In Which I Returned to Foreign Language and Learned Something Else Entirely

I’ll begin this entry by saying something that the average person (in the United States anyway) might already know:  Learning a new language is difficult. 

That isn’t to say that it can’t be done.  However, if you want the best results, you must start young and you must learn by immersion.  I did not start young, but I began to learn Japanese in high school, I’m estimating around 15 years old.  It’s hard to really call it ‘learning’ though, because I simply wrote down a bunch of common beginner’s phrases and would practice saying them to myself out loud.  Somewhere in my old notebooks, there are pages and pages of all the words I knew and could pronounce with relative ease.  I had nothing to really help me except my own willpower, and since it was 2002, the Internet was still awkwardly blossoming, not really sure where to go or how to organize itself.  For my 16^th birthday, I asked for my first dictionary, and the first thing I did was read it cover to cover, marking words that I thought were interesting.  I thought it was funny that the entire entry for the letter ‘P’ on the Japanese side were all loan words from English (piano for piano), or onomatopoeia (pika pika suru – to glisten). 

While it wasn’t completely useless, as I eventually wrote down the phonetic alphabet of Hiragana and could start to recognize the characters on sight, it wasn’t until almost 8 years later that I got the chance to take everything I had taught myself and would put it to the test.  I moved to Okinawa with the rest of my family and stayed for a year.  The jittery happiness I felt for the 14 hour plane ride was something I’ll never forget.  And that happiness was mixed with a strange concoction of fear and nervousness when I began encountering actual Japanese people, something I had never done before.  Suddenly it felt as if those years and years of memorization and singing J-pop and recognizing phrases from different anime were all for naught.  In reality, it was true.  It’s like that with learning anything; if you don’t have direction or a solid goal, nearly anything you learn is going to be a bit… empty.  It’s kind of like wanting to be a lawyer when everything you know about lawyers is based on playing Ace Attorney.  In short, it’s not exactly ideal.

Regardless, I learned maybe 100 times there what I had learned on my own, and not only that, I got to put it to use nearly every day.  That year passed much too quickly and I returned to the States the next summer.  I spent the next 3 years away from the culture and language, and it wasn’t until 2 months ago when I started taking Japanese classes again.  While I don’t regret the decision to do so at all, I got that same jittery panic that once loomed over me back then.  Rightly so, because I realized how much I had lost in that amount of time.  While many phrases aren’t lost to me, I could barely recognize a lot of the kanji I had learned from my time in Okinawa.  Many of the phrases I had relied on to get me through the day seemed wrong or obsolete.  It was certainly a strange phenomenon to experience. 

One of the projects we had done recently was an oral presentation.  We had to give a script between 2-3 people, as if reading a play, all in Japanese of course, and bonus points for any new words or creativity.  The blue print of this presentation was Valentine’s Day, and it wasn’t until after I had written it and presented it that I had a different realization about myself.  The general script is two girls talking with each other, one chiding the other about her boyfriend not making Valentine’s Day plans with her.  Instead he breaks up with her, leaving her to find solace in her friend.  In the second and last scene, as they are about to get coffee together, the girl’s now-ex-boyfriend calls her and begs for forgiveness, wanting to start over.  Since her friend is there with her, she gets the courage to tell him no, and they leave to go play a game at her friend’s house. 

I said all that to say that foreign language is a strange thing, but it can really reveal a lot about ourselves that we didn’t know about.  I feel as if I had made this script outside of the expectations of the grade, and in doing so, took a peek at what I really wanted out of life. 

I’ve spent a lot of my years in difficult relationships, trying to find that One Special Person.  I’ve failed and failed and failed some more.  But something that I feel like I haven’t failed at is my love for this culture.  It may have not always burned brightly, but it has always been there, a dimly lit ember that has consistently glowed.  My real-life experience living in Japan will always be a testament to that love and the passion I have.  So I said all this to say that maybe the expectations that I’ve held over myself are not where my heart lies.  Perhaps it’s time to hang up the “Family” goal and go forward with the “Japan” goal instead.  

In Which it Was 2005 and I Began My College Days - Part Two

Read Part One Here!

