When it comes to school and homework, I am soooo bored! I knew that college in Japan was easy, but this is almost pathetic. If it weren’t for the language problem, I’d have almost no work. This term, I’m taking Japanese Level 4, Thai Ethnology Studies, and the History of Japan in Asia in the 14th-17th centuries.
Japanese class is pretty cool, but they separated us into smaller groups and now it is all the Keyaki kids minus one: Ellie! They put her in the other class, so now we can’t all talk and practice together. We're watching Totoro, too! That is part of the class: watch and understand the movie Totoro in Japanese. Sounds good to me! Besides that, the Japanese teachers this term seem to be pretty interesting, and one of them is a former Wadaiko player from our club. Since visiting an English class at another nearby college, I've gotten a chance to see how hard teachers try, almost beg for class participation. It made me really pity language teachers, which is why I have been volunteering for more stuff during class this term. And I need the participation grade. And I need to improve my speaking. Okay, so there is a host of reasons and I'm not just doing it out of the ever-flowing kindness of my heart. We can't all be prefect.
As for history, it is pretty much the same course that I took last term with the exact same teacher. That professor complimented my final paper, too. He said, "I recently read a very well done paper on fashion in the 16th century which was able to incorporate images in the reference section of the..." That was my paper! So take that, academia! If it weren't for the two annoying groups of freshmen in that class, it would be pretty good, but these kids drag the professor off on random tangents for DAYS. He knows too much, so whenever they ask an unrelated question, he knows the answer and feels it is his duty as a teacher to tell them. Very sweet, but it takes away from the actual lesson! And they ask about basic, basic stuff! Just let the man lecture, then ask questions at the end!!! We actually had to say straight out that he hadn't spoken about the syllabus for 2 days, and the freshmen got really defensive about it. They should, it is their fault. Besides being a self-proclaimed History Otaku, our professor is also a huge Harry Potter fan, which makes me so happy. He even has the class divided into dormitories and periodically gives 10 points to Griffendor and goes off on all sorts of tangents. The thing about being a history professor is that he can act as a time-traveling-tour guide, “And now let’s jump to the 13th century, but in order to better understand where this name came from, we should visit the 7th century.”
Besides those two easy classes, I have an Ethnology class in Japanese….I might die…probably. Luckily, the teacher takes extreme pity on me, gives me extra readings in English, letting me do my presentations and reports in English. As long as I don’t fail, it should all be fine, but every now and then, I can’t stand it. This class is definitely not a class for people who care about their grades. But I was saved the other day! We had to interview these two Thai students for 1 hour and a half, but thankfully the students wanted to do it in English. Praise heavens!! I had spent the whole day in dread for that interview and was prepared to cry myself to sleep that night, but when I found that I knew more Japanese than the Thai kids, I nearly jumped out of my chair! This makes my life so much easier, there was no way I would have survived if it had been in Japanese. Hopefully I’ll get better as we go on, but…hahah, let’s be reasonable now.
The good thing about have very few classes is that I have more time for fun and random activities. Like what? Rakugo, practices, and traveling!!
No comments:
Post a Comment