Procrastinating on my "late marriage" paper

Yepppp, don't really want to write a paper about the late marriage trend. At all.

Instead here are my basic thoughts about the classes I am taking this semester, listed in the order I have them during the week...

Intensive Japanese 5:
The best class, although I don't want to write this paper. We go through vocab and grammar while reading articles about various things. We make example sentences, discuss the articles, etc.

Empathetic Conversation 4-5: It's a sorrrrt of good class, I guess. I tweeted the other day that the content is good but it's hard to internalize. That pretty much sums it up. Of course knowing the ins and outs of conversation is great, but it's those little things that are trickiest to master.

Extensive Reading 5-6: An utterly pointless class where we spend 90 minutes reading out loud in small groups. I guess I knew that going in. I just wanted an excuse to read so it's ok. Just sort of a grind way to end the day.

Vocab Building 5-6: Ahhh I dunno about this. We're basically going through words we mostly know already (or probably should) and making sure we understand how to use them properly. It's good in its way, but kind of tedious. Also I hate that we have to look up the words ourselves and then get tested on them before we know if we even found the usages she wants to test us on.

Honorific Expressions for Communication 5: I kind of hate this class. I really just want to drill keigo into my head and this is like some light explanations followed by a little practice, the handing out of a homework sheet, and then we spend like a half hour doing group work that...I mean it's just pointless. I don't want to spend hours of time in and out of class writing one example conversation. Spending all that time on one example conversation would be much better spent shadowing in my room with headphones on, which I should have just done to learn keigo like I had planned to ages ago...

Reading Comprehension Skills for Intermediate and Advanced Learners 5: Kind of random. We read the weirdest things like about coal and oil, about weird science 'experiments' (like elementary school kids do), to cuisine theories by some guy who is not Japanese. It's sort of hard to know how/if we have to try to absorb all the vocab, but...I dunno. Honestly I guess I don't really seem to have reading comprehension problems unless I don't know the grammar so...maybe this class was kind of pointless? It's still more reading practice though, so I guess it's fine.

Enjoy Short Novels: Reading, Listening & Watching Videos 4-5: This is actually one of my favorite classes probably. The material is a tad simple but there are still things to learn. It's fun to read and then get to see a video version of the story, and the teacher says really hilarious things. We also get to write stuff like our impressions comparing the movie to the book (which makes up for how awful the film class is, a little bit), or like this first story we read we had to write our own ending before we finished it in class.

Music of Japan: from Nursery Rhymes to Lieder 4-8: Kind of a random fun class. We sing and play patty-cake-type games ;D Some of the more traditional songs have obscure-ish vocabulary but it's not the end of the world.

Developing Discourse Ability in Japanese 5: I thought I was going to love this class, but have come to dread it. Group writing assignments are just not a good idea. Also I kind of don't feel like we're moving quickly enough through what material there is.

Learning Japanese Through Films - Think and Discuss What a Film Appeals to Us 5-6: This class is hands down the worst. It's definitely not about thinking and discussing films. At least so far it seems to be about memorizing tons of random vocab that appear in a movie and getting tested in a really difficult way on our listening comprehension. I wanted to drop this but I missed the deadline. I actually cried when I found out I couldn't drop it—that's how big a waste of time this class is.  

The Latest Japan on TV News 5: I like this class more every time I go. Definitely useful even if the in-class vocab explanations are tedious and not super helpful generally. Watching the same news story a million times is not something you get to do usually though, so I sort of wish there were some tips on understanding it as you go...I guess you can only learn by learning. Technically my TV can tape stuff for me if I get a hard drive, I think, so maybe I should look into that at some point.

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Communication (1) 5: I really don't like this class, but I NEED it, so. Just the atmosphere of both the teacher and the students kind of bothers me for some reason. The content is fine, a little hard to remember. I wish there were more example sentences. I just want example sentences that reach to the moon...

BESIDES SCHOOL

...life is kind of whatever. Have not solved my laundry machine issues, but have begun cooking. Frankly cooking is exhausting. When I think of how I only have one burner anyhow so sooner or later things are going to get impossible, it's discouraging, but the idea is to make do and try to have fun, so that is what I'm doing.

I also got a lot of furniture and things, but I don't have curtains yet. My TV is sitting on a badly sagging cardboard box...

Club activities are going ok I suppose. I see the Gundam guys now and then. Honestly I don't have that much time though, so I'm not sure how to best like...interact or be a part of it. Have mostly given up on joining anime club, I think.... Honestly, hanging out with a lot of people at once is just not my style. Four or less is great. More than that and I get kind of tired and alien-feeling.

Writing has been going ok. "Writing." You know what I mean. I feel good about myself when I can fit it in and bad when I can't.

Lately I've been wishing I could just go back to work full-time and study part-time somehow. But what the heck I should take advantage of my time. So far though I just feel really overwhelmed. There are all these loose ends or impending stressers that kind of make me want to just do nothing. So then I end up on FB or the Tw just refeshing like crazy hoping to see something that makes me happy. Or I punk around on YouTube looking at Japanese music from the 70s. I've been renting the same DVDs for 3 weeks now. It's only about a buck per week but c'mon, just watch the movies. I just feel like there is so much I need to do so it's hard to relax. It's one of those line'em up and knock'em down scenarios, but sometimes knocking it down means going across town in a train, not just like, organizing a cupboard (although I should probably do that too).

Also as you might be able to tell I'm not really interested in blogging anymore. Twitter is the spot. It's so much easier to just post an interesting picture as you take it than save them up and try to say something intelligent about them later. I guess it's that "saying something intelligent" that is the trouble. Brain continues to atrophy...