Long Term Goals
My long term goal is to become a trilingual--that is, to be able to speak Chinese as well as I can speak Japanese and English. So far, I am planning to go China to study one year as an exchange student, and I really want to improve my Chinese before going to China alone and living in a totally different environment. The reason I am specially interested in China is for one, I have already lived in China for a year and half, so at this point I can understand just a little bet of conversation. For two, and more importantly, I was actually born in China, Beijing, and that my name has the meaning of both Japan and China...Waka as in Wa means Japan and Ka represents China. So I feel some attachment toward China, and hope to be able to speak its language as well!
The challenge is that there are not much opportunity for me to hear somebody speaking Chinese or being forced to use Chinese in daily life now--as I live in Japan and Chinese is not really required of me to live through the environment. I need to speak Japanese and English in order to live comfortably in ICU, but definitely not Chinese....therefore, if I do not make a special effort, I will not be able to acquire Chinese language naturally.
Short Term Goals:
Having explained how it is almost impossible to acquire Chinese language naturally in current environment, I had decided to take Advanced Chinese Class, which creates an environment for me to use Chinese to communicate and write. Since I have not used Chinese for almost whole three years, it is really hard for me to keep up with the teacher and the class--but I am pushing myself to engage more in the class, such as sitting in the front of the classroom and asking many questions by throwing away hesitation. I am also always reviewing what I have just learned right after the class ends, so I would not forget the important things that the teacher has told us. I have actually started listening to the Chinese News Broadcast, which I do not understand most of them. Even though I cannot understand well, I always put Chinese News in my iPod and listen to them every morning while jogging around the ICU campus.
So for my short term goal, I am making an effort to participate actively in the Chinese Advanced Class, and also listen to the Chinese News everyday. It would have been very difficult to me to make some time to listen to the news, as I am quite busy with other things to do, but because all I do is to switch the music I have been listening to during the jog, it is not time consuming and is very easy to continue (as jogging is my everyday activity).
-Engaging Distractions-
Also to make my study more interesting and meaningful, I am planning to buy some Chinese music and probably watch Chinese movies during the Golden week so I can get the sense of "Chinese as an alive language" that is not just about studying on paper, but is a language used in people's daily lives.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
First Jounal Entry -Preface-
The most difficult experience I had as a leader was when I was still in high school around age 15 or so. At that time I was really interested in acting, so even before entering into the high school I had already set my mind to join the drama club--but my dream soon sank as soon as I found out that there was no drama club in ICU High School. Although at first I gave up and joined a dance club, soon I found that dancing is not exactly the best of my interest, so as a first year student I had decided to make a drama club myself--which turned out to be an extreme burden.
First of all, it was not easy to gather the members, as basically no one had heard of such thing as 'drama club' before so people were skeptical about joining it. But what made it even more difficult for me was the teachers discouraging attitude toward my effort to build a new club. Instead of giving me support or offering for help, majority of the teachers whom I asked support or help coldly turned down my offer by saying 'I don't know if that club is really necessary' or 'I wonder if your club still exists a year later'. All of these heartless comments really made me down, and at one time I really thought about giving up. We were literally on the brink of edge.
However, to tell the conclusion first, the drama club did succeed--the members dramatically increased after the first performance, and now it is accepted as one of the club activities of ICU High School--and it still exists today (I heard they have performance a month later).
To be honest, I was not good at combining members at all. I tried to be a good leader and so made an attempt to listen to all the member's voices (as I thought that was what a 'good leader' would do), but consequently it made me look ambiguous and made the members think that I lacked in self-confidence. Therefore, when it came to making decisions, I was often criticized by members for not leading the club well. Also, I had this strong sense of responsibility, so strong that I basically tried to handle all the problems by myself and of course that was out of my capacity so I often made mistakes which angered the members. To be fair, I did not have many qualities to be a good leader- such as decisiveness, sense of authority or charisma.
Looking back now, one thing that enabled me to attract members to stay with me was probably my excessive enthusiasm toward building the club. Even though I was severely discouraged by numerous teachers, I tried again and again--I even went to the Principle's Office to ask him to be the club teacher, as no other teachers offered to be one. Unexpectedly, he turned out to be once the manager of the drama club, and even though he could not become the manager for our club, he gave me support by giving me words of encouragement such as 'I really hope to see the drama club again'. Later on, though the change was not dramatic, the teachers started to show some sympathy toward my efforts, and then one teacher actually offered to be the manager of our club. I think my never-giving-up behavior and enthusiasm made the teachers to reconsider and enabled to keep the members to stay with me.
