焼けた :: In Which Kat is Burnt Out

Surprisingly, I'm not actually procrastinating on any homework or projects at the moment. I am writing this blog of my own free will and not because the instant gratification monkey in my brain is making me. Whew. Originally, I meant for this post to be a bit of a review on how classes have changed for this semester and what I think of classes now, but fair warning, it may just turn into me complaining about class and homework and regular work and ugh.

So this "semester" we're learning from Tobira, which is mostly long passages of reading on a topic (like food or sports) and various shorter passages, conversations, graphs, etc on the same topic. Tobira itself is set up quite nicely, with a short intro, the reading, a vocab list following the reading, the extra reading, extra vocab lists, and grammar, but there are some things I feel I prefer Nakama (the textbook from last "semester") and JSL. For instance, grammar explanations, while in English, are generally...nonexistent. There are a couple sample sentences and two or three sentences of explanation for each grammar point, and sometimes that just isn't enough. I'm having a bit of a hard time now figuring out if I'm conjugating a verb correctly or if I'm even using some new grammar point correctly. Another little peeve of mine is how the reading of new kanji isn't given okurigana (hiragana reading of the kanji) when the kanji/word is introduced in a passage. It really gets tiring trying to flip back and forth between the vocab list and the sentence I'm currently reading.

Here, have some crazy English to ease the pain of reading about my classes

Besides general complaints about Tobira, the one huge problem I have with this semester is how we do the homework and learn the grammar for a chapter before we actually study the material in class. I feel like I'm not learning the material as well as I should be because there isn't really homework for me to practice the new grammar points on. For me, it just makes everything take a bit longer to actually sink in (if it ever does sink in). However, I do like how the kanji and vocab are now combined for our quizzes, which definitely helps me keep on track with both (last semester they were separate quizzes and I had the problem of forgetting everything promptly afterwards).

The awkward English continues. 

To continue on this general chain of rambling, we just finished writing these terrible speeches (terrible in my case, wonderful and skilled in other cases) that were supposed to be 3-4 minutes long. Apparently this translates to 1.5 - 2.5 pages typed up, but almost everyone went over the time limit. I chose my topic on traditional ink painting. Not the most interesting of subjects, and certainly not the easiest to write about using the limited vocabulary that we have learned thus far. Other people chose topics that were much cooler than mine, such as group dating, Japanese variety shows, and otaku culture. It was definitely fun to listen to everyone's speeches (with the added bonus of no class!!!!), but memorizing the speech was...not fun. And I didn't even manage to memorize it all. I'm definitely happy to be done with this, and I surprised myself a bit at how much better I could articulate myself when writing the speech.

Me too, t-shirt, me too.

We also just started reading a Japanese folk tale called Momotaro based on a boy who was born in a giant peach. Yep. Giant peach. So that is great fun, and there are plenty of pictures (always a plus). Class right now feels like it gets longer and longer, and even though we are learning and reading about plenty of fun things, my heart is just not in it anymore. I need a break. A long, long, break. With plenty of sleeping and lazing about and not worrying about a quiz or homework or class or debates or speeches. I am very burnt out. At least there's only one more week to power through! (Ohgodthere'sonlyonemoreweekleftintheprogramIdon'twanttoleaveJapanatall)

Words cannot express how much I wanted these chicks...

Or these gigantic fluffy rabbits

I feel like the end of this program has come on far, far too quickly. There are so many things that I want to do and so many new, amazing places that I am just discovering now. I'm going to miss so many things so much. Bleargh. Oh well, back to homework and back to studying! Thank goodness there's a long weekend coming up.

Thanks for reading and DFTBA!