Done.
Well, it ended up costing me a summer, most of my free time for the first quarter of college, and then almost all of winter break - but I finished it.
Most of the people who will read this already have some idea of what i've been doing with my free time for the past 4 months, but for those that don't i'll explain:
I've never been dedicated to much of anything; I played team sports throughout elementary school and junior high mostly out of habit, and as the level of competition increased in highschool I didn't have enough motivation to seriously dedicate myself to any of them. My musical pursuits were hardly worth mentioning, and besides the fact that I seriously sucked at playing the baratone horn, it was boring. School was never a focus for me either. Sure I did well enough to slide by with decent grades, but I never had any serious desire to excell.
So what does that leave? Sure, snowboarding is fun, I dabbled in skateboarding, surfed in the summers, but I dont pretend that I'm good enough at any of those to dedicate any serious effort to them. They were just a way to have fun in my spare time. I would have been hard-pressed to point to an achievement that i was honestly proud of, outside of perhaps an imaginary online character that I ended up selling for a few hundred dollars.
I suppose the turning point for me was my homestay in Japan the summer before my senior year of high school. I had always had an affinity for the Japanese language, but immersion in the language and culture changed it from a class I took to a hobby. I came back with an enormous boost to my listening comprehension, and I was able to put that to use watching and listening to videos and movies in Japanese. For the first time, I could actually apply the things I was learning in school to leisure activities that were interesting. By the end of highschool, I realized that I had finally found somthing to be passionate about.
The problem with Japanese, however, is the 8 years that all Japanese students spend studying Kanji every day. Even after 4 years of highschool Japanese, I could read mabye 200 characters, and write 100 if I was lucky. I knew that if Japanese was going to have a place in my career and every day life, I had to know the 2000 general use characters that are taught in highschool. Learning these the way I'd been tought them for the past 4 years was out of the question - you need to write each kanji hundreds and hundreds of times untill the seemingly random tangles of strokes become habitual. In pursuit of a better way, I turned to the internet, and found a book which promised something different.
Remembering the Kanji, by James W. Heisig. For the past 4 months, I have spent around 5 hours every day following the systematic method taught in this book. 2042 kanji, starting from the most simple, and then building them up into larger and larger compound elements; using this book it takes about 10 minutes to learn each new kanji perminantly.
So tonight, 4 months later, I finished.
The more I think about it, its quite possible that this is the only real test of self discipline that I've ever had. Which makes sense, considering its the first time in my life that I've ever been dedicated to something.
On thursday I start Japan 312 at the UW, and i'll begin to reap the benefits of the trial that the past 4 months has been.
I dont think anything has ever felt this good.
Most of the people who will read this already have some idea of what i've been doing with my free time for the past 4 months, but for those that don't i'll explain:
I've never been dedicated to much of anything; I played team sports throughout elementary school and junior high mostly out of habit, and as the level of competition increased in highschool I didn't have enough motivation to seriously dedicate myself to any of them. My musical pursuits were hardly worth mentioning, and besides the fact that I seriously sucked at playing the baratone horn, it was boring. School was never a focus for me either. Sure I did well enough to slide by with decent grades, but I never had any serious desire to excell.
So what does that leave? Sure, snowboarding is fun, I dabbled in skateboarding, surfed in the summers, but I dont pretend that I'm good enough at any of those to dedicate any serious effort to them. They were just a way to have fun in my spare time. I would have been hard-pressed to point to an achievement that i was honestly proud of, outside of perhaps an imaginary online character that I ended up selling for a few hundred dollars.
I suppose the turning point for me was my homestay in Japan the summer before my senior year of high school. I had always had an affinity for the Japanese language, but immersion in the language and culture changed it from a class I took to a hobby. I came back with an enormous boost to my listening comprehension, and I was able to put that to use watching and listening to videos and movies in Japanese. For the first time, I could actually apply the things I was learning in school to leisure activities that were interesting. By the end of highschool, I realized that I had finally found somthing to be passionate about.
The problem with Japanese, however, is the 8 years that all Japanese students spend studying Kanji every day. Even after 4 years of highschool Japanese, I could read mabye 200 characters, and write 100 if I was lucky. I knew that if Japanese was going to have a place in my career and every day life, I had to know the 2000 general use characters that are taught in highschool. Learning these the way I'd been tought them for the past 4 years was out of the question - you need to write each kanji hundreds and hundreds of times untill the seemingly random tangles of strokes become habitual. In pursuit of a better way, I turned to the internet, and found a book which promised something different.
Remembering the Kanji, by James W. Heisig. For the past 4 months, I have spent around 5 hours every day following the systematic method taught in this book. 2042 kanji, starting from the most simple, and then building them up into larger and larger compound elements; using this book it takes about 10 minutes to learn each new kanji perminantly.
So tonight, 4 months later, I finished.
The more I think about it, its quite possible that this is the only real test of self discipline that I've ever had. Which makes sense, considering its the first time in my life that I've ever been dedicated to something.
On thursday I start Japan 312 at the UW, and i'll begin to reap the benefits of the trial that the past 4 months has been.
I dont think anything has ever felt this good.