Beecken-sensei has done a lot to allow us to excel in the language, but I still found daily life things difficult in Japan.
That's what frustrates me about learning a language for Academic purposes. I want to LIVE my language, not vomit it verbateum. I really was disappointed this week when we had some students from Yamagata University come visit our class this week. I WANTED to talk to them about a place that I really fell in love with while I was in Japan! I can really honestly say that those are the only times in Japanese class where I am just burning to speak Japanese. But no we barely had ten minutes to talk to them and then we had to perform a stupid skit that when it was my groups turn, she was too busy applying the mistakes of the other group onto us that we didn't even perform much of anything and then she says "Well perform it again PERFECTLY on Tuesday". It was a skit that she originally said was to be our original interpretation of the article we read and she was SUUUUPER vague and then proceeds to rips us apart with stupid details like what side of the Friggin car a Japanese person would be walking on if you were to stop to get a ride! WTF!!! I hated being made an example of like that (I was already ill that day) I came home and cried, so much so that when I went to my tea lesson Mike-sensei asked if I had been crying. ( I told him no of course even though I cried half the bike ride there.) The only class I look forward to is my Tea Ceremony Independent Study which the assignments that Beecken-sensei established really push down the exhilaration I have. I'm going to talk to her about dropping the research paper and adding more regular readings to my syllabus, but something tells me that won't change, but its a two credit class and when I look at my syllabus and the LJPN 3 credit syllabus the assignments almost mirror each other.
And at Thursday's lesson I nearly burst into tears a second time over a stupid frustration, my Nonoji (taking the tea whisk out of the tea bowl) because I was having to re do it. But thankfully Mike is so positive I was able to swallow the tears, I don't think he noticed since I made sure I stared at the tea bowl the whole time.
I hate how class makes learning feel like a chore. I think that's why I hate school so much because in that setting for me learning becomes a tortuous chore.
I love to learn and it really upsets me that I have to wade through a ton of BS assignments and preach to the teacher's ego. And I mean this across the board, not just in Japanese. Yes I know they need some way to assess us but still it really just stresses me out and makes me want to cry. These problems are some of the of the reasons I didn't even want to go to college in the first place, and now that I'm almost finished... I feel like its just going to be a huge relief like dropping a body into the ocean and it will just drift to the bottom and be lost.
And I've been having stress sickeness again. Pardon me being gross but I haven't thrown up this much since my grandmother was dying last year. I've only gone yesterday and today without revisiting my meals at least once in the past like two weeks.
That brings me to the next thing. Real life, well what I like to secretly call "big girl" life is coming. I'm now faced with the great question of every graduate, "Well what do I do now?" I'm always the girl with the plan for everything, but really I feel like I'm drifting in a sea of indecision. My life can go in a million directions, I could teach, I could travel, I could just do something totally insane, there is so much! I feel like I'm drowning in options, and I'm just not sure which float I should latch onto. My focused plan of teach, teach, teach is totally done a 180 now I'm looking at all this...
-Teach in Japan
-Study tea at Urasenke in Kyoto
-Teach in rural or low income schools in the US
-Graduate school in Europe... to get a degree in Midieval Studies (>o<)
-Tour Guide in Hawaii or California or somewhere to use my Japanese
-Try to find a job with a company that does travel things like the Travel Channel (Could I be the female Anthony Bourdain... psh F YEAH!)
-Working for a travel company that focuses on Asia
-Just say screw it and take my passport to the airport and get on the first plane I can catch and just go SOMEWHERE!! (This has been so tempting of late) And just see where life takes me.
But unfortunately I can't just jump out into the big wide world, but I want to sooo badly. There is much I haven't seen, and so many places I haven't been that I am just dying the longer I sit still!!
And yet my academic life is getting so lazy. Its my last semester at CSU and I'm juggling a hundred things, and quite frankly school is not what I want to be my top priority. Hell there's one class that I've barely cracked the book open for, granted I've covered the material in three different classes so that helps a TON, but still, Senioritis much?
