JAPAN111: 1st Year Japanese
Autumn 2010 5 Credits Final grade: 3.8 Japanese and Linguistics |
1st Year JapaneseI did not actually receive any official credit for my first quarter of Japanese at the University. As I had used my two years of Japanese from high school to satisfy the language requirements in my application to the UW, it was expected that I would begin taking lessons at least beginning with the second quarter. In high school, our Japanese handwriting had never been carefully marked, which made my initial quarters taking Japanese at the UW particularly difficult. I lost several points based on my handwriting - trying to break the bad habits I had developed during my high school years.
I learned an astronomical amount of information in my first quarter at the UW: far more than I had in my two years at high school. I was able to speak in rudimentary sentences about things I did and did not like, describe my position at the University as a 1st year Student studying Japanese. My greatest accomplishment for the quarter would have been the short essay I wrote about the University of Washington as one of my assignments for the class. It is strange to see how now the essay looks very small and insignificant, definitely the work of someone not comfortable with the language. However, at the time, the essay had taken several days and hours to put together. We all have to start somewhere. |
Image: Cherry blossoms in the UW quad as seen from Miller Hall