#29

So uni...
Fuck loads to go through since I haven't updated this in forever so will through throw this in several sections: course, people and friends.

Course

• 1st term of Japanese has been really easy.

• TESOL isn't as easy cos of there's been two essays already and my grammar is atrocious which I know about.

• ACADEMIC READING AND WRITING - A.K.A PIECE OF SHIT. omg I seriously need to behead the person that thought of this. The whole purpose of this module is to show students how to write "academically" cos a lot of students at uni don't know how to. tbh, if you don't know by this stage - you fucked.anyways, it's only for another few weeks after I go back to uni and then it can piss off. HOWEVER, we have to produce a portfolio with a range of tasks to prove that we can. One of the tasks is to write a fucking essay. oh no, not on anything we want, cos y'know it might not motivate us, but on whether not studying a degree in a place where it has a different language, culture is an act of great madness of great courage - THE BEST FUCKING ESSAY TITLE EVER!!!!

• In TESOL, we obviously have teach people so to prepare us last term, we got to teach the whole class about something (usually a fixed topic but we got to choose anything cos the lecturers are awesome) - I chose 'how to draw a panda' and a general overview of Starcraft II (got obsessed in it during the Summer, many thanks to my bro).

People

omg people in my class...

• First off, the TESOL class is comprised of everyone who's doing TESOL+Japanese with the exception of one guy who's doing Arabic+TESOL and a woman who's doing French+TESOL. She's only in one of the two lessons we have due to convenience for her. Majority of them, I have to face in my Japanese class - I hate most of them.

• There's ~20 in the class, apparently the biggest one out of the two 1st year classes.

• I like about 7 people in the TESOL class and maybe 3 more in Japanese class?

• The reason is because the rest are a fucking whiniest as fuck bastards that obviously haven;t read the course content when looking at UCAS/uni website.

• Like for instance, the Japanese class. I'm in the lowest group (which was the group where no-one had any experience with the language. I put myself there in case I ended up somewhere too high level.

• If I did put how much of the language I know, I would be put in A cos there isn't any difference between B and C tbh. and a friend (will get to them in a moment) is in A and it sounds scary as fuck.

• B and C are taught by the same person (surname Kasza) who's a non-native but she's amazing. She's Polish, know French, English and Japanese fluently (and obv Polish) - amazing. I mean her Dad is more amazing (he's head of the Asian Studies Department) - Polish, French, English, Japanese, Korean (North Korean dialect, mind you), German and probably some other ones he's yet to show us.

• A is taught by a native who sounds scary as fuck (tbh, most of the natives sound scary as fuck), Watanabe. It's like rapid-fire questions. The class is about a whole chapter ahead of B and C and 3 chapters of Kanji ahead so I like C - up to a point.

• so people of my Japanese class. It's like the typical weeaboos packed together. Like seriously, it's as if most of them are really there so that they can watch anime without subtitles

• People complain about everything. One is how quick we go through the book (nearly halfway the book and we've still got 2 more terms). Uhm, yes, we do that, but you're only in 3 days max. for uni. There's something called self-study. 4 hours that are timetabled and an option hour you can go to. So how many hours does that leave you throughout the week?

• KANJI. omg, cannot believe how worked up I get when people complain about this. It's like 'URGH Y DO WE HAF 2 LEERN KANJI COS IT'S LIKE SOOOOO DIFFIKULT?' uhm, it's part of the language and the foundation of it as well. If you're not gonna learn something like Kanji, people see you like a noob at the language and HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN A JAPANESE TEXT BEFORE OMG? I mean, really? Ok people probably say I have an unfair advantage before I know Cantonese+traditional chinese, but it makes no difference because the Japanese reading is different, there are many more readings in Japanese and usually the meaning is different so fuck off. 

• Majority of the class can't even read the ABSOLUTE basics of Japanese - hiragana and katakana. You've been here more than 10 weeks and you still don't know it? It takes like about a few hours of intense sitting down and studying+remembering it or a few days at a slower pace. People are obviously not putting in the time for this and it just piss me off so much. Like all my friends and I study our arses off, especially one guy who's doing psychology+japanese and he's had so many assignments to do on top of self-studying Japanese and he didn';t even have his Japanese till about 3/4 weeks after ours and he knows all the Kanji we've learnt+more, hiragana and katakana! People in our class are absolute lazy fucks

• Every lesson, there are always reoccuring things that people get wrong. Fucking particles, right there may be a few that are a bit urgh, since the usage is a bit interchangeable and depends on circumstances. but there are some that are for definite. 

• there's one that is used to show something belong to something else, acts as a preposition. e.g my book would be 私の本。私 (watashi) is I. 本 (hon) is book and の (no) is the belonging particle. There's no other (that we've learnt anyway, don't know if there are any else, but pretty sure it's the only one) to denote an object belonging to something but for some reason people have not still grasped this. This particle has been introduced since the first lessons and you still haven't realised this?!

• It's not just 'の', there are some more but I may just explode with rage.

• Readings of hiragana+katakana, omg. Need to punch some people. How can you even get that one wrong when you've just read it correctly just a few syllables ago?!

• There's a guy called Rob a.k.a shiny face (complains about everything and anything. met him on induction day and said he wants to learn japanese so that he can visit Gion and see geishas...) who talks like an stereotypical Italian person trying to speak Japanese. Most of the people in the class - do you think you sound like the teacher (who seriously sounds like a native)? Can you not tell that you aren't pronouncing the words like she is?

I can go on and on about this people but really not worth the time.

Friends

• Made a few friends  and don't wish to mingle to know everyone in both classes.

• All awesome and share same views about our classes and motivation to learn the language is not to watch anime without subtitles and nor is it a platform to get an kawaiiii japanese partner.

Want to write a bit more but been trying to write this for the last 2+ hours and cba now so whoop.

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