might be just beginning
Since I'm graduating soon, I've been kicking around my options and trying to figure stuff out.
I thought I'd made up my mind to apply for the FALCON program at Cornell University, which is basically Japanese language boot camp, in which particpants have about 50 hours of exposure to the language a week. You're pretty much guaranteed to be fluent by the end of it, and I feel like it would do me a lot of good to have the language hammered into me like that if I'm serious about becoming proficient in it.
I started making preparations to send in the application, which is due March 1st, by asking for letters of recommendations this week. When I talked to one of my Japanese language professors, though, she told me she didn't think FALCON would be a good fit for me because she thinks there's too much emphasis on speaking, and not enough on reading/writing. To demonstrate her point, she showed me the textbooks FALCON uses, and it was all written entirely in romanji. Yikes!! For someone like me, who wants to be able to pass the JLPT, this is rather problematic.
So now I'm sitting here going, "hurf durf" 'cause I don't know what to do. She recommended looking at universities in Japan if I want a good, well-rounded curriculum, but so far I can't find anything that offers more than 20 hours a week. That's more hours than I had at Ritsumeikan (about 14, iirc), and I'd be in Japan, which should offer plenty of opportunties to use what I've studied, but it still pales in comparison to 50.
There are also application deadlines to consider, though I think I've convinced myself that if I decide to go to Japan instead, I'll be looking at starting in April, rather than September or October. I suppose I could work and save money in the meantime, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
(What's sad is that it's actually cheaper for me to continue my Japanese studies in Japan.)
Maybe it's weird for me to want to continue my language studies like this, but I think that's what would make me happiest at this point. I know that, whatever I do career-wise, I'd like for to tie into Asia somehow, and so this seems like the best course of action for now. At the very least, being proficient in the language will make me a more attractive graduate student candidate if/when I do decide to go that route.
There's also independent study, but, quite frankly, I don't think I'm motivated enough to force myself to do 10 hours of study a week, much less 20-50. I wish I knew what else to do, though...
I thought I'd made up my mind to apply for the FALCON program at Cornell University, which is basically Japanese language boot camp, in which particpants have about 50 hours of exposure to the language a week. You're pretty much guaranteed to be fluent by the end of it, and I feel like it would do me a lot of good to have the language hammered into me like that if I'm serious about becoming proficient in it.
I started making preparations to send in the application, which is due March 1st, by asking for letters of recommendations this week. When I talked to one of my Japanese language professors, though, she told me she didn't think FALCON would be a good fit for me because she thinks there's too much emphasis on speaking, and not enough on reading/writing. To demonstrate her point, she showed me the textbooks FALCON uses, and it was all written entirely in romanji. Yikes!! For someone like me, who wants to be able to pass the JLPT, this is rather problematic.
So now I'm sitting here going, "hurf durf" 'cause I don't know what to do. She recommended looking at universities in Japan if I want a good, well-rounded curriculum, but so far I can't find anything that offers more than 20 hours a week. That's more hours than I had at Ritsumeikan (about 14, iirc), and I'd be in Japan, which should offer plenty of opportunties to use what I've studied, but it still pales in comparison to 50.
There are also application deadlines to consider, though I think I've convinced myself that if I decide to go to Japan instead, I'll be looking at starting in April, rather than September or October. I suppose I could work and save money in the meantime, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
(What's sad is that it's actually cheaper for me to continue my Japanese studies in Japan.)
Maybe it's weird for me to want to continue my language studies like this, but I think that's what would make me happiest at this point. I know that, whatever I do career-wise, I'd like for to tie into Asia somehow, and so this seems like the best course of action for now. At the very least, being proficient in the language will make me a more attractive graduate student candidate if/when I do decide to go that route.
There's also independent study, but, quite frankly, I don't think I'm motivated enough to force myself to do 10 hours of study a week, much less 20-50. I wish I knew what else to do, though...