I am finally done with my masters program. Finally! I turned in my masters thesis on Friday. I was exulted as I handed the bound 87 page paper in.
I kind of snuck something in there, as an almost easter egg for my thesis.
I have every letter from A to Z in my works cited section. I managed to somehow cite something from every single letter. I had to look up citations just for V and X... maybe that was cheating a little bit, but I legitimately worked those in too.
I am so pleased with myself, it's silly. Almost more pleased than actually having finished.
It's weird being finished. Wonderful, but kind of weird. As I was turning it in, it felt like there was so much more I could have done on it. But there's little sense in worrying about that now.
I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.
A lot of people are asking what I'm planning on doing afterwards. I fully intend on getting a job, but I don't really know what yet. I don't really know where any of my paths lead right now, but I do know one thing. All my paths lead forward. I mean, I'm going to get a job. I'm going to apply to a bunch of different places. I have no one path that's yelling my name out right now. For all I know, one of them could lead to a job in neuroscience or something. That'd be super fun. But it might also lead somewhere else. And that's the exciting part about where I am right now. I don't know where I'm going. It's kind of scary, but at the same time, kind of exciting. I know wherever I end up, I'll be able to make the best of things, and be able to make do. It's a matter of how fast I'll get to where I'm going, and what kind of sites I see along the way I suppose.
Someone jokingly, when I responded that I didn't have anywhere specific in mind (I meant mostly anywhere that would hire me, for the time being) that I didn't really have a game plan (which kind of characterizes my life right now), asked if anywhere meant McDonald's. I got super pissed. I snapped, associating it with all the "lolz non-STEM" kind of jokes people make about how we won't be able to find jobs and stuff. And this person counted himself as my friend, and I was kind of upset that he made that because we don't really have that kind of relationship.
But I was thinking, it would actually be kind of interesting to work for them in like, a waste division or something. Where you figure out how to deal with the waste from their distribution, packing, etc, or deal with making their food healthier or partnering with local communities. Because I think McDonald's has the potential to make a large impact, so just because it's fast food that the higher class people distain for organic and non-GMO slow food, doesn't mean that we should completely write it off.
Anyways, I'm getting rambley. I only meant to talk about graduating for realsies this time, and how I can finally tell people that yes, I'm 100% done now and I've finally graduated and I'm moving on to the next part of my life. (Unemployment lolololjk, I'm going to have a kickass job somewhere even if I don't know where that is yet)
Showing posts with label stanford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stanford. Show all posts
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Dear Japanese
Dear Japanese,
I have a love/hate relationship with you. I'd say it's not you, it's me, but to be honest, I think it's a little bit of you too.
I love that I can communicate to people in a place I've come to love, and that when I go back it feels like I haven't been away for so long, and that mostly I'm going back home.
I hate that you're difficult to learn, but not just because you're difficult to learn. Maybe I'm just complaining too much, but I'm in 4th year Japanese right now, and yet, I wouldn't call myself anywhere near fluent, and it's practically killing me, this Japanese class. So much of my time goes to studying you, and yet, I'm not studying you the right way or something, because I still struggle to understand the basics of what you're trying to tell me in the articles I'm reading. I hate that it's treated like any other language, when seriously, it takes something like 10 years to master (or so I'm told).
I love the way you sound, and that one of my strong points is that I can speak with only a slight accent. But I don't like the way you expect my Japanese to be perfect because of that (it's not! Far from it).
I know it's part my fault; I should immerse myself in more Japanese (I should be writing this in Japanese!) if I want to get better while I'm living outside of Japan. I should read the news more. Use subtitles less. I swear I'm trying. But it's hard to read the news when reading the articles for class takes a monumental effort of god to just get through once with a barebones understanding of meaning. Being able to recall the following class what the paragraph was about too, is nigh impossible when I'm struggling to remember the words.
Apparently, I just need to sit down and memorize vocabulary. Getting definitions in Japanese doesn't help when I have to look up the words used to define each word (doubling the amount of time it takes to understand what's going on). Also I've noticed a trend to use some of the same words (or to use the adjective form of a noun) to define things... which is incredibly unhelpful.
I also hate that sometimes, when I talk in class, I can't help but feel like the dumbest student of Japanese, like I should be back in Japanese one. And maybe I should be, but I definitely am better than starting off in first year.
I'm sorry I'm not sorry I can't remember some of the grammar structures I learned over 7 years ago (holy cow). I'm sorry I'm not sorry I don't know enough vocab to be caught up with the class.
