(Brief 3: Reflections are unseen in muddy waters)

So, looking back on the work I’ve been doing, I have come up against quite a few hurdles. One of the major issues I’ve had is comparing what we have learnt in class up against the slang I know. The structures are so different. Particles are dropped, words are shortened. Jesus Christ I opened a can of worms, Haha.
The amount of times I have written and erased my work has been ridiculous. There is no way to cohesively join the two, especially at my (low)level of Japanese.
On the plus side however, writing and re-writing has helped me retain a few things here and there, and any writing practice is good. The unfortunate thing about language learning is that if you stop using it, even for a day or two, you forget ALOT.
I’ve certainly been learning that the hard way this semester, vocab is ever disappearing from my brain. It’s actually quite frustrating.
I initially chose to do that because(and I guess it’s the same for everybody with every language) I always seem to remember the slang words and rude terminology. I find it fascinating that that can stay there, and it puzzles me as to why my university studies do not seem to have the same effect. I guess it’s like trying to skip proper education just to kinda “be down” with my Japanese friends or something.
As times speeds towards the end of the semester, I have shifted and changed where my 2nd brief is heading. I haven’t really posted anything to this blog. Still avoiding mahara, my sworn enemy(I’ll get you mahara...). Just writing and re-writing on paper as I need that practice(curse you 3 alphabets!!!). Maybe I should scan some of my handwriting and post that up.
In all honesty, I intended to make this into a dictionary/reference place for my uni work, but it never occured to me how time consuming, and ultimately pointless that would be.
I guess, all in all, that it’s turned into a gigantic mess, that is barely salvageable.
Still, mustn’t dwell on what’s already happened, focus on trying to fix the key problems I had.
Also realizing I cannot really write anything in Japanese as my lecturer will not be able to mark it has become another hurdle I need to try and overcome.
And then I found the answer. Writing about how I had gone about “learning” this semester.
It’s all too perfect. It fell into my hot little hands.
What did I do? I analyzed what I had been up to in the whole studying realm of this here semester 1. It never occured to me how much wasted thoughts were spent dodging the learning in the name of it until I wrote it all down.
So here I am, egg on my face, feeling like I’ve wasted a semester in a way, disappointed at how Japanese has been going for me, only to realize, I had secretly been learning something else this semester. How to sabotage my own learning.
That’s right. My brain tricked me into alot of timewasting habits and destructive studying patterns. I remember thinking to myself “I can’t study here!” while I was home by myself, so I ended up meeting a friend in town to “help me study”. I did anything but. Shame.
But it’s time to break free of all this.
I feel that what I speak of in the other entry(brief 2) is the most important lesson I have learnt this semester and am going to remind myself of these thoughts through the rest of my uni life. I might even keep up entries with this blog, it's been great in many aspects, and infuriating in others, but that's learning!
Hear’s to not robbing ourselves of our own education.