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Not to sound all emo-y or whatever and shit, but that's the only way that I feel about myself nowadays.
About me: I'm in my 2nd year of University and I'm majoring in Japanese and Korean in a Bachelor of Arts. I know I'll probably sound like a dick (which I'm not trying to be) when I say some of the following stuff, but I just want to be as honest as possible to try and describe myself and my situation; I find the subjects quite easy and have gotten straight 7s (max grade in Australia) so far without really much difficulty. With my marks from high school I could've gotten into basically any course straight away (except the precursor to med because you need to have done an external exam for that) and I chose a Bachelor of Arts anyway because I wanted to do translation and interpreting with Korean and/or Japanese.
First year was alright, didn't have to do much and cruised through that pretty happily. You usually do 4 subjects as a full-time student and since I could only do 1 Korean subject in each of the First Year semesters and 2 Japanese subjects, I had some electives and opted to do a maths subject that was like Linear Algebra and Calculus I (a continuation from the advanced maths level at high school) and in second semester I did a Software Engineering subject involving Python.
Now to explain the title of my blog.
So this year I've been able to fill my 4 subject quota with 2 Japanese subjects and 2 Korean subjects, both of which are still quite easy. And this is where I feel the problem is. I go to uni, go to classes, come home, don't study and do whatever. I'll usually study the night before an exam or something and pretty much ace it barring silly slip-ups.
And that just doesn't feel right. I don't want to go to uni to just do some fucking simple subjects that don't challenge me or require me to work hard and graduate with a useless degree. I know all that shit about blah blah do what makes you happy blah blah don't compare yourself to others blah blah, but when I look around at my siblings and friends who are doing things like medicine, engineering, law, architecture, basically most stuff, I feel straight up pathetic.
Even when I'm not doing these comparisons I feel pathetic when I just look at how little I have to try in class. I've told friends and relatives parts of this and the university age ones usually say things like, 'Oh I wish my subjects were that easy, that would be awesome' etc, etc. But think about it for a second, if you went to fucking university during the week and your lectures were like solve 2+2, write a 150 word paragraph or whatever, I can't think of any decent examples right now. The point is, if you went somewhere with the purpose of increasing your knowledge and becoming a smarter person for a few to several years and you often found the content quite easy, wouldn't you be frustrated?
I'm just going to keep repeating myself if I continue writing, so I'll just try to finish up here. I'm trying to think of something to add on to make this a dual degree to give me something hard to do so I don't end up deferring or dropping out. Everyday, to uni, during classes, going home from uni, I just feel straight up pathetic, like I'm wasting my time and I'm a worthless piece of shit studying an Arts degree. If you're wondering, yes, I do have friends in almost all my classes. I have been depressed before, but this doesn't feel like that, this just feels like a huge lack of self-esteem created by me thinking that I'm pathetic, etc.
It may sound stupid, but the only time I really felt "legit" was when I was doing those engineering and programming subjects, I actually had to challenge myself and do work, which frankly felt amazing. Not sure I want to do everything in engineering though, but I'm just not sure.
Thanks to anyone who read that, I just needed to get some stuff off my chest to slow down this spiral that rocketing down. Any suggestions or discussion of similar experiences or basically anything you think that would be relevant or helpful is most certainly welcome. I'm trying to see an Academic Advisor sometime soon, so hopefully something good might come of that.
Addendum: I'm not saying that the Japanese or Korean teachers or departments are bad at all, quite the contrary. The teachers are excellent; they have great materials and make the classes interesting. They are always eager to help students with any questions. The problem lies with me.
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To state the obvious: you can challenge yourself in an Arts degree. Take something that requires some analytical thinking: philosophy, history, English. Either that or change degrees.
I'm assuming that your Japanese and Korean units are just language units?
What uni are you at?
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Given that changing your major is a no-go, do some independent studying. Go to your university library and pick up a physics book and start learning on your own. You could even survey some courses if they don't impede with your other language classes (The professor may even be open to administering exams to you and grading it). You may not get academic credit, but who really cares. So long as you're challenged and learning, that's really all that matters.
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Langauge courses don't become more difficult until the third year(5+ course in the langauge), at least here.
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Take more than four courses a semester?
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So, you're retaining the material, but it's simply not enough to challenge you? Well, you've got a few obvious options.
1) Coast, and goof off in your leisure time. There are a lot of ways to 'goof off' that are quite beneficial, like playing a sport or making/developing friendships. Games and reading are often good for your brain.
2) Take more/harder classes.