Going to Japan was the absolute best thing for my Japanese; it restored my confidence in speaking, and it was surprising how much easier it was to speak when I wasn't worrying all the time about using the correct grammar, because who cared as long as I got my point across (that's not to say that grammar was completely unimportant, just that things flowed way easier when I stopped thinking so hard).
One of the important things I learned when I was there was from my Aunt, who told me that when she asked me "what?" it wasn't that she had misunderstood me, or didn't understand what I was saying. It was that she couldn't hear me properly, and that I needed to speak louder. Speak with more confidence. Speaking loudly = speaking with confidence, which is pretty true I suppose. That's why when you mumble, you get yelled at because a) nobody can hear you and b) it sounds like you don't really know what you're doing because you're not projecting confidence in saying the things you want to say.
Really, it's like that no matter what language you learn. The more confidence you have in speaking, the better you're going to sound and the faster (I think) you learn. Confidence was always something we were trying to get the students to cultivate by not worrying so much about their mistakes, and actually trying really hard to understand what they were saying.
I wish I was better at Japanese. One of my goals had been to get my japanese to the interpreter level, where you basically know everything and anything about vocabulary and grammar. That was probably a little ambitious of me, especially being outside of Japan. I wish I had more time to devote to Japanese, and I wish I found that perfect way to study this language of area I've come to really love. Learning this language has taught me so much, and shown me so many different things.
I think I've just needed to realize that learning 4th year Japanese is NOTHING like learning 3rd year Japanese. 4th year is hard. You're studying the academic equivalent of it. Even English words like that are hard and require vocab tests in high school and stuff.
I realize I might have made a mistake, taking fourth year Japanese. It seemed like the natural thing to do at the time. But I think I work best when I can go at a slightly slower speed (Stanford is seriously too fast and the knowledge never sinks deep enough for me to remember it long term). But what's done is done. It's not like I can quit now, though admittedly, there have been several days where I've been ready to just throw up my hands and throw in the whole towel to grad school (it's complicated, since my funding is tied to my language learning class, so quitting Japanese is kind of like saying hi I don't want your money here take it back) because of this one class. It's disheartening, to feel so stupid and to sit through class, knowing that you prepared maybe not as much as you could have, but as much as you could have given the time constraints on your life and the fact that you have other classes and need to take sanity breaks and write ridiculously long blog posts and that no, you shouldn't be working on Japanese for 4 to 5+ hours daily.
Anyways, here's my promise to you, Japanese. I won't give up on you, if you don't give up on me. Please don't give up on me, no matter how stupid I might seem at the moment, and even though it might seem like I'll never actually become fluent. I've always hated how, when I said I was interested in learning how to play the violin, the first thing everyone has ever said was "oh you're too old" meaning it was something out of my range and impossible for me to even learn how to play. Similarly, people (especially Japanese people) constantly say, "Japanese is really hard" in the sense that well, maybe you'll never master it. Despite the ridiculously long rant here about how hard Japanese is, I hate when people say that because it's always said in the context of "well you probably won't master it but it's okay because it's hard" which, sure, makes it more difficult (hence why I'm complaining) but surely if you persevere, even a foreigner can learn Japanese well, right?
Right?
Love,
Jess
I have a love/hate relationship with you. I'd say it's not you, it's me, but to be honest, I think it's a little bit of you too.
I love that I can communicate to people in a place I've come to love, and that when I go back it feels like I haven't been away for so long, and that mostly I'm going back home.
I hate that you're difficult to learn, but not just because you're difficult to learn. Maybe I'm just complaining too much, but I'm in 4th year Japanese right now, and yet, I wouldn't call myself anywhere near fluent, and it's practically killing me, this Japanese class. So much of my time goes to studying you, and yet, I'm not studying you the right way or something, because I still struggle to understand the basics of what you're trying to tell me in the articles I'm reading. I hate that it's treated like any other language, when seriously, it takes something like 10 years to master (or so I'm told).
I love the way you sound, and that one of my strong points is that I can speak with only a slight accent. But I don't like the way you expect my Japanese to be perfect because of that (it's not! Far from it).
I know it's part my fault; I should immerse myself in more Japanese (I should be writing this in Japanese!) if I want to get better while I'm living outside of Japan. I should read the news more. Use subtitles less. I swear I'm trying. But it's hard to read the news when reading the articles for class takes a monumental effort of god to just get through once with a barebones understanding of meaning. Being able to recall the following class what the paragraph was about too, is nigh impossible when I'm struggling to remember the words.
