i wish people would normalize being lost in life and just not knowing anything. not knowing what you’re passionate about, where you want to live, what you want to do, where you want to go— or what lies next. as a society, we normalized going to school, finding a passion, getting a job, finding a partner, getting married, having kids, working hard to earn an honest living. but what about when shit just doesn’t go that way? you really just don’t know. and what’s even worse is, you don’t know why you don’t know or even where to start so you feel alone. you feel as though you’re a disappointment to your family. as if you failed in life. but you haven’t, it’s okay, to not know. to be lost. you have your whole life ahead of you to figure things out. patience is a virtue. there is no time limit on life. you don’t need to rush. don’t allow society to fixate the narrative of having all your shit together at a certain age. it isn’t realistic for most. being lost is so much more normal than we think. and i just wish people would be more transparent about it.
I think it’s safe to say that for me, clinical masters has so far been a lot. They say it’s intense, they say it’s not easy to keep up, but boy was I wildly unprepared for the absolute BARRAGE of competing demands
I’m at that point in the semester where the first lot of assignments are soon to be due, while also trying to navigate my way around the initial stages of a new thesis (+supervisor) and the anxiety that comes along with ensuring your proposed research is something your supervisor will approve of
Don’t get me wrong though, I am most definitely enjoying uni so far, and I look forward to hopefully being back on campus by Semester 2 later this year - it has so far been extremely brill learning so much clinically relevant content!
Concept: I sleep 8 hours per day and still get all my tasks done, my citations are all in order, I travel to new locations twice a year and I never having pending laundry.
Learning Japanese is no easy feat. It requires dedication and hard work, especially if you have decided to self-study. If you are absolutely brand new to Japanese, here are some fast facts about the language to get you started:
* Contains two alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana
* Each alphabet has 46 phonetic characters (72 in total)
* Kanji is a Chinese based script that has thousands of characters
* You’ll need to know about 2000-3000 characters to be considered fluent inn Japanese writing (according to the JLPT)
* Japanese is an SOV language (Subject - Object - Verb)
* There are no tones in Japanese, but there are intonations (yukuri vs yukkuri)
* There are 4 politeness levels
* Japanese uses verb conjugations like European languages
* Japanese uses particles to mark parts of speech (example:
は
and
が
)
* Often times the subject is omitted in sentences if the subject is clear based on the context
*Pronunciation in Japanese is perhaps the easiest part of learning the language
* It typically takes 5-6 years to gain fluency in Japanese
So now that you have the absolute basics of the language, here is the best way, I have found after 7 years of language study, to learn Japanese.
It’s okay to be a beginner at the things you are interested in. There is no reason to feel intimidated by people more advanced than you are, because they too were in your place at one point. Keep learning and growing and expanding in whatever it is that you love and let nothing and no one stop you. You don’t have to be at the same stage as someone else. You can just be at your stage and that one is okay too.
It really doesn’t matter if you only know three (3) sentences in your target language, that’s already three (3) sentences in and it’s impressive! Other people don’t know how to say those three (3) sentences but you do. Keep going! Learn that fourth (4th) sentence~
