Nearly every other day I feel like quitting Japanese study. It's not because I don't want to learn, it's because every other day I'm reminded of how bad my Japanese is. Today for example, maybe because it was Monday, I really was out of it and was having a very hard time following along in class. Nothing seemed to make sense. 1/2 the example sentences seemed to have strange grammer and I didn't understand etc.
Nearly every day at school I'm introduced to 60 new words I don't know. Of those, if I'm lucky I might remember 2 or 3. A few days after that I'll remember none of them until the next time I encounter the same word a few weeks later and then I get to be upset that I was supposed to have already learned this word.
Considering that I've never kept a job longer than 2 years I started thinking today that maybe it's something with me that's the problem. Of course everytime I've quit I've had my reasons and I've always looked at it as a strengh. My thoughts being something along the line of "I'm stronger than the average person and therefore if I don't like the current situation I'll move on to something else. Whereas a person who doesn't see their own value will stick around in an unsatisfactory condition giving their life to the company." But, is this really the case? I can go through each situation and point out why I feel justified in my actions but then I suppose so can nearly everybody.
Should I have stayed at Microprose? At Crystal Dynamics? At Naughty Dog? The answers all seem very clearly to me to be "No!" but then why is it that I keep changing. I suppose it's just that I haven't found what I'm looking for which is
- To work on a great game. A game I respect and so do my peers
- A game that sells like crazy
- To get a large percentage of the money. Not more than others but not to make somebody else rich while I give up my life for a year or two to make the game
- Respect
Anyway, I'm not sure what that has to do with Japanese. I don't really want to quit but everyday it actually seems like I'm further away from getting fluent than closer. Kind of like old saying "the more you know the more you know you don't know". Well, the more Japanese I learn, the more Japanese I can see that I still have yet to learn. When I started learning I was thinking it would take about 3 years. Other people have done it in less. But, I've been studying for over 4 years now and I'm only at a 1 year level. And, the more I learn the longer it seems like it's going to take.
Some people say that there's a hump you reach at which point learning gets easier and your rate accelerates. I thought I had already hit that hump just about the time I left Sega 2 years ago since that's about the time at which I started feeling comfortable having conversations exclusively in Japanese but I guess they were pretty trival conversations.
Now we're starting more detailed Japanese and I feel like I can't remember any of it. I think part of the problem is that outside of class I really have no reason to use the new grammer since I can get by with the old simple grammer.
Anyway, I guess I'm just keveching but I hope I break some kind of barrier soon. 😖