I’m so happy I live in this country, where it’s possible to go to uni at the age of 30. In Japan, people start pressuring you about it at the age of, oh, 5. Months.

I digress. At uni, I’m now taking two courses — engineering methodology and linear algebra. The former is a pain, the latter is fun. The former mainly comprises of the following:

Be put into a group with 7 other people, plan and execute a fairly big project (1-2 months of 16 hours/week worth of “work”), and then present the results. And write a bunch of reports about how it all went.

Said project turned out to be assembling and programming a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot. I was “fairly” lucky with my team mates, except that the majority want to “take the short cut” and sort of just pretend not to exist so they don’t have to do anything.

I don’t blame them, really. We were a pretty disorganized bunch from the get go, and it was really hard to get everyone things to do. There were only so many sub-components of the robot you could make before you ran out, and building the robot required at most two people — more, and there’re too many hands fidgeting.

I also don’t blame them for starting to talk shit about me behind my back. It happened after we had been sitting in a “seminar” which was obligatory, talking about a chapter in the engineering methodology book we had been required to read. First though, to get some perspective, this is the deal:

I’m working 50% plus attending school. That means I have 4 less hours each (week)day to studying or relaxing. This is considered normal in most countries, but in Sweden, being a uni student is considered the equivalent of working approximately 125%. In effect, I’m now occupied 175% with work and/or school. That’s 70 hour weeks.

So there we are in the seminar, and people haven’t done what they were supposed to. The assignment clearly said “read the book and then pick out stuff from parts 2-4 and bring to the seminar”, and people interpreted “parts 2-4″, conveniently, as “chapters 2-4″ (which were all in part 1). So we take 15 mins where people read up “real quick” on the other parts, and then discuss… and…

… it’s just retarded. Absolute, raw, unfiltered retardation. People were saying things like,

A. “Okay guys, so! The next item on the list goes: ensuring group unity. Anyone have anything to say?”
B. “Oh yeah, we totally need to have group unity. It’s like, super important. Without group unity we won’t be as effective and such.”
A. “That’s awesome, B. How do we ensure group unity?”
B. “You know, we have to stick together and shit. Back each other up.”
A. “Perfect.” (writes this whole thing down on lap top)

And it spirals downward from there. I’m sitting there watching these people with this empty, glazed over expression in my eyes, and at some point I just involuntarily start grunting agreement in an extremely sarcastic voice. I’m serious when I say I felt like someone was controlling me, because even though I knew how bad it was, I couldn’t stop myself.

Meanwhile someone pulls out their math book, walks over to me, and starts asking me questions about some problem. In the middle of the seminar. I look at the book for a brief moment, then turn back to the room and pretend nothing’s happened. So totally not me.

Then eventually I just stand up and say, “Well since you guys are doing math, I’m gonna head home and work.” and leave.

And that’s where it sort of started. People laughing for no reason when I say or do something. It bothered me initially, but then I stopped caring. I also stopped caring about courtesy in the group, coming at appointed times and leaving when we’re done, doing everything I can for the project, but nothing for the people in it. They’d stop talking when I came into the room, or even say things like “The group is already falling apart, *laugh laugh chuckle chuckle*” when I did. I always felt like confronting them when that happened, but instead I just grinned back and said something like “Yeah, me and (random name of person who’s also not there at the moment) have decided to dump you guys from the project.” And I realized it was because I actually don’t mind that they use me as “the bad guy” to talk about whenever I’m not around.

I’m comfortably fine being an asshole, and I know I’m being one. And I know it’s partly my fault. It feels good. It’s so unlike me, it’s as if it’s not me at all.

It’s partly my fault. When I started my classes I was determined at a completely separate level from the others in my group — all of them. I was dead set on doing everything in my power to get everything done as fast and efficiently as possible. I just came into it with this zero tolerance for “unnecessity” that made me lash out or do things I normally never would. The others ranged from “want to get grade” to “want to do something good with the time”, which I’d say is the healthy, normal state (or the latter, at least).

And I just don’t take bullshit the way I used to. At some point in the last couple of years, my patience has just… diminished.

Not great, perhaps. But there are other, good things too in this.

Throughout all of this, I realized something dark and dirty about myself. Throughout my life, I’ve loathed being hated. The mere thought of someone out there hating me, or even slightly disliking me, has always haunted me and affected my actions. Now, seeing these people around me being petty as they are (and they are; even if it is partly my fault), I’m struck by the realization that I absolutely couldn’t care less if they hate, or dislike, me, and if I don’t care about people I’ve been around 16 hours a week for the last two months, why on earth should I care what a stranger on the street thinks about me?

I should rather care about what those I care about think, or those I respect think, or not care about what anyone thinks and just do what I think is right. Not thinking about what other people think is a mindblowing concept, to me.

Late bloomer, what can I say.

My preparations this time around were, frankly, lacking. I’ve been concentrating mostly on what school’s been handing me, and not so much on “my own self studies of the things beyond”, which was a major part of my life for the last year. One thing I did learn though was that preparing for the exam is all about knowing the exam — that is, knowing how it is layed out, and how well you do timewise on each part, and what kind of questions are being thrown at you, etc. I posted the results and my thoughts on each of the times that I took the test here on this blog, and while I won’t go so far as to link to the individual posts for your comparison (I doubt you’re that intrigued), I must say that my results took leap-like steps upward for every time I took one of the previous years’ exams.

