These last two weeks have been all about wrapping up the final lessons with my language partner and focusing on finishing up my last assignments as the end of the semester arrives. It’s sad to think about how I will be finishing up my last week of my undergraduate career this week and it feels so anti-climatic and abrupt. It feels weird to not officially be able to close the door on the past four years of my life. My language partner and I discussed how unexpected and sad it was to end our senior year this way. It was definitely not something we ever imagined would happen to us. We were both happy and hopeful that we were still getting somewhat of a closing with the possibility of a senior celebration in the future. We also discussed how online classes at home were hard especially when taking tests. I think that the environment in my house is more relaxing and causes me to become lazy especially when needing to study and learning new material. I have always relied on the environment of the library where there are other people around me to study. Surprisingly my teachers have not become more lenient because of online classes. I am having trouble at home studying for exams and learning the material. We also reflected together on how our two semesters of lessons went. Although I am improving in some areas, we discussed how there is still a lot of room for improvement and learning. Specifically the areas of reading and writing are where I can improve the most. I think some ways I can strengthen them is rewriting vocabulary over and over and reading vocabulary lists repeatedly. It might benefit me to make actual flashcards to review which is not something I have really been doing. My language partner suggested that I continue lessons through videos as wells since I am more of a visual learner.
Although this course is ending soon, one of the benefits of self-directed learning is that I can still teach myself and I can continue to improve and schedule lessons alone especially with the amount of online resources available to me. I will definitely be continuing my education online. The online resources I have mentioned in my last two journals have been really helpful. I think speaking might be harder to improve without the help of a language partner but there is a solution for that as I can always record myself speaking words and listen and compare it to a recording of somebody speaking. Listening will be easy as I can continue watching Korean dramas. I am hoping that at some point I will be able to watch Korean dramas without English subtitles for the most part. I think even if I learn enough Korean, I will still not be able to understand their idioms or word play. The English subtitle translations of those do not give them justice. I think I will continue learning Korean for a while at least until I master it to some point that I am comfortable with.
Comments
Hey Annie,
I share a similar experience about senior year. I really like how you are thinking about applying your learning plan outside of this course, that is the great thing about self directed courses, we already have a road map to continue our language learning. I hope the best for you in your endeavors!
Hey Annie, I'm sorry that your last semester in college got cut short. But I'm glad to see that you were still able to reflect in a somewhat positive way. It's great to see that you have a plan for continuing to learn Korean and I wish you the best!
Hi Annie. This is such a cool journal entry. It is sad to think that we have to spend our second half of the spring semester in quarantine, but I can see how it is worse for the seniors. But I am glad to see that you are staying positive and I am glad you will continue to learn Korean in the future.
Hey Annie! I totally agree that it feels so anti-climatic and abrupt that we just had our last day of undergraduate classes…Everything just feels so incomplete and empty. I don’t feel proud like I should be that I’m graduating from college. I miss my regular meetings with my language partner and friend, Jimin, but I’m glad that we’ve still had lessons through videochat. Good luck with everything!