Apparently, I just need to sit down and memorize vocabulary. Getting definitions in Japanese doesn't help when I have to look up the words used to define each word (doubling the amount of time it takes to understand what's going on). Also I've noticed a trend to use some of the same words (or to use the adjective form of a noun) to define things... which is incredibly unhelpful.
I also hate that sometimes, when I talk in class, I can't help but feel like the dumbest student of Japanese, like I should be back in Japanese one. And maybe I should be, but I definitely am better than starting off in first year.
I'm sorry I'm not sorry I can't remember some of the grammar structures I learned over 7 years ago (holy cow). I'm sorry I'm not sorry I don't know enough vocab to be caught up with the class.
Going to Japan was the absolute best thing for my Japanese; it restored my confidence in speaking, and it was surprising how much easier it was to speak when I wasn't worrying all the time about using the correct grammar, because who cared as long as I got my point across (that's not to say that grammar was completely unimportant, just that things flowed way easier when I stopped thinking so hard).
One of the important things I learned when I was there was from my Aunt, who told me that when she asked me "what?" it wasn't that she had misunderstood me, or didn't understand what I was saying. It was that she couldn't hear me properly, and that I needed to speak louder. Speak with more confidence. Speaking loudly = speaking with confidence, which is pretty true I suppose. That's why when you mumble, you get yelled at because a) nobody can hear you and b) it sounds like you don't really know what you're doing because you're not projecting confidence in saying the things you want to say.
Really, it's like that no matter what language you learn. The more confidence you have in speaking, the better you're going to sound and the faster (I think) you learn. Confidence was always something we were trying to get the students to cultivate by not worrying so much about their mistakes, and actually trying really hard to understand what they were saying.
I wish I was better at Japanese. One of my goals had been to get my japanese to the interpreter level, where you basically know everything and anything about vocabulary and grammar. That was probably a little ambitious of me, especially being outside of Japan. I wish I had more time to devote to Japanese, and I wish I found that perfect way to study this language of area I've come to really love. Learning this language has taught me so much, and shown me so many different things.
I think I've just needed to realize that learning 4th year Japanese is NOTHING like learning 3rd year Japanese. 4th year is hard. You're studying the academic equivalent of it. Even English words like that are hard and require vocab tests in high school and stuff.
I realize I might have made a mistake, taking fourth year Japanese. It seemed like the natural thing to do at the time. But I think I work best when I can go at a slightly slower speed (Stanford is seriously too fast and the knowledge never sinks deep enough for me to remember it long term). But what's done is done. It's not like I can quit now, though admittedly, there have been several days where I've been ready to just throw up my hands and throw in the whole towel to grad school (it's complicated, since my funding is tied to my language learning class, so quitting Japanese is kind of like saying hi I don't want your money here take it back) because of this one class. It's disheartening, to feel so stupid and to sit through class, knowing that you prepared maybe not as much as you could have, but as much as you could have given the time constraints on your life and the fact that you have other classes and need to take sanity breaks and write ridiculously long blog posts and that no, you shouldn't be working on Japanese for 4 to 5+ hours daily.
Anyways, here's my promise to you, Japanese. I won't give up on you, if you don't give up on me. Please don't give up on me, no matter how stupid I might seem at the moment, and even though it might seem like I'll never actually become fluent. I've always hated how, when I said I was interested in learning how to play the violin, the first thing everyone has ever said was "oh you're too old" meaning it was something out of my range and impossible for me to even learn how to play. Similarly, people (especially Japanese people) constantly say, "Japanese is really hard" in the sense that well, maybe you'll never master it. Despite the ridiculously long rant here about how hard Japanese is, I hate when people say that because it's always said in the context of "well you probably won't master it but it's okay because it's hard" which, sure, makes it more difficult (hence why I'm complaining) but surely if you persevere, even a foreigner can learn Japanese well, right?
Right?
Love,
Jess
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Tourists at Stanford
One of the most surprising and different things about going to Stanford are the sheer number of tourists who visit the campus on a daily basis. This number, unsurprisingly, increases during the summer. I'm not talking about "knows someone who goes to Stanford so we're touring the campus since we're visiting them" or "prospective high school student who is probably not a senior but is probably a freshman, sophomore, or junior" or even "parents of a prospective student."