This time around it’s all quite different. For one, I’m pretty sure I’m going to fail. Secondly, I haven’t prepared myself quite as well as I had — with the increase in level of difficulty, I doubt you can, in the time I have spent since I wrapped up the level 2 stuff. Last time around I did my first exam-at-home months ahead of time, and let about a month pass in between each try. The exams I took were also the real thing — 2004, 05, and 06 respectively, of the actual JLPT that people took in those respective years. This time however, I couldn’t find the book that had more than just one test in it, and most of the books I found said “level 1-2!”. Why would I want a book for level 2? I got that one already.

Anyway, so I ended up buying a book with two “pretend exams” in it, which also had commentary in the end which pointed out common mistakes people tend to do on the questions. It’s actually more useful than I thought (as you might’ve guessed by now, I took one of the two tests from that book).

In fact, I took it today. The exam is next Sunday (5th of July), and it took me this long to do this. There are several reasons for this, not all of them about my laziness. For one I’m now attending a “JLPT strategy class” (don’t know a good translation for 対策 other than that…) in which they are throwing TONS of old, real JLPT exam content at us. Thus, in hindsight, buying a real exam would have been pretty bad in the end since I’d be guaranteed to have the contents of that exam thrown at me in school, possibly before I even took it. But I digress…

Mostly it was just about the fact it ISN’T the real thing. “Even if I pass, it doesn’t mean that I would pass the real thing, since it’s not even the same guys who’ve made it. Even if I fail, it doesn’t mean anything, because it’s not the same guys who’ve made it.” So yeah, I procrastinated. But today I finally decided to do it anyway.

Results:
- kanji/vocab: 72.2% (72 points)
- listening: 71.9% (71 points — what the fuck? I usually score 100% on listening normally)
- reading comprehension & grammar: 64.3% (I knew I’d screw this one up, but I didn’t screw it up as badly as I thought I would)

Total: 271 points out of 400 points, which puts me at 67.8% and I need 70% to pass. *rip my eyes out* Yeah, that’s great.

I don’t know what was up with listening. I screwed up completely. I was totally expecting 80+% on that one, and in fact I’m counting on getting that amount on the real exam. If I had, I would’ve passed with exactly 70%. Heh. I guess I’m going to be taking this again in December, eh?

Yes, I did at some point consider the idea of entering a university in Japan, weighing the good against the bad and so on, and came to the conclusion that what I can get here, is more or less the same — or not as good — as what I can get for free in Sweden. If I wish to work in Japan after graduating from the university, I will not be able to present a shiny graduation certificate from a shiny Japanese university, but at the same time, I somehow doubt I can get into a shiny university here anyway (unless I work my ass off studying for the entrance exam, which would detract from my studies of the language itself).

In any case, I am here exclusively to learn Japanese now, with the additional desire to learn the Japanese people, from a cultural, sociological, economical, etc. point of view. I am still sort of haunted by the clock in my head ticking and going “hey, happy birthday buddy, you’ll be 36 by the time you graduate from uni” but I’ll cope with that when that day comes. I also believe that having spent 2 years in a country so utterly different from my own will be a valuable merit on my curriculum vitae.

So back to today — I, being the sole student wishing to learn Japanese and ultimately take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (the level 1 one), among a group of around 20 people, am now without a class. The school originally informed me that there would be a separation of the class into two groups — those who want to go to university and those who do not — but as things stand, both groups will be “those who do”. Conclusively, the principal of my school offered to find me another school.

What a guy. He’s not only willing to let me go to another school (thus my school tuitions to his school end), but he’s also willing to find a school for me, and to introduce me to the school. This means a huge deal in the Japanese society — it’s a world of difference whether the student contacts the school and goes “Hey folks, I’d like to switch to your school” and whether the principal contacts the school and goes “Hey there, I have a student whose needs I am not able to accomodate, so I wanted to see if you were up for taking him in”. In retrospect, maybe he thinks I’m a pain in the ass, and can’t wait to get rid of me.

Here’s the funny deal though. When he first said he would look into other schools for me, I decided to do some searching on my own. Me and my girlfriend looked around long and hard and found the one school that we both thought would suit me the best. After I’d talked to the principal about whether or not I should actually switch schools (I was wavering on that one — still am, actually — because I only want to switch if it makes a big difference in the quality of my studies), he said that he had this one school in mind for me. I noted that I had looked around and found a school as well, and he asked me what its name was. I said I didn’t remember, but that it was located by the Imadegawa station. He grinned and said “Well, that’s the school I wanted to introduce you to.” That’s quite promising, I’d say.

So after he’d called the school (for the record, the school’s name is Kyoto Japanese Language School) and asked if the idea of me switching there was possible, he suggested I go there and take a look at the school for myself. I went to the new school, and spoke to one secretary-like woman about the school in general and various procedures required of me were I to accept, and then I spoke to one of the teachers about the possible classes I might end up in, and she even brought with her some school books that they were using in class right now. There would be an examination “placement test” deal which ultimately would determine which class I ended up going to. They had a lot of classes on various levels fairly close to where I feel that I am now, so that seemed quite promising.

The new school is actually a little more expensive than the one I’m in now (but only a few hundred $US per year), and I have to pay the examination fee (about $500US), which I have already paid for for my current school, but ultimately I have to look at it from a “where will I learn the most efficiently” point of view, so it’s highly likely that I will accept the offer and switch schools.

The new term begins October 16th, and I’ve asked for this weekend to think this through before I make a decision. I’ll tell both schools what I decide on Sunday evening, I’ve decided, so I don’t do anything hasty that I end up regretting.