Japanese is really the class that is giving me the most trouble. As many can attest to, the Beecken has gone off the deep end. The expectations are raised so high I sometimes feel I'm drowning, and at the same time, the things we are doing in fourth year (well assignment wise) I really don't find stimulating or interesting nor do I feel that they are preparing me for the way I want to use my Japanese in the future. After being in Japan, it was obvious that Beecken-sensei has done a lot to allow us to excel in the language, but I still found daily life things difficult in Japan.
That's what frustrates me about learning a language for Academic purposes. I want to LIVE my language, not vomit it verbateum. I really was disappointed this week when we had some students from Yamagata University come visit our class this week. I WANTED to talk to them about a place that I really fell in love with while I was in Japan! I can really honestly say that those are the only times in Japanese class where I am just burning to speak Japanese. But no we barely had ten minutes to talk to them and then we had to perform a stupid skit that when it was my groups turn, she was too busy applying the mistakes of the other group onto us that we didn't even perform much of anything and then she says "Well perform it again PERFECTLY on Tuesday". It was a skit that she originally said was to be our original interpretation of the article we read and she was SUUUUPER vague and then proceeds to rips us apart with stupid details like what side of the Friggin car a Japanese person would be walking on if you were to stop to get a ride! WTF!!! I hated being made an example of like that (I was already ill that day) I came home and cried, so much so that when I went to my tea lesson Mike-sensei asked if I had been crying. ( I told him no of course even though I cried half the bike ride there.) The only class I look forward to is my Tea Ceremony Independent Study which the assignments that Beecken-sensei established really push down the exhilaration I have. I'm going to talk to her about dropping the research paper and adding more regular readings to my syllabus, but something tells me that won't change, but its a two credit class and when I look at my syllabus and the LJPN 3 credit syllabus the assignments almost mirror each other.
And at Thursday's lesson I nearly burst into tears a second time over a stupid frustration, my Nonoji (taking the tea whisk out of the tea bowl) because I was having to re do it. But thankfully Mike is so positive I was able to swallow the tears, I don't think he noticed since I made sure I stared at the tea bowl the whole time.
I hate how class makes learning feel like a chore. I think that's why I hate school so much because in that setting for me learning becomes a tortuous chore.
I love to learn and it really upsets me that I have to wade through a ton of BS assignments and preach to the teacher's ego. And I mean this across the board, not just in Japanese. Yes I know they need some way to assess us but still it really just stresses me out and makes me want to cry. These problems are some of the of the reasons I didn't even want to go to college in the first place, and now that I'm almost finished... I feel like its just going to be a huge relief like dropping a body into the ocean and it will just drift to the bottom and be lost.
And I've been having stress sickeness again. Pardon me being gross but I haven't thrown up this much since my grandmother was dying last year. I've only gone yesterday and today without revisiting my meals at least once in the past like two weeks.
That brings me to the next thing. Real life, well what I like to secretly call "big girl" life is coming. I'm now faced with the great question of every graduate, "Well what do I do now?" I'm always the girl with the plan for everything, but really I feel like I'm drifting in a sea of indecision. My life can go in a million directions, I could teach, I could travel, I could just do something totally insane, there is so much! I feel like I'm drowning in options, and I'm just not sure which float I should latch onto. My focused plan of teach, teach, teach is totally done a 180 now I'm looking at all this...
-Teach in Japan
-Study tea at Urasenke in Kyoto
-Teach in rural or low income schools in the US
-Graduate school in Europe... to get a degree in Midieval Studies (>o<)
-Tour Guide in Hawaii or California or somewhere to use my Japanese
-Try to find a job with a company that does travel things like the Travel Channel (Could I be the female Anthony Bourdain... psh F YEAH!)
-Working for a travel company that focuses on Asia
-Just say screw it and take my passport to the airport and get on the first plane I can catch and just go SOMEWHERE!! (This has been so tempting of late) And just see where life takes me.
But unfortunately I can't just jump out into the big wide world, but I want to sooo badly. There is much I haven't seen, and so many places I haven't been that I am just dying the longer I sit still!!