Oh no. I'm talking about literal tour buses (those big huge ones with a toilet in the back and cushy chairs) that arrive on campus with tour guides who wave around little flags and whatnot. A lot of them (though not all) are Asian (specifically Chinese). They walk around campus, which is kind of annoying since it's already crowded with campers for the summer and whatnot, but whatever, that's fine. They visit the big spots around campus like Hoover Tower, the Oval, Cantor Arts Center (which is admittedly pretty awesome), and Memorial Church (which I have NOT been to yet, though to be fair, I tried to go with a friend and it was CLOSED probably because someone was having a wedding in there, so I did try at least...). That's fine, whatever, those are awesome places around campus to go and among the "must see" kind of spots. Like, if you only had a limited amount of time to spend on campus, those places are the big ones. The cactus garden, masoleum, and angel of grief are really awesome, but they're also really far.
So I don't mind people going around and being tourists and looking at those things. Or well, I only get mildly annoyed when they block the entire road and make it impossible to bike through or around.
There is one thing though, that the tourists do that piss me off to no end though. And, I will say, it's primarily the Chinese tourists that do this (though I think there's a partial reason for this), which does not help the image of Chinese tourists. Our classroom is right next to memorial church. Tourists will walk by and glance into our classroom since we have the windows open for ventilation, as it can get pretty stuffy in the classroom (and it lacks an ac). What makes me want to kill someone though, is when the tourists actually stare into our classroom, and get their face super obviously close to the window and poke their head in. Um, hello? We are obviously in class. Also? WE CAN TOTALLY SEE YOU. There's no one way mirror, so we can see that you're staring at us and at our classroom and it's really really distracting and disturbing.
Like really really distracting. I can't sit on the whiteboard side of the classroom because I would seriously, probably get super pissed if I sat there since that side is the one that you can see from the window really well.
That's not even the worst of it either.
So when they stare, I just get really really annoyed. However, some tourists have pulled out cameras and taken pictures of us in our classroom while staring at us through the small gap in the window. What. The. Hell. Is wrong with these people. What corner of the planet is it okay to take pictures of students in a classroom as they're watching you without even asking if it's okay? SERIOUSLY. I mean, I think most cultures would find it rude if you went up in their home country, less than ten feet away from them, and take their damn picture while pretending like they couldn't see you.
Dear Chinese tourists: this is not okay. Dear other tourists: this is still not okay, no matter if you're in a different country or not.
I swear to god, if I catch someone doing that, there are two things that may or may not happen. One, I might pull out my phone and take a picture of them. This, however, disrupts the class. Two, I might get up, lose it a little bit, and tell the person to stop taking pictures because it's EFFING RUDE AND I DON'T WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN. Who takes pictures of students anyways? I mean, we're not exactly kids any more but still. It makes me feel like I'm on display in a little box; an uncomfortable feeling.
Though speaking of taking pictures of kids, maybe it is a cultural thing after all. There's a student in our class who's from China, and we were talking about how cute Japanese elementary school kids are and stuff, and somehow we were talking about them walking home and stuff and the Chinese guy casually mentioned that he would/wanted to take a picture of the elementary school kids, and justified this by saying that of course he would ask the child first.
We pointed out to him that a) they're still kids so asking them doesn't really do much b) he's a stranger and c) he's a man taking pictures with little kids and oh yeah, d) society kind of frowns upon this both in the US and in Japan because these kind of actions are things that pedophiles do. I mean, I will not disagree that those kids are really freaking cute, but to go up and ask them to be in a picture with you? SUPER SHADY. You never know with intent, and it's not the same as going up to someone with a dog and asking them if you can pet it (though I have seen times when there's a cute kid and there might be a comment of "you're kid's cute" but I feel like people generally don't ask to hold the baby, and they certainly don't go over and pick up the small child. Those kind of things get you arrested.
On a more random note, we had a pretty cool cultural event on friday. We did tea ceremony, which was super interesting to do though I think I got too embarrassed by my Japanese slash the woman didn't understand what I wanted to do slash I didn't think about passing my cup to the other person to pour slash I used the wrong form to ask and then lost confidence but whatever. Sadly though, the lunch place we were going to get bento boxes from was closed for renovation, so we had to order from a different place. I'm kind of sad now that we canceled that one culture day so people didn't have to come in and commute and blah blah. That cost me excellent free food that we missed out on two weeks in a row. But I guess I shouldn't complain, since free food is free food... but they had good tasting hamachi. Sigh.