3) Work harder in your classes. Don't settle for the highest grade -- go for full completion. Turn in perfect assignments. Complete all the exercises and memorize all the vocabulary in the entire textbook. Learn the connations of different words/phrases with similar meanings. Take advantage of 'office hours' to ask the teachers about stuff that goes beyond the coursework. (If you do this, get those teachers to write you letters of recommendation.)
4) Practice Korean/Japanese separately from class. Read Japanese/Korean books and comics, watch Japanese/Korean movies, listen to Japanese/Korean music. Find people to speak with, and content to translate. Starcraft communities want Korean translations. Other gaming communities (fighting games?) probably want Japanese translations. There are always films/comics/animated stuff that don't get official translations, or don't get them when people want them.
5) Independent study. The internet is flooded with free material to help you learn. Open courseware -- MIT puts a lot of its material online for free, and so do many other universities. Websites like:
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
http://projecteuler.net/
http://www.programmerfish.com/45-free-online-computer-science-courses/
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
Furthermore, you're a student. You can probably pester professors and teacher and grad students for help, even if you're not taking their classes.
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If you really feel great challenging yourself with engineering and such, feel around in those areas, take courses on them, and then maybe switch majors. If you're happy, who cares whether or not you want that to be your job?
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As said before try and find a different field that you are interested in and learn it on your own, you might really enjoy it as a hobby 
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What uni? And complaining that BA = too easy is kinda like saying it's too cold in Antartica; You should have expected this, etc.
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On April 23 2012 10:50 n.DieJokes wrote:
Take more than four courses a semester?
That isn't the issue; I want the content to be harder.
On April 23 2012 11:12 Severedevil wrote:So, you're retaining the material, but it's simply not enough to challenge you? Well, you've got a few obvious options. 1) Coast, and goof off in your leisure time. There are a lot of ways to 'goof off' that are quite beneficial, like playing a sport or making/developing friendships. Games and reading are often good for your brain. 2) Take more/harder classes. 3) Work harder in your classes. Don't settle for the highest grade -- go for full completion. Turn in perfect assignments. Complete all the exercises and memorize all the vocabulary in the entire textbook. Learn the connations of different words/phrases with similar meanings. Take advantage of 'office hours' to ask the teachers about stuff that goes beyond the coursework. (If you do this, get those teachers to write you letters of recommendation.) 4) Practice Korean/Japanese separately from class. Read Japanese/Korean books and comics, watch Japanese/Korean movies, listen to Japanese/Korean music. Find people to speak with, and content to translate. Starcraft communities want Korean translations. Other gaming communities (fighting games?) probably want Japanese translations. There are always films/comics/animated stuff that don't get official translations, or don't get them when people want them. 5) Independent study. The internet is flooded with free material to help you learn. Open courseware -- MIT puts a lot of its material online for free, and so do many other universities. Websites like: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/http://projecteuler.net/http://www.programmerfish.com/45-free-online-computer-science-courses/ http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/SequencesFurthermore, you're a student. You can probably pester professors and teacher and grad students for help, even if you're not taking their classes.
I really appreciate you taking the time to put this post together, it really gives me some purpose to aim for. I think I'll go for the hardcore option no.3. I already look up new vocab and grammatical structures when I'm bored, so it will be exciting to ramp that up. I'm actually about to go see a lecturer about getting some hard material to work through, so should be good.
In fact, I think I'll try to do everything that you've listed there. I'm quite keen on programming and don't want the little that I know to go to waste and there are some more activities that I've wanted to do in my spare time that I haven't yet.
I'm pretty pumped now tbh, if the course is too easy, I should go way above and beyond to supplement that as much as possible. I should give myself worth and meaning, not wait for it to be bestowed upon me.
Once again, thank you, I'm already feeling better about myself. Also thanks to the others posting, I appreciate that fact that you took the time to read and make a comment.
edit: for those asking, I'm at UQ St Lucia.
On April 23 2012 12:11 hkf wrote:
What uni? And complaining that BA = too easy is kinda like saying it's too cold in Antartica; You should have expected this, etc.
Yeah I do realise that, but I thought that it would be different if I went hardcore on languages, I thought that they would be hard and there would be more opportunities from them. Languages are the only reason I chose a BA.
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As someone who's also learning Korean, let me tell you (well actually I'm sure you know), becoming fluent isn't about handing in assignments and getting nice little As (or 7s) in class; that doesn't mean jack shit imo. I studied Arabic in university and got A's without even going to class, but even after 4 years I couldn't carry a decent convo with a native speaker. Becoming fluent in a language (and I mean really fluent, not just able to get around) isn't a walk in the park, and if you don't think that it's challenging, you're doing it wrong or you've set the bar too low in terms of your goals (again I really think getting an A in a language class is easy, and doesn't mean much at all, if anything).
