Placement Day

WARNING: This post also has NO PHOTOS >_< There just wasn't anything I felt inclined to photograph today... sorry friends!

Today was the other big day: placement test results day! We left for Sophia around 12:30 and nervously made our way to the Liberal Arts office. This week, however, is club week! All the school clubs and circles are out advertising their clubs and trying to recruit members! It was super crowded and it took some effort to get through everyone. We decided to come back to look at all that later so we could make it to the advising sessions at 2:00 if we needed them, and boy did we need them.

The sannin all signed up for Intensive Japanese, which is 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, and we had been shooting for level 2 or 3 out of 3 in that section. Greg got level 2, Jen got level 3, and I got... JAPN 321 Advanced Japanese in the regular twice a week section?? That can't be right.. I didn't even test in the regular testing room! Something was amiss, so after some confusion on where I needed to go and who I needed to talk to, I ended up in line to speak with the adviser for that class.

Jeannette and Hunter both met with her before me vying for different spots than the ones they were assigned, but neither prevailed. I was getting pretty nervous at this point! One good aspect was that while standing in line, I met a nice girl named Tuuli (I think that was the spelling I saw on her envelope) who was from Estonia but had done her entire undergrad in Japan! She was having a tough time because she had missed the placement test, and by the time Sophia could get things together to give her a make-up exam and get her placed, it was going to be awfully late after classes would have already started. I hope everything worked out for her!

I entered the office with my best "Shitsureishimasu" (standard phrase when you enter a professor's office, basically means "sorry to bother you") and proceeded to tell her how I had taken the intensive test, but been placed in the regular classes, and in the advanced class of those. She looked at the results and said that I had placed higher than the intensive classes, so that's why I was in the advanced class. This might not have troubled me so much if the advanced class was more than four credits and more than twice a week. I told her that I didn't think this could be right, or that this class was right for me because I had mostly guessed on the intermediate portion of the exam and I didn't feel like I was at that level. She kept insisting that my scores were quite good, and that since that's what the test had said, I should take that level, so I asked her what textbook the course used. She got it out for me and I looked through it for a bit. I think I found a total of 10 English words in a whole chapter.... this definitely was not the class for me! Meanwhile, I noticed that she was staring at my folder inquisitively, and mumbling something to herself. After a few moments she realized that the class on printed on my sheet did not actually match up with the results of my test!! Instead, she decided I should have been placed in Japanese 212, which would let me be in the Intensive equivalent, Intensive level 3, so she sent me off to that professor's office.

At that point I was starting to get pretty stressed about the whole thing. Ending up in a regular class for 212 was just about as bad as being in the advanced class. I had been counting on being in intensive for the learning experience and the credits. I came to Japan to learn Japanese, not to take more culture classes that I can take at UVa. I kept hearing from people in the hallway that they were being turned down from the intensive classes because they were full, and all I could think was that the professor was going to tell me that yeah, there had been a mistake, but the classes were full now so too bad. I tried to just pray that things would work out and God would work things out the way he wanted and that I'd be able to accept it.

Luckily, the professor was very nice and seemed to understand fairly quickly what had happened and that there had been a mistake. It was a great feeling to hear her say she would put me into the intensive class ( "shimashou" has never sounded so sweet!)!! She didn't let me out, however, without a good talking to about how it might be pretty difficult in level 3, and how I didn't know very many kanji and those are important, and how study time is important. I tried to seem as eager and studious as I could with my "hai"s and "mochiron"s and she eventually let me leave on the promise that she would get me into Intensive 280! Hooray!!

After that mess was all over, we met up with Greg and Hunter in the midst of the club parade and went on to lunch at our favorite local vending machine restaurant where I enjoyed another katsudon. I had been waiting for that thing all afternoon XD Back at Sophia, Greg left us for his meeting with the baseball club, and the remaining three of us went to find a copier to make some copies for Uzuki-san. We also checked out the bookstore while we were there, which really made me want to know enough Japanese to read a novel because they had so many of them! We also turned in our certificates of registered matters to the foreign liaison office, and I got to speak a little bit of good Japanese =)

So far, I haven't really felt the excitement I thought I would about being in Japan and surrounded by the Japanese language. The fun of learning Japanese was the reason I became a Japanese major, and before when I would think about being in Japan, I would get really excited thinking about being surrounded by the language and learning so much. I think the reason I've felt so mellow still is maybe that it's sooo easy to get by in Japan without knowing much Japanese at all. (I know my professors don't want to hear this, haha). We've needed to know the basics+ for some of the more complicated things like alien registration and JJ Club 100 (haha), but for example.. our guesthouse manager, Mr. Uzuki, speaks pretty good English and all the information about the place is in English as well. At the store, you don't really need to know much Japanese, the train system is pretty straightforward, if you just know some katakana you can read a LOT of signs and labels in Japan, and a lot of times workers and other people know at least a little English to help you out.

I think another reason for my lack of excitement has been my lack of schedule. We've been doing a lot of running around, doing this and that, seeing the sights and taking care of school stuff, so whenever we have some downtime, I've pretty much been vegging out. After thinking about classes all day and walking through that bookstore and seeing textbooks, however, I started to get that little feeling of excitement inside again. I wanted to just buy all the study books and kanji books they had and set aside a time each day to work in them. I can never just make myself a schedule arbitrarily though, especially with our daily plans being so erratic all the time, so I'm very very excited and anxious for school to start so I know where I'm going, when I'm going there, when I'm getting up each day, and when I should go to bed. Also, having study goals will be a huge plus for me. As long as I have a clear and concrete goal to strive for, I can work work work towards it!

That's about all that happened today, as the rest of the evening has been spent doing said vegging out. I think tomorrow a few of us are going back to campus for various reasons. Hunter has a friend who is performing in the gospel choir in the morning, which is something I'd be interested in seeing, and Greg wants to see the big band play tomorrow, which is something else I'd be interested in seeing. For me, since I was busy taking care of my placement mishap, I didn't really get a chance to go through the clubs and circles or get many fliers, so I'd like to do that tomorrow. Here's hoping I find the perfect beginner-friendly hip-hop club! =) The club advertising thing also has proven to be a great place to speak Japanese and (sometimes amazing, sometimes HILARIOUS) English with the Japanese students, so I'm looking forward to it!