I recently wrote about not comparing yourself to others and about being in the highest level Japanese my campus offers. I said in the latter post that I'm intimidated by my classmates at the same level. In only our second class, I found myself panicking, wondering if I really belong in this level and how everyone is so much better than me, how they understand and know so many more words than me, and how they can speak so much better and more naturally than me.
And then I realized I'm being a complete hypocrite. I'm not practicing what I preach. One thing is that I spent most of the month-long winter break not speaking Japanese, certainly not conversationally anyway, and instead speaking English all day every for three weeks while my mom and step-dad were in the country. The other factor is that, since I came home from the vacation two days before the semester started, I have not slept well. This will be continued in a post about living alone in Japan, but my upstairs neighbor has been a serious nuisance and kept me from sleeping through the night once in the last three weeks or so, so I'm a little addled on coffee and not thinking too clearly.
Yet another factor that makes some of my classmates intimidating is that three of my classmates were in the same level last semester (it's required to take Japanese, so they're taking it again). So, though we're now at the same level, some of us have been studying at this level longer than others. Surprisingly, I am one of two Americans, and one of three Western people--the other five are from either Hong Kong or China, so I do have to allow for some advantages they have with kanji.
Anyway, I guess it just goes to show that what a person teaches best is often what they're worst at. It's important to keep things in perspective, yet also remember we're human and deviate from what we know to be a good way of thinking. Good luck in your studies!
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