There's a real abundance of challenging things you can (and need to) do if you want to really become fluent: try to decipher korean newspapers, challenge yourself to learning a certain number of words per day (learn a word, make 3-4 sample sentences with it), learn idioms, translate and/or try to understand Korean music/dramas/whatever, write a short story in korean, even go into Korean chat rooms and try to talk with native speakers. If you don't feel challenged, it's your own fault; maybe you're just not interested enough to put in the effort, in which case I would suggest changing majors ASAP.
If you really want to do translation/interpretation work, you need to get your ass in gear; just sitting through your university classes thinking you'll eventually be fluent because you can get As easily really isn't going to cut it.
Disclaimer: I'm saying this assuming you're just a random white kid like me; if you've got a Korean parent or something, I'm sure you're already fluent enough to discount my advice
Edit: If you haven't already, check out talktomeinkorean.com ---> Especially the "Iyagi" series, great for listening and comprehension practice
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5) Independent study. The internet is flooded with free material to help you learn. Open courseware -- MIT puts a lot of its material online for free, and so do many other universities. Websites like:
I'm a very lazy comp engineering student. I find that a lot of my courses don't teach me anything useful. I just take them for graduation requirements. They aren't fun but I suppose they are challenging. Independent study would be my mode of choice if I were allowed to leave school now. If I had the motivation I'd try to get through a textbook or an online course in a week and learn twenty times more than I do in school.
Grass isn't always greener.
Professors are generally good researchers but bad teachers.
There is no hand holding on any assignments.
No one cares if you don't come to lectures or tutorials but you better do well on the exams.
Keeping track of everything is your responsiblity.
Keeping up with the course and doing required readings is your responsibility. I can't seem to study for most exams in one night.
If you're confused good luck getting help, the average class size in third year is 100 people. But go ahead, try to reach the professor after class.
The things we learn are the basics, theory and things that were proven thirty years ago.
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On April 23 2012 13:06 Baobab wrote:As someone who's also learning Korean, let me tell you (well actually I'm sure you know), becoming fluent isn't about handing in assignments and getting nice little As (or 7s) in class; that doesn't mean jack shit imo. I studied Arabic in university and got A's without even going to class, but even after 4 years I couldn't carry a decent convo with a native speaker. Becoming fluent in a language (and I mean really fluent, not just able to get around) isn't a walk in the park, and if you don't think that it's challenging, you're doing it wrong or you've set the bar too low in terms of your goals (again I really think getting an A in a language class is easy, and doesn't mean much at all, if anything). There's a real abundance of challenging things you can (and need to) do if you want to really become fluent: try to decipher korean newspapers, challenge yourself to learning a certain number of words per day (learn a word, make 3-4 sample sentences with it), learn idioms, translate and/or try to understand Korean music/dramas/whatever, write a short story in korean, even go into Korean chat rooms and try to talk with native speakers. If you don't feel challenged, it's your own fault; maybe you're just not interested enough to put in the effort, in which case I would suggest changing majors ASAP. If you really want to do translation/interpretation work, you need to get your ass in gear; just sitting through your university classes thinking you'll eventually be fluent because you can get As easily really isn't going to cut it. Disclaimer: I'm saying this assuming you're just a random white kid like me; if you've got a Korean parent or something, I'm sure you're already fluent enough to discount my advice Edit: If you haven't already, check out talktomeinkorean.com ---> Especially the "Iyagi" series, great for listening and comprehension practice
Oh yeah, I certainly understand the difference between class grades and actual proficiency and fluency. I studied French for 5 years at high school and while I can manage myself, but I'm nowhere near fluent or an intelligent conversation level imo. And yeah, I'm a random white dude as well, but a half Italian one, so I dabble a bit in Italian, although it's pretty atrocious because I don't use it often outside of family, so I do realise the difference between studying a language, kinda knowing a bit and being fluent.
I already try to read Korean articles from 조선일보 (and Japanese ones from 読売新聞), look up idioms and expressions that native speakers use, look up new vocab and make lists with them and look up new grammatical structures that I haven't seen before. And don't worry, I'm not under the illusion that 3 years of university will make me fluent lol, I'm planning on going on exchange, maybe doing honours and definitely going to live/maybe work in said countries for a few years.