I quickly found that out when I attended college for the first time.  It was a knock-off, over-priced art school where I would be educated in ‘Graphic Design’.  There were two things that they, the head teachers of the school that screened future students, were interested in:  Artwork and money.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Right around those last couple weeks of my Senior year – the ones where you just stop caring and kick back with a smug expression on your face because you’ve done the math and you know that you don’t have to turn in any more homework and you can still pass all your classes with a C+ – there were some after-school college fairs set up in the school gym.  Ours looked like a slightly more polished Science fair.  Every table had tri-folded posters glued with information, a bowl full of key chains or lanyards, and matching pamphlets spread in a fan pattern.  Of course I was only there to scope out what was going to be offered, and coupled with my outlandish ideas of how college was going to be, I didn’t think I would be so quickly reeled in. 

It wasn’t by any big name university either.  While so many of the tables of UK and UC were surrounded by dozens of my peers, I was observing from afar.  I had an agenda, after all.  Was I going to fall into the masses and choose to be content with the ‘normal’ path?   Or was I going to go with ‘the road less travelled’ and find something just for me.  Since I had that “Special Snowflake” syndrome, of course I felt like I was capable of going to a specialized school, custom-tailored to my every fantastical whim that, in my ever-so-innocent mind, was the answer to all my problems.

I should take this time to briefly note that this was the time in my life where I was heavily into art, and thus I carried a sketchbook with me at all times.  And I mean at ALL times.  Unless explicitly stated by my parents, it was my answer to ‘grab your purse’ or ‘put on your shoes’.  I never left without it, as well as a good pink eraser and a mechanical pencil filled with plenty of .05 mm lead.  And so armed with my trusty sketchpad and at least two pencils, I meandered lazily around the small table that held the representatives for the Art Institutes.  Sadly, this was not in the same vein as the Graphic Design schools that got advertised on television; rather they seemed like a cheap knock-off.  Oh, and by ‘cheap’ I mean ‘soul-suckingly expensive’.  It was a large chunk of change to attend just one semester, made even more outlandish by the fact that the entire student body consisted of roughly 30 people. 

Regardless, I was hooked from the very moment the rep started complimenting me on my art work.  The sketchpad I brought with me was opened to a page with a particularly detailed, shaded drawing, held close to my chest and yet those with a trained eye could spot it a mile away.  Before I could stop myself, I was taking home the pamphlets, application, and whatever other little table samples I could gather.  Probably Post-It notes or something.  I announced my desire to enroll into this “Art Institute” to my mother that evening.  I would like to think that my parents were supportive of me; after all, they paid for the major portion of my tuition that year.  My father had other plans, and his ultimatum was that I had to obtain my driver’s license if I was going to attend this school.  But first, we had an appointment to tour the school and speak with the Head teacher.

Upon arrival, I felt as if I were in a contemporary Art museum, narrow but pristine hallways lined with perfectly measured frames full of paintings and different crafts.  I was instructed to bring my portfolio, of which I had no idea how to put together.  I didn’t name my drawings, nor did I keep them safely laminated and separated.  They were all drawn on computer paper, haphazardly thrown into the same manila folder.  Some corners were bent, some of the more heavily shaded drawings were slightly smeared, but it was all I had.  The teacher, named Sandy*, took a slow, pensive look through all my work, noting all of their qualities and strengths, and making sure to throw in a “We can help you improve this part” every now and then.  Strangely enough, it didn’t occur to 17 year old me that I was being buttered up.  Instead I was drawn like a moth to a flame.  A very expensive flame with no use.  But again, I tend to get ahead of myself. 

All summer I practiced driving, and it’s worth mentioning that I and my family moved 14 hours south from this school I so badly wanted to be in.  It didn’t occur to me that going back up there would mean living up there, as obvious as it is to any onlooker with a quart of sense.  It never occurred to me that I wanted to enroll in a college that didn’t have any dorms, and that I was too poor to rent a place of my own.  Lest we not forget my previous entry in Part One, money was not a forthcoming issue to me.  Back then, I had nearly no concept of it, sad as it is to type.  I was truly living in a bubble my whole life, and so when this entire incident happened, it was like culture shock.  In the end, I felt stubborn and called it ‘dedication’, and I passed my driving test.  And soon it was the last week in August and my dad and I were making the trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, with all my belongings packed up.  I was to live with my cousin and her husband in their spare bedroom.  Finally, my dad left his treasured car with me to use as transportation for school, so long as I took care of it and maintained it, it was virtually mine. 

