{"id":387,"date":"2010-12-07T12:47:39","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T03:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/life-in-japan\/life-in-japan\/?p=387"},"modified":"2011-04-25T00:26:21","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T15:26:21","slug":"what-have-i-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/?p=387","title":{"rendered":"What have I done..?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh. My. God. Remember when I said I made copies of the past three years of grad school entrance exams? I just looked through them today, and have discovered that while I’m a little better off than I first imagined (I only have to write about two<\/strong> subjects out of Education, Linguistics, and Culture, not all three. Seeing as I know nothing of pedagogy, this is a godsend), I’ve also learned that the next 2 months are going to be somewhere between a living hell and hell on earth. An observant reader may note that these two things are exactly the same. Trust me; that’s intentional.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I have a strong background in Japanese culture and history (it was<\/em> my major after all), but some of the questions are so obscure that Japanese people have never heard of them. I also have a good backing of linguistics (had linguist friends and took enough classes for a minor in university, but never pursued it), so that I’m at least somewhat okay for. But, there’s the added bonus that in the last 3 years worth of exams (2 exams a year), I’ve never seen any questions repeated. So.. what do I study? If I study what’s presented, I already know that it won’t be on the test. But therein lies the problem.<\/p>\n

As I discussed with BFF Midori today, by going through the questions of yesteryear, I can identify what I don’t know (and remedy that). That’s no problem. I’ve got 2 months, no hobbies, time to kill, and an unreasonable determination to do my best. Good, good. Knowing what you don’t know is half the battle. But the problem is, I don’t know what I don’t know<\/strong><\/em>. By its very nature, that is the most dangerous and<\/strong> most pressing issue. This is also why 16 year olds annoy everyone (and I realize I was much the same way–probably still am): they are blissfully unaware of how much they don’t know (which is pretty much everything). But I digress.<\/p>\n

I’m guessing the best strategy is to study what I know that I don’t know, and pray that by sheer osmosis I’ll pick up other stuff along the way. I have 50 topics to research, times 3. So that’s 150 things (at least) that I need to learn and read up on. I imagine there will be recurring topics in all of those, which should somewhat alleviate this unknown unknowns<\/em> problem. Maybe.<\/p>\n

So! Need to buy some books on linguistics in Japanese (so I can learn the technical vocabulary that I only know the English terms for), and start spending hours everyday on the Japanese wikipedia. Not the best of resources, but I’ve got less than 2 months to learn an BA degree worth of linguistics in Japanese<\/em>. We’ll learn to make do.<\/p>\n

Also thinking of getting an iPad. Though I’m opposed to spending money now (every $1 I spend now is food I don’t have later as a starving college student) and I need to sign on for a 2 year contract, the iPad is free with contract right now, and it’d help for my studying for the next two months. I need to get out of my house to study, but I also need internet access. Right now, these things are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s just what’s going on today. In other (good?) news, I’ll be on TV for the first time tomorrow. Will be appearing in a weekly English program for the next 6 months. It’s stupid, short, and made for kids, but I’ll do my best to get a copy of it and put it on YouTube.<\/p>\n

All right.. need to exercise and get some rest. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh. My. God. Remember when I said I made copies of the past three years of grad school entrance exams? I just looked through them today, and have discovered that while I’m a little better off than I first imagined (I only have to write about two subjects out of Education, Linguistics, and Culture, not all three. Seeing as I know nothing of pedagogy, this is a godsend), I’ve also learned that the next 2 months are going to be somewhere between a living hell and hell on earth. An observant reader may note that these two things are . . . → Read More: What have I done..?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":861,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}