For whatever reason, I’ve been posting more at HTLAL lately than here. I’m not really sure why.

Last week I got really into doing Russian practice again. I have a funny tendency when I’m stressed out (usually because I’m already too busy, for extra irony), I tend to pick up throwaway hobbies that I get really excited about for a day or two or a week, and then drop later in favor of the long-term ones. It’s not the first time I got into Russian– I’d tried to learn the alphabet before, with … partial luck. This time seems a little easier, though I’m still pretty baffled by Russian spelling/pronunciation rules. It’s the first language I’ve tried to seriously learn that I haven’t grown up with, so I’m not familiar with the phonemes, which doesn’t help. Memrise seems to work much better for me with Russian, though, than it does for Japanese. I hate it for Japanese. Either way, I think my Russian adventure is done for now… until next time.

Speaking of Japanese and HTLAL, during one of my posts there, someone prompted the idea that I should look into taking the N3 this year, and I really considered it. Registration opened up a week or two ago, and I could probably at least make a reasonable attempt at it, but it’s costly since they don’t hold one in my city or anywhere in driving distance. And I’m again thinking… there’s not really any point for me, is there.

Originally it was a motivator for me– an objective, if arbitrary, goalpost I could aim for that would theoretically mean something to other people and mark my progress. But I’ve realized it’s not much of a motivator for me now. What I’m finding is that getting a good score on the test would mean nothing to me personally, unless maybe it was a 100% (or close to) just because that would be damn impressive on a test that has such a low passing rate already? I can tell I wouldn’t be excited about it, so really the test is either going to make me feel terrible about myself (i.e. if I fail), or pretty much the same about myself. The thrill I’d have felt about it if I’d passed straight out of college would not be there for me now, because I think I have a more of a boost these days just reading something I couldn’t a couple months ago, or realizing I had a conversation in Japanese.

This is not to say I think the JLPT is totally worthless and you shouldn’t take it, because I think that’s up to each individual person’s situation to dictate. Some people are way more motivated by test scores than I am, or need to get a job in Japan or something, so it could definitely be worth it for other people. But for me right now, at least, I don’t need or want to aim for it myself because it’s becoming more distracting than useful to me. Which is good, since that’s a couple hundred dollars saved (in plane tickets and things), at least right now.

Though also I’m having a bit of an internal conflict, because I’m more and more frustrated with my complete lack of Mandarin, and the idea of waiting another year or two to feel totally okay with my Japanese and then spending another 3-6 years on Mandarin to get it up to adequately conversational sounds awful. I don’t want to be nearly-40 before I can actually speak to my mom in Mandarin. Also so much language-study is already kind of making me a total recluse, and I’d like to have more of a social life before I am 40 either. But it’s one of those awkward things where okay, so where do I get the time from, then. So I’m working on a plan of attack for that, which may involve cutting back on Japanese more. Meanwhile I’m just going to keep my primary focus as Japanese for now and see how much Mandarin I can work in.

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