Promiseland

[Fetian]

Class today was chill! We learned about the が particle, specifically in the context of asking and answering questions (most of the time if you are asking or answering a question you will be using が to do it), and we learned 何か ("something", used in questions, like "have you eaten something?") and 何も ("anything" used in negative sentences, like "we don't need anything"). We zipped right through the practice, and then we did a practice dialogue in breakout rooms. The dialogue today technically had three roles in it (one of them a character who appears to say a single line right before the dialogue ended), so when she started breaking us off into pairs I asked what we should do about that, and she called everyone back into the main meeting room to break us off into threes instead. I got paired up with a couple of extremely low-energy students so it wasn't a super great time, but hey, I haven't run into anyone in this class this semester who just doesn't want to do any of the work! Everyone is in fact here because they want to be here to some extent or another, unlike last Spring where there were a bunch of students I'd get paired off with and just, get nothing. A complete waste of time.

When we were all back in the room, she had us rotate between all of the parts this time, which we all thought would fill up the rest of class time, and there wasn't anything left on the lesson plan for the day, but then when the last set of students had gone she had us pull the book back out again and put us into another breakout room in pairs to do a 'practice talking to your partner' exercise. That one was very confusing, and then when we were done she just asked us if we had been able to figure out the answer, didn't have us do the exercise again in front of the class. My partner there was cool, though, actively engaged in trying to practice using the language. Like, we finished once and then he wanted to just keep going for a bit to get more practice in.

Disruptive Student wasn't there for a chunk of class, first he was late because his computer was updating and then he wasn't able to get into the call for a while or something? And then when he was there he was completely quiet except when called on. Maybe he's actually learned to mind himself, we can only hope

After class I grabbed some food and then got into voice chat with Erika and Dave so we could play some PlateUp together! First we jumped into a restaurant to kill it and get the XP, see if it would unlock any of the new content for us, but alas that was not to be. So instead we made a coffee shop! It was extremely fun, we may or may not be doing it again on Saturday. Tomorrow, Erika and I have plans to play ESO together again, probably some time in the early afternoon. I'll confirm that's still on tomorrow (probably via a comment she'll leave in this thread)

For now I'm gonna chill the rest of the night, probably alternate some more video games with getting some chore stuff done. I have two pages of homework due tomorrow -- one regular page and one kanji comprehension page, so one of them is easy and one of them is going to be tedious. There's also a vocabulary quiz due Saturday, which I should be able to whiz through. We also should get a chapter quiz soon, and a kanji quiz, but she didn't say anything about either so next week perhaps? We've just finished chapter 8 today, so we should be starting chapter 9 on Tuesday

I also need to eat some more food, probably will make ramen or something

[erikavonkaiser]

I did forget we had plans but am still available for plans so we'll pretend I didn't forget!! Just shoot me a message on discord whenever you're ready

[Fetian]

I will have A Lot to say about today's class later but let's go ahead and just start with this:

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[Fetian]

So yes, class today. The class itself went fine, basically more review stuff. No class on Thursday because we've got a midterm covering chapters 6, 7, and 8 in the textbook, so I need to study for that, plus homework and a kanji quiz tomorrow. A bunch of students are getting together tomorrow night to study together so I might jump in on that depending on how socialling with Erika & Dave and then with ash goes.

But. Okay. So. The professor has us doing an exercise in the book, and does not actually say that we're doing part B, just that we're on page 331. It's clear from context that we're on part B, though, and most everyone picks up on that, except Disruptive Student, who struggles a lot for quite a while with the professor berating him for not paying attention. So I say in the chat, that we're doing part B, which is when he tells me to "kiss it". I said nothing else to him for the rest of class, but there was some back-and-forth with some other people as you can see above -- some definitely bullying happening which I'm not okay with, ideally the professor will see that also happening and talk with those students about their behaviour as well.

My DM to the professor there never got seen as far as I know, so the chat really is just straight up not being monitored at all. Would be nice if zoom had some kind of 'report comment' feature that I could get the professor's attention with but I didn't see anything when I tried to find it.

A bunch of students decided to stay after class to talk with her about Disruptive Student's behaviour, I also stuck around mostly to be nosy but I did speak up a couple times as the student apparently Most Affected by Disruptive Student's Rudeness. It actually may well be true that he's been the most hostile to me in specific, even outside today's incident, and if that is the case I can only guess it's because I previously pointed out that he has struggled more with some of the lessons than other students have, which means he's not the smartest kid in class and doesn't know the most Japanese.

Anyway, so a couple of students outlined his general behaviour, and the professor let slip several things that were extremely inappropriate to be disclosing to other students: that he is autistic (but hasn't spoken to the college about getting any accommodations); that he was failing the class but has now been getting Cs on his assignments; that she recommended he take her 401 class instead of this 402 class, but he insisted that he already knows Japanese and doesn't need it and that he would study the textbook on his own time; and, most wild of all, she has repeatedly had to ask him to a) stop emailing her, and b) stop emailing her in Japanese, because he has been emailing her six or seven times a day, in nonsense Japanese because he just does not know enough to be trying to communicate in the language, so she has no idea what he's trying to say or ask. About things completely irrelevant to the class.

Wild behaviour all around, honestly

She said she was going to talk to him again both about his conduct and to remind him not to use the chat. I also will avoid saying anything to him in it in future, obviously -- I'd just been trying to help, man.

