class

Well this week my Japanese language courses began. 2 weeks ago I took a placement exam that would determine which levels of classes I would be placed in and this past Tuesday was judgment day.

Quick background, there are 3 levels of classes, basic, intermediate, and advanced. The Japanese interpretations of intermediate and advanced are very skewed though, if you are advanced, you are basically fluent. Needless to say I was registered for the intermediate classes, 5 of them.

but man what an absolute cluster bomb of stupidity it was. Instead of emailing everyone their respective classes and such, they simply posted all of the classes and their class lists on the wall in the international student center. They told all the students they would post this on Tuesday morning.

So 8:30, I'm walking into the student center and there is just an absolute crowd of people. Everyone is trying to get closer to 1 wall, that has all the information, and write down their classes. Because not only is your name written there, the time, days of the week, and location of the class is written there as well. So you have to write down all of that, for each class. BUT WAIT, lets say you wanted to switch classes, then you would have to go back and try to find the class you wanted to switch in to, and then once again fight your way to the front to do it all again. What a mess.
A week later I am actually still in the process of switching one of my classes, so needless to say it has been a bit frustrating. From their point of view they have students from all different countries of all different skills levels coming here, and they need to figure out where to put everyone. From out point of view, we take a test, and get thrown into classes not really knowing what they are all about. So I feel kind of sorry for the teachers that have to go through these first 2 weeks of re-arranging class rooms and schedules and the like, but they could also have simply emailed the information to everyone and saved some time and paper.
I also met my advisor last week, he is an economic history professor here, and he has a “zemi” every Monday from 2:45…to….6!! yay. So he says that he wants me to come to his zemi (btw zemi is derived from some german word, but it’s not seminar. Anywho, he tells me that he wants me to come and attend his class. Yay. I get to sit in a classroom with 20 other students, while I can’t understand anything, and listen to them talk to Meiji Era railroads and media for more than 3 hours.
There is an upside, I get to sit around and listen to the language and make a couple of new friends and the like. I’ve been assigned a tutor as well that is supposed to help me get through some of the material and such, but needless to say my Mondays have been utterly destroyed.
My total class load is 19.5 hours. Is that a lot? I was talking to one of my friends at OSU and he is taking 20 credit hours at OSU and he said it is only 14 hours of classes per week, and I looked at the schedule that I would have had this quarter, and I would have only been in class around 12 hours per week. Argh. So I am in class a lot, have a lot of homework, and then soccer club. Yay.
Also the textbook that I used to study with at Ohio State. Really not that great.