The days counting down to the first day of class were maddening, and I was experiencing something very strange.  It was homesickness, and yet I was basically in the same area I had grown up in for the last 7 years.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that it wasn’t only homesickness that I was experiencing, but a wild freedom.  This was not necessarily a good thing for a 17-turned-18 year old.  I drove around to pass the time, thinking that I could perhaps learn some of the roads and get some practice in driving more, because what could that hurt?  It didn’t take me long to hit my first vehicle at a stop light.  It was barely a tap, but the visible shake of the SUV in front of me, accompanied by the driver’s side door opening and a very pissed off looking man emerging within seconds, knocking on my window with one hand while his other held a smartphone, left me in tears.  I’m not sure if I had ever been yelled at by a complete stranger up until then, but I won’t ever forget his tone of voice and how angry he looked.  From then on I drove with more caution than ever, even on my own driving test. 

Unfortunately, getting into scuffs with other drivers wasn’t my biggest issue on the road.  It was getting lost.  I had no smartphone back then, and wouldn’t have a GPS for another 6 years.  I spent afternoons driving endlessly, not because I wanted to, or because I had extra gas to burn, but because I had no idea where I was.  I would get off exits and park at gas stations to ask for directions, and I even recall asking a middle-aged woman how to get back to Fairfield, and she looked at me as if I had grown another head.  Fairfield was literally one exit away, but I was literally going in circles at that point, doubting my sense of direction, and for good reason too.  I also recall trying to find some kind of logical way of memorizing the numbered roads around me.  “Surely,” I thought to myself, “If 74 leads to 75 eventually, then 176 will lead to 177 and so on.”  With this awful theory in mind, I set out to test it.  2 hours later, I ended up in Indiana.  But I think the most shameful part was the fact that I called my mother, who was 800 miles south of me, and when I told her I was lost, she spent another hour on the phone with me, with the help of Google Maps, leading me back to my cousin’s house.  Overall, driving in general was a nightmare.  I cringe just thinking about all the gas money wasted and all the needless fear I felt. 

Finally, a week had passed and it was time for school to begin.  I was finally living the dream.  I had all my art supplies ready, packed up in a big tackle box, and I was ready to prove myself to everyone.  Because I wasn't a 2^nd year, I had to park across the 4 lane intersection at Costco, so carrying all my supplies was a bit unruly.  On the first day, I called my mom to let her know that I had made it to the school in one piece.  I tried throwing in a joke about landing in a ditch somewhere, but she was not amused.  But I digress.  

Attendance was taken electronically, by inputting our personal code.  Sometimes I imagined that I was actually working for the CIA or the government, like in a futuristic film or sci-fi novel.  The first floor of the school was the art museum section, where student works were displayed.  The second floor held the classroom, which didn't feel like a classroom at all, since everyone not only had their own desks, but they were angled at such a way to make them like modified easels.  They were also sectioned off into their own cubicles.  Mac computers lined the back walls.  A huge copy machine was also on the opposite wall, but inside its own room.  The entire room smelled like wood, and paint, and eraser shavings. 

There were three teachers total, who all taught at the same time in the main room.  I say “taught”, but it was more like we were given a specific project, shown an example of a previous student’s work, and then told to make our own.  We were given 5 days for each of these projects.  The entire week, the three teachers milled around slowly, giving suggestions or comments.  Frankly, I remember loving every minute of it.  Everything was leisurely, and if I drew something that they didn’t quite agree with for whatever reason, I could always use the old “Art is subjective” card and they’d give in.  We would break for lunch, and as the weeks passed, I found myself clocking out and just skipping the second half of the school day.  I never got reprimanded, and as long as I was showing progress at my desk, showing the instructors my improvements, they didn’t seem to care in the slightest. 

Strictly speaking, I was happy in that environment.  I felt that at the time, creating art work was what I was meant to do in life.  I worked on my projects at my own pace, had as much help as I could ask for, and I could leave early with no penalty if I so desired.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  

Stay tuned for Part 3 if it intrigues you.