Only two more weeks of classes. If that tourist peeping business happens again, I'm requesting to change classrooms. :x
Oh no. I'm talking about literal tour buses (those big huge ones with a toilet in the back and cushy chairs) that arrive on campus with tour guides who wave around little flags and whatnot. A lot of them (though not all) are Asian (specifically Chinese). They walk around campus, which is kind of annoying since it's already crowded with campers for the summer and whatnot, but whatever, that's fine. They visit the big spots around campus like Hoover Tower, the Oval, Cantor Arts Center (which is admittedly pretty awesome), and Memorial Church (which I have NOT been to yet, though to be fair, I tried to go with a friend and it was CLOSED probably because someone was having a wedding in there, so I did try at least...). That's fine, whatever, those are awesome places around campus to go and among the "must see" kind of spots. Like, if you only had a limited amount of time to spend on campus, those places are the big ones. The cactus garden, masoleum, and angel of grief are really awesome, but they're also really far.
So I don't mind people going around and being tourists and looking at those things. Or well, I only get mildly annoyed when they block the entire road and make it impossible to bike through or around.
There is one thing though, that the tourists do that piss me off to no end though. And, I will say, it's primarily the Chinese tourists that do this (though I think there's a partial reason for this), which does not help the image of Chinese tourists. Our classroom is right next to memorial church. Tourists will walk by and glance into our classroom since we have the windows open for ventilation, as it can get pretty stuffy in the classroom (and it lacks an ac). What makes me want to kill someone though, is when the tourists actually stare into our classroom, and get their face super obviously close to the window and poke their head in. Um, hello? We are obviously in class. Also? WE CAN TOTALLY SEE YOU. There's no one way mirror, so we can see that you're staring at us and at our classroom and it's really really distracting and disturbing.
Like really really distracting. I can't sit on the whiteboard side of the classroom because I would seriously, probably get super pissed if I sat there since that side is the one that you can see from the window really well.
That's not even the worst of it either.
So when they stare, I just get really really annoyed. However, some tourists have pulled out cameras and taken pictures of us in our classroom while staring at us through the small gap in the window. What. The. Hell. Is wrong with these people. What corner of the planet is it okay to take pictures of students in a classroom as they're watching you without even asking if it's okay? SERIOUSLY. I mean, I think most cultures would find it rude if you went up in their home country, less than ten feet away from them, and take their damn picture while pretending like they couldn't see you.
Dear Chinese tourists: this is not okay. Dear other tourists: this is still not okay, no matter if you're in a different country or not.
I swear to god, if I catch someone doing that, there are two things that may or may not happen. One, I might pull out my phone and take a picture of them. This, however, disrupts the class. Two, I might get up, lose it a little bit, and tell the person to stop taking pictures because it's EFFING RUDE AND I DON'T WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN. Who takes pictures of students anyways? I mean, we're not exactly kids any more but still. It makes me feel like I'm on display in a little box; an uncomfortable feeling.
Though speaking of taking pictures of kids, maybe it is a cultural thing after all. There's a student in our class who's from China, and we were talking about how cute Japanese elementary school kids are and stuff, and somehow we were talking about them walking home and stuff and the Chinese guy casually mentioned that he would/wanted to take a picture of the elementary school kids, and justified this by saying that of course he would ask the child first.
We pointed out to him that a) they're still kids so asking them doesn't really do much b) he's a stranger and c) he's a man taking pictures with little kids and oh yeah, d) society kind of frowns upon this both in the US and in Japan because these kind of actions are things that pedophiles do. I mean, I will not disagree that those kids are really freaking cute, but to go up and ask them to be in a picture with you? SUPER SHADY. You never know with intent, and it's not the same as going up to someone with a dog and asking them if you can pet it (though I have seen times when there's a cute kid and there might be a comment of "you're kid's cute" but I feel like people generally don't ask to hold the baby, and they certainly don't go over and pick up the small child. Those kind of things get you arrested.
On a more random note, we had a pretty cool cultural event on friday. We did tea ceremony, which was super interesting to do though I think I got too embarrassed by my Japanese slash the woman didn't understand what I wanted to do slash I didn't think about passing my cup to the other person to pour slash I used the wrong form to ask and then lost confidence but whatever. Sadly though, the lunch place we were going to get bento boxes from was closed for renovation, so we had to order from a different place. I'm kind of sad now that we canceled that one culture day so people didn't have to come in and commute and blah blah. That cost me excellent free food that we missed out on two weeks in a row. But I guess I shouldn't complain, since free food is free food... but they had good tasting hamachi. Sigh.
Only two more weeks of classes. If that tourist peeping business happens again, I'm requesting to change classrooms. :x
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)