Promiseland

[Fetian]

Not feeling great today so I skipped out on class, which I hear was just kanji reading exercises and a dialogue. I also hear Disruptive Student was up to his usual; a lot of volunteering to answer a question and then not knowing what the question is or how to answer it, and I also hear he attempted to correct the professor on something??

I did do a bit of work on the skit and got a chunk of that done. Tomorrow will be homework and kanji quiz -- I thought we had the end-of-chapter quiz but apparently not, or at least it hasn't been uploaded yet.

Watched a couple youtubes with ash, and then because I wasn't feeling well, Dave and I skipped Stardew and he streamed Planet Crafter while I played Dark Souls and we sat in voice together. It was fun. I am doing a sorceror run in Dark Souls and ... not having a super great time? But I'm progressing.

Tomorrow I have the doctor's appointment that had to be rescheduled before -- I did not get a confirmation text/call from them so I'm a little worried they cancelled it on me, but since that one is in-person I'm going to just show up and insist on being seen either way. I do need to get up a bit earlier than I have been to be able to make it to said appointment, so I should start going to bed in a minute here. To facilitate this I have now turned the steamdeck off so I can't jump back into the game and 'just a few more minutes' it until six AM.

Instead I'm going watch a youtube and eat some food, and then get ready for and go to bed.

[Fetian]

I am home from my doctor appointment! They just got my blood pressure (after I was walking for half an hour and while I was being talked at, but they didn't say anything about it being high so I guess I'm good), poked my finger to get my hemoglobin count, and got my signature on their updated consent forms, so overall largely painless.

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I usually take the light rail into the city and then just walk the 1.3 miles to the office, and the same back home, and something very interesting happened on said walk back to the station. It has to be a coincidence, but the pedestrian signs turned to walk right around the time I reached them, and I didn't have to stop to wait for them to change during almost the entire walk. I did have to for one of them. It's like the intersections are timed to accommodate a moderate walking speed? But that can't possibly be true, either I just have phenomenal luck or they're timed for some car speed or another that walking speed happens to be evenly divisible by. But I thought all the timed lights had been taken out in favour of triggered ones, and I know people were waiting at reds as I was walking. But that's around 16 intersections I just breezed through, and that's a lot to just happen to have arrived at just the right time at.

I just refuse to believe this city has done anything even a little related to pedestrian-centered street design.

Notably I did not have that luck on the way there, but I was walking pretty fast to make sure I got to my appointment on time, and on the way back I was walking just a bit slower than my usual pace. I did also get to the station just as my train was pulling up (I had to run to catch it), so maybe I just had amazing timing today.

Alright! I'm going to sit for a bit, eat something, and then I'm going to do the kanji quiz and look at the homework.

[Fetian]

Homework done and uploaded and I didn't even do it at the last possible minute this time. A little worried I messed something up on it, but c'est la vie and et cetera

Kanji quiz was surprisingly hard because that one did turn out to have a bunch of translation questions thrown in at the end. Probably messed something up there too but I hope I did alright

I should take a look at what my skit partner has added to the script and add some more stuff of my own but I will probably wait until tomorrow to poke at that. I am pretty braindead now and plan on video gaming for the rest of the night. As well as bed early so I can recover from so much exercise, as much as I am able. Also more food

[Fetian]

I'm honestly surprised we don't see more assassination attempts in this country considering the political climate and how easy it is to get a gun. You would think they'd be happening literally every hour on the hour but instead people shoot up schools and nightclubs for some reason

[Fetian]

Unrelated to the above or to recent events, I am having Negative Emotions today.

[Fetian]

a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a

[Fetian]

Today's Connections had |"-pilled" and "-core"| in the category |"suffixes"| and that just doesn't seem right to me. I don't want the New York Times knowing and using terms like |"redpilled"| and so forth

[Fetian]

Good lord I really need people to stop thinking that making LGBT people out themselves to access privileges that are given to cishet people by default (like, for example, being allowed to tell our own stories), is Not Good Allyship

Please just shut the fuck up and let people live their lives

[Fetian]

I think the skit script is basically done. Partner did a good chunk of it and I super appreciate that she hasn't slacked on it. I believe she's also got access to a native Japanese speaker so I think (hope) she has been running it by that person to doublecheck we're not making any dumb mistakes with the grammar but also I think the grammar is all fine. It might, might be a touch long. We'll run through it on Tuesday and see if we want to make any changes to it but as of right now I am done with it. She might not be.

I! Am! Frustrated with the professor and how she teaches. I do not feel like I super benefitted from being in her class, she doesn't explain why something is wrong when I get it wrong which is fine but whatever when it's something out of the workbook and I made a dumb mistake like getting a particle wrong or a conjugation, but then when it's a writing assignment like. Why is it wrong for me to have just said "電車が好きです" instead of "ここの電車が好きです". Is it wrong or is she just being pedantic. I don't know! Because she doesn't explain her corrections at all she just marks them wrong and rearranges sentences. And even if it is wrong, like, this isn't something that I learned in class at all! This isn't me forgetting a grammar point, this is me apparently not being able to put a series of sentences together in a way that sounds grammatical or natural. I feel like after two semesters of the language and an entire textbook on the subject, I should be better prepared to actually communicate, but I'm just not. I'm glad I'm taking Japan 411 next fall instead of next semester so I can spend some time really hunkering down and focusing on some self-study. I need to start consuming media in Japanese and get myself to a point of being able to take in comprehensible input, and start absorbing natural language, and also need to review every chapter we went over this class so I can actually learn all the content without feeling like I'm constantly on my back foot and trying to catch up despite missing no classes (except one) and in fact spending the day before each class studying what we're learning that day and pre-answering all the questions for that class. Good lord what a sentence.

Anyway! I think I wasn't a huge fan of the other Japanese professor but I do think I liked her style more than I've liked this one's, and luckily she's the professor that teaches both the advanced classes, so. And next semester I'll be taking Intro to Linguistics as an asynchronous online class, so that will hopefully be fun and give me enough flexibility that I'll have time to do other things.

Final next week, which I need to study for, a lot. Skit rehearsal, functionally, this week on Tuesday and then the performance on Thursday. And that's it for this class, and hopefully, hopefully, Disruptive Student isn't in 411 with me next year.

[Fetian]

It sucks how I can basically only watch my grade go down? Makes me sad how I can at best keep it at its current percentage by doing Perfectly on Everything, and getting even one thing wrong it creeps ever downward. Feels bad!