Self Assessments: What They Mean to Me

While assessing my own skills and accomplishments I became extremely aware how far behind I have come, and in the duration of actually writing down my answers, I grew more and more stressed and disappointed with myself. Even though I can rationalize that practice and use are important in retaining information, my completive side really got to me when it came to putting levels to things. I found myself wanting to score myself low on everything, and I struggled to have confidence in my skills.

That all being said, I am actively trying to work on that pessimistic view of myself. I know there were reasons why I am not where I want to be, and I am willing and excited to use this opportunity to grow. This semester's major goal is going to be simply gaining confidence in myself. I love to talk and laugh and create relationships, and I want that to reflect my experiences in Japanese and not just English.

Major goals I am setting up for myself this semester include:

1. I want to be able to follow along with gameplay and subtitles more.

2. I want to be able to listen to music (and other media) and be able to have a general understand with   less context than now.

3. I want to feel more comfortable holding more substantial conversations with my peers.

4. I want to increase my vocabulary with an emphasis on Kanji and Katakana.

5. I want to be able to give instructions verbally like with cooking tutorials.

6. I want to be able to be able to write larger blocks of text without having to include a majority of English on really any topic.

Besides putting in effort in class, I am also going to be doing a number of things outside of class to reach my goals. I bought Heisig's Remembering the Kanji and will be working on kanji there as well as Marugoto, and I've downloaded Lyrics Training to work on listening skills. I also have asked two friends from my game, Mutsumi-san and Megumi-san to allow me to work on getting comfortable with writing. I want to reach these goals because I want to be able to connect with patients in my future medical practice and expand my cultural horizons.