Katie and Voltaire are no longer active on Suicide Girls? What has this world come to, they were the two reasons I joined.
Anyway... Today was a horribly frustrating day. I realized that my school, St. John's University is robbing me of my money. The education I am getting here in Japan isn't even up to par with a community college in the states. Our Japanese language class is the only one that is even worthwhile. Once again here is a letter I mailed to my Father.
Dad-
Today was a pretty frustrating day of classes for me. The class that really ticked me off was our 'contemporary Japan' class. We were assigned to read two Chapters of our textbook, which was easy enough as class only convenes once a week. However, it was the teachers ""Method of Teaching"" that I found especially ridiculous. He came into the classroom and instead of providing us with an insightful lesson or discussion, actually took the textbook out and read it to the class for 80 minutes. Yes. Nothing else besides reading the material which he had assigned. What made this infinitely worse, is that when we asked the "teacher" questions, he was unable to reply. He apparently did not know the answer to any of the questions we asked. This made me wonder, when they were going to teach the Americans, did they just find someone who spoke broken english and hand him a textbook and say read it to the Americans? What the hell is this?
We are paying what, around 15,000 American dollars for this? This is bullshit! These classes wouldn't even be taught at a community college, say ridgewater or something. Our only class that is worthwhile in the slightest is our Japanese language course, and possibly our literature course, although we aren't doing nearly enough. The rest of our classes are seemingly just time sinks. Its not even worth paying attention in the majority of them. There is one class that is 'international relations' or something to that effect where a Japanese man from UNESCO comes and talks about UNESCO for 80 minutes. Sure, far and between we may find out some interesting figures, but I really can't shake the feeling that I am being horribly ripped off. This is not a St. John's Whatever the semester's tuition is. Classes, save for the Japanese language class, only convene one time a week. ONE! We forget anything that we might have 'learned' in between those times. We are given no incentive to study anything. The only class that provides any (most Japanese homework takes 10 minutes, studying maybe a half hour would be satisfactory) homework or that is worth studying for is the Japanese language course.
This is really frustrating. I am thinking about talking to the program director, but I think I would just launch into a tirade. I saw him today and was going to ask him why St. John's is stealing my money. I don't think that would have been a prudent course of action, so I refrained from doing so.
-David
Well, today I am going to iado lessons (Some type of Japanese swordfighting) Hopefully that will be entertaining/help me relieve stress.
Addendum: Iaido Lessons were interesting. I dont know if I would go again having learned that all you do is wave a sword around (no fencing involved) and it mainly involves your imagination and assuming that all your enemies are incompetent.
However, it is 5am and I still have not been able to sleep tonight. I know for a fact that I took all my pills (Which usually is the culprit when I cannot sleep) I took half a sleeping pill but that had no effect. One of my roommates is snoring so loud it makes me want to commit suicide, but I don't think that is the culprit either. I am at a loss for what to do, but I am fearing classes tommorow, specifically sleeping through all of them. Which will be especially difficult because I have to do some zen sitting for an hour or so in two hours. Joy. Yeah, I can safely say that tommorow is going to be a ROUGH day.
Still waiting for an e-mail from Zhang Peng. :*(
Anyway... Today was a horribly frustrating day. I realized that my school, St. John's University is robbing me of my money. The education I am getting here in Japan isn't even up to par with a community college in the states. Our Japanese language class is the only one that is even worthwhile. Once again here is a letter I mailed to my Father.
Dad-
Today was a pretty frustrating day of classes for me. The class that really ticked me off was our 'contemporary Japan' class. We were assigned to read two Chapters of our textbook, which was easy enough as class only convenes once a week. However, it was the teachers ""Method of Teaching"" that I found especially ridiculous. He came into the classroom and instead of providing us with an insightful lesson or discussion, actually took the textbook out and read it to the class for 80 minutes. Yes. Nothing else besides reading the material which he had assigned. What made this infinitely worse, is that when we asked the "teacher" questions, he was unable to reply. He apparently did not know the answer to any of the questions we asked. This made me wonder, when they were going to teach the Americans, did they just find someone who spoke broken english and hand him a textbook and say read it to the Americans? What the hell is this?
We are paying what, around 15,000 American dollars for this? This is bullshit! These classes wouldn't even be taught at a community college, say ridgewater or something. Our only class that is worthwhile in the slightest is our Japanese language course, and possibly our literature course, although we aren't doing nearly enough. The rest of our classes are seemingly just time sinks. Its not even worth paying attention in the majority of them. There is one class that is 'international relations' or something to that effect where a Japanese man from UNESCO comes and talks about UNESCO for 80 minutes. Sure, far and between we may find out some interesting figures, but I really can't shake the feeling that I am being horribly ripped off. This is not a St. John's Whatever the semester's tuition is. Classes, save for the Japanese language class, only convene one time a week. ONE! We forget anything that we might have 'learned' in between those times. We are given no incentive to study anything. The only class that provides any (most Japanese homework takes 10 minutes, studying maybe a half hour would be satisfactory) homework or that is worth studying for is the Japanese language course.
This is really frustrating. I am thinking about talking to the program director, but I think I would just launch into a tirade. I saw him today and was going to ask him why St. John's is stealing my money. I don't think that would have been a prudent course of action, so I refrained from doing so.
-David
Well, today I am going to iado lessons (Some type of Japanese swordfighting) Hopefully that will be entertaining/help me relieve stress.
Addendum: Iaido Lessons were interesting. I dont know if I would go again having learned that all you do is wave a sword around (no fencing involved) and it mainly involves your imagination and assuming that all your enemies are incompetent.
However, it is 5am and I still have not been able to sleep tonight. I know for a fact that I took all my pills (Which usually is the culprit when I cannot sleep) I took half a sleeping pill but that had no effect. One of my roommates is snoring so loud it makes me want to commit suicide, but I don't think that is the culprit either. I am at a loss for what to do, but I am fearing classes tommorow, specifically sleeping through all of them. Which will be especially difficult because I have to do some zen sitting for an hour or so in two hours. Joy. Yeah, I can safely say that tommorow is going to be a ROUGH day.
Still waiting for an e-mail from Zhang Peng. :*(
shattered:
A whole bunch of girls left, some of them (like Katie and Apnea) to go model for a copycat site that isn't up yet.