As the time passed, the members started to support me more actively, and I think it was because they feared that if they leave it all to me, the club would eventually collapse. Also as we spent more time together, I had started to realize that there were certain things that they were good at. I found that one of the members of the club was actually better at making decisions and leading people than I was, so I let her handle the decision making process while I did other jobs such as negotiation and campaigning around the school (the jobs which I was good at). With two leaders, the club started to function ever more smoother than before, and as a result our first performance turned out to be a success.
I think another quality I had that enabled us to pursue our goal was the strong feeling of responsibility. I had the strong feeling that I was responsible for the success of the club, and that strong feeling made me able to endure difficulties and drove me to do anything to not let the members down.
Also, I kept myself as honest as possible to all the members who supported me. At first, I wanted to appear to be a good leader so I made a futile attempt to do everything by myself and take all the responsibilities, but soon I realized that I had to be honest and tell everybody that I simply could not do this alone--obviously because I was forgetting a lot of important things. Therefore, I confessed that I could not do this alone, and that I wanted to share the burden with them. I think this honesty led to creating trust among the members, and helped us to create the sense of unity--that 'I' was not the only one who was aiming to achieve the goal, but we all were.
Therefore, considering what led us to succeed, I think it was the enthusiasm, the feeling of responsibility, and the honesty that made us able to develop trust among one another. The club would have not existed if one of the members were lacking, as every single member of the club had strong responsibility and enthusiasm toward establishing our own club.
First of all, it was not easy to gather the members, as basically no one had heard of such thing as 'drama club' before so people were skeptical about joining it. But what made it even more difficult for me was the teachers discouraging attitude toward my effort to build a new club. Instead of giving me support or offering for help, majority of the teachers whom I asked support or help coldly turned down my offer by saying 'I don't know if that club is really necessary' or 'I wonder if your club still exists a year later'. All of these heartless comments really made me down, and at one time I really thought about giving up. We were literally on the brink of edge.
However, to tell the conclusion first, the drama club did succeed--the members dramatically increased after the first performance, and now it is accepted as one of the club activities of ICU High School--and it still exists today (I heard they have performance a month later).
To be honest, I was not good at combining members at all. I tried to be a good leader and so made an attempt to listen to all the member's voices (as I thought that was what a 'good leader' would do), but consequently it made me look ambiguous and made the members think that I lacked in self-confidence. Therefore, when it came to making decisions, I was often criticized by members for not leading the club well. Also, I had this strong sense of responsibility, so strong that I basically tried to handle all the problems by myself and of course that was out of my capacity so I often made mistakes which angered the members. To be fair, I did not have many qualities to be a good leader- such as decisiveness, sense of authority or charisma.
Looking back now, one thing that enabled me to attract members to stay with me was probably my excessive enthusiasm toward building the club. Even though I was severely discouraged by numerous teachers, I tried again and again--I even went to the Principle's Office to ask him to be the club teacher, as no other teachers offered to be one. Unexpectedly, he turned out to be once the manager of the drama club, and even though he could not become the manager for our club, he gave me support by giving me words of encouragement such as 'I really hope to see the drama club again'. Later on, though the change was not dramatic, the teachers started to show some sympathy toward my efforts, and then one teacher actually offered to be the manager of our club. I think my never-giving-up behavior and enthusiasm made the teachers to reconsider and enabled to keep the members to stay with me.
As the time passed, the members started to support me more actively, and I think it was because they feared that if they leave it all to me, the club would eventually collapse. Also as we spent more time together, I had started to realize that there were certain things that they were good at. I found that one of the members of the club was actually better at making decisions and leading people than I was, so I let her handle the decision making process while I did other jobs such as negotiation and campaigning around the school (the jobs which I was good at). With two leaders, the club started to function ever more smoother than before, and as a result our first performance turned out to be a success.
I think another quality I had that enabled us to pursue our goal was the strong feeling of responsibility. I had the strong feeling that I was responsible for the success of the club, and that strong feeling made me able to endure difficulties and drove me to do anything to not let the members down.
Also, I kept myself as honest as possible to all the members who supported me. At first, I wanted to appear to be a good leader so I made a futile attempt to do everything by myself and take all the responsibilities, but soon I realized that I had to be honest and tell everybody that I simply could not do this alone--obviously because I was forgetting a lot of important things. Therefore, I confessed that I could not do this alone, and that I wanted to share the burden with them. I think this honesty led to creating trust among the members, and helped us to create the sense of unity--that 'I' was not the only one who was aiming to achieve the goal, but we all were.
Therefore, considering what led us to succeed, I think it was the enthusiasm, the feeling of responsibility, and the honesty that made us able to develop trust among one another. The club would have not existed if one of the members were lacking, as every single member of the club had strong responsibility and enthusiasm toward establishing our own club.
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