So yeah! We'll see if anything comes of all that next week.

[Fetian]

Truly is there anything more frustrating than watching someone checking out a piece of media you really like and completely missing the point of it

[erikavonkaiser]

re: difficult student I feel like this is a situation administration should step in and counsel him/possibly redirect him to an easier class/etc, I wonder if the teacher has pursued options or not

It's entirely possible she has and administration is like well he paid for the class, so something something classroom management something something complete

EXTREME yikes to her disclosing all of that, regardless of how frustrating the situation is and how abusive of a person he seems to be

[erikavonkaiser]

also extra fuck him for being spicy to you what an absolute wiener

[Fetian]

re: difficult student I feel like this is a situation administration should step in and counsel him/possibly redirect him to an easier class/etc, I wonder if the teacher has pursued options or not

It's entirely possible she has and administration is like well he paid for the class, so something something classroom management something something complete

EXTREME yikes to her disclosing all of that, regardless of how frustrating the situation is and how abusive of a person he seems to be

If he has been steadily improving in his grades, I can understand if she hadn't been pursuing options for getting him out of her class, especially this late into the semester. And especially since as far as she's aware he had been largely behaving himself, since he was keeping his comments in the chat she doesn't read, instead of constantly interrupting the actual class like he'd been doing. I do think 'constantly struggles to participate in class' is a situation worth intervening on, but I don't think it's 'get administration involved' worthy, necessarily

I do have long thought that he really needs to talk to a counsellor about his workload, because he has seemed extremely stressed by it -- and trying to force himself into taking a class that's a higher level than he's prepared for probably isn't helping!

I feel like if she had talked to administration about him she would have also said that, given what else she disclosed, so as far as I know all she's done is recommend he drop down to the 401 class, or sit in on it in addition to taking the 402, a couple of times.

Somewhat of an aside, but I know that he's here in this class because he wants to get a scholarship to study abroad in Japan, or something along those lines, and I really wonder if the reality of learning the language has changed his mind at all. I also have been so curious about what he plans to do in Japan, because I get the impression he wants to live and work there after school, and is he one of those guys who decides to teach English in Japan just because that's the most obvious pathway to working there? Does he have some other plan? Is he going to be an Influencer or something? I'm dying to know and probably never will

I will say that if he plans on teaching English he also does not have a particularly competent grasp on that language either, so. Probably SOL there, bud.

[Fetian]

Not a bad day, all in all! Put together a cat tree for ash that he got for his room, then I hung out with Erika and Dave for about an hour and a half -- we played a couple rounds of Trivia Murder Party, then a couple rounds of Fibbage, and then a couple rounds of Fibbage: Enough About You -- which I was sure it wouldn't let us play because I was sure that when Sor was here, we tried that with them, ash, and me and the game said we didn't have enough players, but sure enough it let us this time. Maybe I'm misremembering or maybe they updated it or something. Anyway it was fun! Tomorrow I will ping them both about our next game night, and we can do more jackbox or we can do more plateup or something. I do possibly need to figure out some way to get us a way to do jackbox in a way that will allow them to hear the audio, because for Some reason discord doesn't stream audio when you're on linux and the solution to that looks like this and I just, do not have time for that, man. Maybe on a different day.

More likely I'll just get the other computer set up with a windows and use that -- I do have some streaming related plans there anyway, so.

Speaking of that computer, the backup download is at 54%! Over halfway! Whee!

Also speaking of that, apparently microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 next year and, what the fuck. Just. What the fuck.

Anyway, after Erika, Dave and I hung out I then hung out with ash for a while, we watched some random youtubes while he played Tiny Glade. Then I came back into my room and did the kanji quiz (full points) and my homework (not graded yet). The homework I have once again pushed myself on a bit because I'm incorrigible and just can't help myself (very specifically instead of a straightforward by-the-textbook "明日、雨が降らないと思います" (Tomorrow, I don't think it will rain), I went with "明日、雨が降らないと思います。天気予報は雨が降らないと言っていましたから" (Tomorrow, I don't think it will rain because the weather forecast said it won't rain"), and instead of "私の友達は料理が上手だと思います" (I think my friend is a good cook), "私の友達は料理が上手だと思います。毎日料理をしますから" (I think my friend is a good cook, because he cooks every day). Notably I did the by-the-book translations and then added on to that, so hopefully I a. did it right and b. the teacher will go easy on me if I messed up a little somewhere)

Also "私の猫と遊ぶのが好きです" (I like playing with my cats) instead of something simpler, like "ゲームをするのが好きです" (I like playing games) or "本を読むのが好きです" (I like reading books); and "数学をするのが下手です" (I'm bad at math) instead of using vocabulary we've already learned like, I dunno, ”スポーツをするのが下手です" (I'm bad at sports).

I wanted to answer "Do you like to clean?" with "I like cleaning a little" but I wasn't sure how to do that so I didn't press my luck there.

With all that going on I did not make it to the study group, so I do still need to study for the test tomorrow, but I will do that, tomorrow. For the rest of tonight I'm gonna video games and youtube.

[Fetian]

I continue to be fascinated and baffled by this guy making himself out to be the only person in class who has any passion for or interest in the language, the only person "willing to put in extra work to get ahead", yadda yadda... and he's getting Cs?? Does he think everyone else is failing??