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In life these are the professions that matter
Doctor/surgeon
Bio/chem researcher
Software engineer/architect
Networking engineer/architect
Constructions engineer/architect
Ninja
Pirate
It is only normal that any other field of work will make you feel not challenged, after all, other professions than above are for people with no special skills required. Everybody can write an 150 words essay on how French art in the 19th century influenced Eastern Europe but not everybody can make a surgery on a frog or determine the O(N) complexity of a recursive task done by parallel processes. Exact science is just harder and more challenging. Of course there have to be people that produce bread and stuff and people who make movies but in the medieval times those people were called peasants and jesters accordingly.
I would reccommend switching before it is too late.
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On April 23 2012 14:48 sieksdekciw wrote:
In life these are the professions that matter
Doctor/surgeon
Bio/chem researcher
Software engineer/architect
Networking engineer/architect
Constructions engineer/architect
Ninja
Pirate
It is only normal that any other field of work will make you feel not challenged, after all, other professions than above are for people with no special skills required. Everybody can write an 150 words essay on how French art in the 19th century influenced Eastern Europe but not everybody can make a surgery on a frog or determine the O(N) complexity of a recursive task done by parallel processes. Exact science is just harder and more challenging. Of course there have to be people that produce bread and stuff and people who make movies but in the medieval times those people were called peasants and jesters accordingly.
I would reccommend switching before it is too late.
Eh, I'm a software engineer and I can safely say there are other jobs not in this list that matter, some matter more.
But none matter more than ninja/pirate
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Wouldn't it be hilarious if OP had a korean mother and japanese dad or something along those lines...
But seriously if you are in that position of comforting boredom, its just a matter of doing something that validates yourself, you probably already know this but just join the SES or do some volunteer work or brush up on your physics. I was in a similar position last year during psych where the content is incredibly easy and a breeze to complete. So when I was bored i would find something and read it, whether it was Plato, Ayn Rand or the Quran. Eventually you are bound to find something that interests you and eventually you will find yourself spending every waking moment thinking about it or wanting to learn more.
If you can appreciate that while life might feel easy and shitty, you are still living in the best of times, and the onus rests on you to take full advantage of that.
You probably know every old adage but there is always gonna be something out there that is just waiting to be learned/ discovered/done.
Get more familiar with programming/ do a trip around korea/ look around for job prospects in translation. It will all eventually click.
Probably.
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if you find your classes easy it just means you haven't engaged the subject matter in depth enough, because after a certain point of study EVERYTHING gets hard (some things just get harder quicker, like math/science, etc.) before it gets easier again
either you need to figure out a way to test out of your current classes by proving your handle on the languages is beyond the level of what is being taught, or you need to figure out some other way to engage with the material that really challenges you
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On April 23 2012 14:48 sieksdekciw wrote:
In life these are the professions that matter
Doctor/surgeon
Bio/chem researcher
Software engineer/architect
Networking engineer/architect
Constructions engineer/architect
Ninja
Pirate
It is only normal that any other field of work will make you feel not challenged, after all, other professions than above are for people with no special skills required. Everybody can write an 150 words essay on how French art in the 19th century influenced Eastern Europe but not everybody can make a surgery on a frog or determine the O(N) complexity of a recursive task done by parallel processes. Exact science is just harder and more challenging. Of course there have to be people that produce bread and stuff and people who make movies but in the medieval times those people were called peasants and jesters accordingly.
I would reccommend switching before it is too late.
This is so wrong I don't know where to begin. I guess you're being sarcastic to a degree?
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On April 23 2012 15:50 ohsea.toc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 14:48 sieksdekciw wrote:
In life these are the professions that matter
Doctor/surgeon
Bio/chem researcher
Software engineer/architect
Networking engineer/architect
Constructions engineer/architect
Ninja
Pirate
It is only normal that any other field of work will make you feel not challenged, after all, other professions than above are for people with no special skills required. Everybody can write an 150 words essay on how French art in the 19th century influenced Eastern Europe but not everybody can make a surgery on a frog or determine the O(N) complexity of a recursive task done by parallel processes. Exact science is just harder and more challenging. Of course there have to be people that produce bread and stuff and people who make movies but in the medieval times those people were called peasants and jesters accordingly.
I would reccommend switching before it is too late.
This is so wrong I don't know where to begin. I guess you're being sarcastic to a degree?
Yeah, where is the political science degree? Why the fuck are we getting snubbed out of that list! AM I NOT IMPORTANT IN THIS WORLD!
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Come one, 4 courses for the whole semester, I am sure you are bored as hell. Take some extra courses, when I was in uni most of time I take around 30 credits/semester, you don't have time to breath when the exams come  .
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EPT
